“I fully respect the sensitivity around this.” – Mark Boucher on the SJN hearings.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
IF South Africa thought they had earned some rest, relaxation and rah-rah after almost two months on the road in which they won nine of their dozen completed games, they can think again. Instead, they’ve come home to a storm over deep rooted racism.
The hearings of CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project, which started on July 5 and are set to continue until August 6, an extension from the original end date of July 23, have laid bare pain suffered by black and brown South Africans in cricket since the game was racially unified in 1991. That some of those fingered are in senior positions at CSA emphasises the seriousness of the situation. As none of those accused of racist behaviour have yet exercised their right of reply at the SJN, it would be unfair — not to mention legally actionable in countries outside South Africa — to publish their names in connection with the charges that have been made against them.
But to deny the lived experience of witnesses who have mustered the courage to recount humiliating experiences for all to see and hear, often through tears, would only add to the wrongs that they have testified, under oath, have been done to them. There is no reason to dismiss as false the accounts heard so far, except in the case of would-be fixers who admitted their guilt after an investigation into the 2015 franchise T20 competition. They would now seem to be looking for salvation whichever way they can get it.
One of those ways has been to cast aspersions on the role played by the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), which paid the affected players’ legal fees during the scandal, and David Becker, who led successful matchfixing probes as the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) head of legal and assisted CSA as an external independent lawyer.
Becker represents a range of figures in the game. Is there an argument that he has fingers in too many pies and is thus conflicted, as has been mooted by the failed fixers? “I’m like a doctor, an independent professional who people approach for advice from time to time due to my experience [of 20 years in sports law],” Becker told Cricbuzz. “The Law Society entitles me to provide that advice, except in certain cases where there is a direct conflict of interest with respect to a particular matter in question. If there are any issues regarding a particular conflict of interest, then the aggrieved party must raise it with me and with the Law Society. That is the recourse that they have.”
As for the non-fixers, why would they lie? Dumisa Ntsebeza, the senior advocate who is serving as the SJN ombud, has already said the question of reparations would not form part of proceedings at this stage. Justice can take different forms. Sometimes a sincere apology will suffice, other times stronger action will need to be taken. No-one could argue that racism has disappeared from cricket in a society that, 27 years after the country held its first first free and fair elections, remains wracked with unfairness and inequality.
Certainly, the returning South Africans know they are in the spotlight. “I fully respect the sensitivity around this,” Mark Boucher said in Belfast on Saturday. “I am not going to give a knee-jerk response. I will go back home, assess the information that’s on the table, that’s available to me and I will reply respectfully and appropriately to all of the allegations, and at the right time as well. I need to get home and have a look at what’s been said and then I will come through with a response.”
You wouldn’t have thought he was coach of a team that had just completed a 3-0 thrashing of Ireland in their T20I series. Only three times in their previous 10 rubbers, regardless of format, had South Africa whitewashed their opponents. That followed a shared ODI series against the Irish — one match was washed out — and 2-0 and 3-2 wins in Test and T20I rubbers in the Caribbean. The South Africans aren’t playing their most convincing cricket, but they’re winning.
But the allegations of racism are more important than events on the field, and should lead many to ask if this cancer is at the heart of South Africa’s failure to reach a final — nevermind win it — of a World Cup in either white-ball format. Disunity in the ranks is no foundation on which to aim for the top.
This lack of cohesion extends to the press, where a senior white cricket writer has been widely castigated as trying to launder racism clean after he said, on social media, that he was providing “context” to Paul Adams’ claim at the SJN that he was called “brown shit” in the dressingroom during his international career. Another veteran white reporter, in an exchange on a South African cricket writers’ WhatsApp group, rubbished attempts to explain what was wrong with all that as “woke moralising” and “a chorus of political correctness”. Several writers have since left the group.
The next few days of hearings will mostly feature testimony from figures little known outside their hometowns. But one of the most trenchant and steadfast critics of the state of the game in South Africa in racial terms will take to the stand on Monday. Ashwell Prince should be well worth a close listen.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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