It was almost a pity that a cricket match had to be played.
Telford Vice / Newlands
A woman who had lived more than a few years of life made her way carefully down the stairs separating the lower reaches of blocks D and E in a stand beyond Newlands’ eastern boundary on Sunday.
A light south-easter plucked at her black-and-white dress and white hijab as she went. Her walking stick steadied her every step. She was bound for block E, row J, seat No. 1. Once she had made that effort, she eased into her seat and settled in, her brown face beaming gently at the vividly green field in front of her, the scene bathed in the bright but no longer hot sun of late summer.
In seat No. 2 was a young black woman in a tight, sleeveless top wearing her dusty pink hair short in a pouffy style. More contrasting neighbours would be difficult to find. A black man of similar age to No. 2 was in seat No. 3. Clearly, Nos. 2 and 3 knew each other.
Directly in front of them, in row H, the first seat was occupied by a youngish brown woman who chatted with, to her left, a white woman and, in seat No. 3, a willowy white man wearing John Lennon-style sunglasses under his floppy fringe. The women sported blondish twin ponytails. All were about the same age.
On a stage a hundred or so metres away, Mi Casa, a popular house trio, were oozing through their set. They are fronted by a white man born in Portugal who moved to Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape as a child. The other two members are black men with strong roots in the music scene. One played in his first band at the age of eight. The other’s father was part of Mango Groove, a pop group prominent in the 1980s.
A world away from all that in the President’s Suite, arrangements were being made for the arrival of the man himself, Cyril Ramaphosa. Siya Kolisi and Francois Pienaar, who know a thing or two about winning World Cups with the Springboks, were already there. So was Graeme Smith, who despite his best efforts knows a thing or five about not winning World Cups.
It was just less than an hour before the start of the women’s T20 World Cup final, and it was almost a pity that a cricket match had to be played. South Africa’s society is riven by division so deep that television commercials advertising a particular brand of beer are perennially ridiculed for promoting a fiction of togetherness because they feature people of all races and cultures choosing to spend time together.
So to see exactly that, live, in person and for real, at a sold out Newlands on Sunday tugged at the tearstrings of many South Africans long before the anthems were played, when they flowed freely from even the most cynical eyes. And doubtless also from the woman in block E, row J, seat No. 1.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 