Dumisa Ntsebeza – Bulletproof Truth

How the SJN failed Paul Adams

“Being called ‘brown shit’ by teammates 20-odd years ago still echoes in my memories.” – Paul Adams

Telford Vice | Cape Town

PAUL Adams did not go to the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) hearings to name names. His testimony wasn’t about individuals or the actions of individuals. What he said was not a pitched fork deployed in a witch hunt. It was a plea for understanding and education.

And an alarm about a destructive fire that has always burnt through South Africa’s dressing room. To think it has been extinguished because CSA have dropped disciplinary charges against Mark Boucher, after losing their arbitration case against Graeme Smith last month, is to pour petrol on the flames.

Adams’ confirmation, in a statement on Sunday, that he would not testify at Boucher’s hearing doesn’t change that. There is racism in South African cricket because there is racism in South Africa. Only a sincere focus on eradicating racism in cricket, and our wider society, can change that. Only racists would disagree.

If Adams expected the dressing room to be a refuge from the white supremacist world just outside the door, he was sadly naive. Instead, he was demeaned as “brown shit” by his teammates during fines meetings held to, of all things, help celebrate victories.

The abuse didn’t end with Adams. Boucher was called “wit naai” — “white fuck” — in the same dressing room. Even now red-haired members of the squad are told, by teammates of all races, that “gingers have no soul”. How might Heinrich Klaasen and Kyle Verreynne feel about that?

But Boucher, Klaasen and Verreynne step out of the dressing room and back into whiteness, where they are readily accepted as first-class citizens based on their whiteness alone. Adams steps back into whiteness as just another brown person, and so a target for racism, prejudice, unfair treatment and conscious and unconscious bias. If he were black, his lot would be worse still. That remains almost as true in 2022 as it was in 1992, when South Africa played their first Test after readmission.

Adams made his debut almost two years before Boucher, and had played 18 matches for South Africa before the latter played his first. Thus the slur had no doubt been applied to Adams before Boucher heard it and participated in it. Adams played 69 internationals, of which South Africa won 37. That’s a lot of times to hear yourself described as “brown shit”.

Boucher played in 25 of those wins. The last of them was at Lord’s in 2003, when he hit 68 off 51 balls and Adams took the big wicket of Andrew Flintoff to seal success by an innings and 92 runs. Makhaya Ntini claimed 10 wickets and Smith, in just his fourth match as captain, scored 259 — which followed his 277 in the drawn first Test at Edgbaston. It is shocking to know that that shining day in South Africa’s cricket history ended with the players calling each other despicable names.

The match was Adams’ 63rd for the national team and Boucher’s 217th. By that stage of their careers — Adams was almost eight years into his international tenure and Boucher nearly six years in — were they not senior enough to raise their voices against such obvious misconduct? It’s not that simple.

Adams was just less than a month away from his 19th birthday when he first pulled on a South Africa cap, no doubt with great pride. Boucher was less than two months shy of turning 21 when he did the same, no doubt with identical feelings. Adams and Boucher were young, impressionable people thrust into a toxic environment. To be accepted they had to follow the lead of those who were already there — who themselves had inherited the traditions of the past, however wrong and damaging they were. It’s not as if incoming players are given a choice: here’s the culture, learn it or go home. Again, it’s not that simple.

South Africa’s new dawn on the road towards democracy was reached under Nelson Mandela on April 27, 1994, when the country held its first real elections. That’s the reason South Africans have the privilege of playing international sport. Cleansing toxic cultures is the least teams could do as gratitude for being given that privilege. But first they need to realise and accept that the culture is toxic.

How that did not happen in this case is an indictment on every player who has been part of the XI since readmission. That is even more true of those who had significant careers and especially of white players — as the leaders in the prevailing power dynamic, they alone could effect real change.

Not nearly enough progress had been made in this area when Adams testified at the SJN on July 22 last year. A measure of that was the lack of white witnesses at the hearings to rebut claims made against them, or to apologise. Jacques Faul, the Titans chief executive, was a notable exception. Boucher, like Smith, chose instead to restrict his involvement to a written submission riddled with lawyers’ weasel words and whataboutery.

Even though Boucher spent a good deal of his 14-page submission apologising and illustrating how he was invested in working towards a better culture, he still came across as aloof and unfeeling about hurt he had been accused of causing. Had he or his lawyers respected and trusted the SJN enough for Boucher to turn up in person — to present himself as a sinning and sinned against human being — he may never have been charged.

To leave his fate to the SJN report was a serious error. Dumisa Ntsebeza presided over the hearings with skill and warmth. Clearly, he didn’t know much about cricket. Just as clearly, that didn’t matter. Indeed, it was among the reasons to be hopeful: in a game shot through with contending agendas, he betrayed none. But Ntsebeza should be embarrassed by the report that has resulted. Adams has every right to feel insulted and betrayed.

The SJN report quotes Adams as saying: “Being called ‘brown shit’ when I was playing by teammates 20-odd years ago still echoes in my memories. I recall that Mark Boucher in particular would call me by that name and would be used as a fines meeting song for me … ‘Brown shit in the ring, tra-la-la-la-la’. Yes I was having the time of my life playing for my country and being one of the first black players to represent my country so I brushed it off and focused on my game because I wasn’t going to allow these racists to affect my mindset. I knew then already what was happening was wrong. But there was no-one to talk to or to support a player who spoke up so like my fellow black friends it off and let it go.”

What Adams’ submission actually says is: “Being called ‘brown shit’ when I was playing by teammates 20-odd years ago still echoes in my memories. I recall that a few players would call me by that name and would be used as a fines meeting song for me … ‘Brown shit in the ring, tra-la-la-la …”. Yes I was having the time of my life playing for my country and being one of the first black players to represent my country so l brushed it off and focused on my game because I wasn’t going to allow these racists to affect my mindset. I knew then already what was happening was wrong. But there was no-one to talk to or to support a player who spoke up so like my fellow black friends I shrugged it off and let it go.”

Note the absence of Boucher’s name in the original version, as presented by Adams. Nowhere in his written submission of more than 4,000 words does he mention Boucher. Fumisa Ngqele, an advocate assisting Ntsebeza, interrupted Adams as he was about to move on to the section of his testimony that dealt with his coaching career to say: “Mr Adams, may I just interject there. When Mark Boucher called you ‘brown shit’, did you ever address him personally?” Adams’ reply was that he had not taken up the issue with Boucher, and that “Mark was probably just one of the guys” who used the offensive term.

That doesn’t change the fact that Boucher had a case to answer. But it does mean the SJN report can’t be trusted to make that case fairly and accurately. And that, with Adams saying he was satisfied with Boucher’s apology and would not testify at the disciplinary hearing, CSA’s case — already shaky when Enoch Nkwe, another potentially important witness, indicated he would also not appear at the hearing — was dead in the water.

CSA’s board, which it should be remembered inherited the SJN and its shoddy report from a previous board, did the right thing by pulling the plug. Just as they did the right thing by calling for the hearing in the first place: allegations of racist behaviour by an employee cannot be ignored. Those calling for heads to roll at board level either don’t live in the real world of due process, or they have an unfair axe to grind.

There was more from Adams on July 22 last year, much of it heavy with wisdom and meaning: “I’m highlighting that it should never happen. And if we take this forward in the right manner we will have a lot more respect for each other. Maybe he should come and say sorry. Maybe that is all that needs to happen. But it should not be brushed under the carpet. If we want our teams within CSA to have the right ethic, the right mentality, the right respect for one another, we should air these things.

“No-one’s going to come here and sweep things under the carpet. That’s why I’ve built up the courage to actually come talk about it today. It’s taken a lot for me to be here and dig up some of these memories. I’ve felt a lot of emotion. We’re not here to break down the whole system. We’re here to build a better structure, a better way going forward.”

Sadly, the SJN report is that dreaded carpet. Adams’ courage and emotion will be remembered for a long time, but it’s difficult not to feel that it has been wasted.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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SJN demotes Smith, Boucher, De Villiers from heroes to zeroes

Mark Boucher’s SJN submission “displays an alarming and concerning reality that he does not comprehend South Africa’s apartheid, discriminatory and racist history”.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

IN the annals of South African cricket, Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher and AB de Villiers are usually held up as heroes. On Wednesday they were cast among the villains in chief of the game’s past and present struggles to overcome racism.

The three former players, all of them major figures in the world game, were damned in the report produced by the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) project, the independent investigation established by CSA to probe allegations of historical racial wrongs. The document was produced on the basis of testimony gathered from affidavits and in 35 days of hearings that started on July 5. The process took five months — it was originally slated to last three months — and, CSA said on Wednesday, cost the equivalent of USD463,000, up from the budgeted USD309,000.

Of the three, De Villiers can breathe easiest because he is not dependent on South African cricket for a living or anything else. But that’s not the case for Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, and Boucher, the men’s national team head coach.

A CSA statement that accompanied the release of the 235-page SJN report did not say what action, if any, should be taken against Smith and Boucher. Also not known is whether those implicated are talking to their lawyers. The statement didn’t make clear whether CSA accepted the SJN’s findings. Neither did the report offer concrete recommendations beyond saying the office of the transformation ombud, in this case filled by senior advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, should be made permanent. That said, CSA would surely not want plenty of publicly expressed pain — the hearings were streamed live online — and months of hard work and significant expenditure to amount to nothing.

Smith was South Africa’s captain when Boucher’s career was ended by an eye injury in Taunton in July 2012. Thami Tsolekile, who had played three tests against India in November 2004, was the heir apparent as a CSA contracted player. But the wicketkeeper’s position went to De Villiers, who had kept in only three of his 74 Tests at that point. Quinton de Kock succeeded De Villiers. In both instances, a case could be made that the balance of the team was bolstered by their selection. But Tsolekile was denied his opportunity. He never played for South Africa again, and his career ended unhappily when he was one of the seven players who confessed to planning to fix during the 2015 franchise T20 competition.

“It is hard to exclude Mr Tsolekile’s race as having been the main reason why he did not succeed in the Proteas,” the report says. “CSA, Mr Graeme Smith and some selectors at the time really failed Mr Tsolekile and many black players of his time in many ways.”

In the most explosive testimony at the hearings, Paul Adams said he had been called “brown shit” by his teammates in a dressing room song. Among those players was Boucher, who in a 14-page affidavit to the SJN admitted his guilt, apologised and said he had also been saddled with a racial nickname. The report says Boucher showed “a lack of sensitivity and understanding of the racist undertones” of his comments. “Because of the history of this country, the gravity of calling people nicknames with racial connotations will not weigh the same for black people. It is disappointing that Mr Boucher seems to not appreciate this salient common understanding.” Boucher’s apology was “buttressed by an excuse that the comments he made were within a team setting as if racism can be excused if done within a team setting”. Boucher’s submission “display[s] an alarming and concerning reality that [he does] not comprehend the South African apartheid/discriminatory and racist history”.

De Villiers was denounced for his insistence that Dean Elgar and not Khaya Zondo take the place of the injured JP Duminy for the deciding match of an ODI series in India in October 2015. Zondo had been included in the XI, but was removed after De Villiers complained to CSA and the selectors. The report said he had done so “just to ensure that a black player was not placed in a position which he deemed as requiring greater experience” and that, “The only reasonable conclusion is that Mr De Villiers unfairly discriminated against Mr Zondo on racial grounds.”

Smith, Boucher and De Villiers made submissions to the SJN, and on Wednesday after the report was released De Villiers said, through Edward Griffiths, his agent: “I have wholly supported the aims of Cricket South Africa’s Social Justice and Nation Building process, to ensure equal opportunities in our game. However, throughout my career, I expressed honest cricketing opinions only ever based on what I believed was best for the team, never based on anyone’s race. That’s the fact.”

Smith and Boucher will have to tread more carefully. So far, they have said nothing.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Where to next for cricket’s race conversation?

“I don’t think we’re ever going to be done speaking to each other on this topic.” – Anrich Nortjé

Telford Vice | Cape Town

“SEE that gas station,” a cab driver quipped with a rightward cue of his head as he guided his taxi down a street in Kingston, Jamaica. “It belongs to Michael Holding.” It was April 7, 1992, and we were on our way to Sabina Park, where South Africa’s inaugural series in a majority black country — besides the one they considered their own — was about to start.

South Africa had broken their brown duck on their tour to India five months earlier, their first official international cricket since 1970, and their first ever against opposition who did not field an all-white XI. Shockingly, and even though Kepler Wessels’ team had, by the time they arrived in the Caribbean, been to a World Cup — another first for South Africa — apartheid was still the law of their land.

Twenty-nine years on that is no longer the case. But Holding is still fuelling things. In 1992, five years after he had retired as a member of the game’s pre-eminent attack, he was firing up engines. In 2021, he is helping to power the global conversation on racism. And anti-racism. His book, “Why We Kneel, How We Rise”, was published in June — 11 months after he had spoken, live on television in Southampton during what has become cricket’s most important rain delay, through hot tears: “I remember my school days. I was never taught anything good about black people.”

Holding no longer owns a garage and he announced his retirement from commentary in September. But he was on screen again on Friday as the last speaker in the 35 days of the CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) hearings: “The quota system … I have heard that used on so many occasions when referring to South African cricketers of colour; that they are only there because the regulations say they have to be there. They are never given full credit for their abilities.”

Holding spoke to Dumisa Ntsebeza, the SJN ombud. Some will struggle to see the point of two black people talking to each other about being black in a world held hostage by whiteness. But these are not any two people.

Ntsebeza is due to submit his report, which will likely include recommendations on what to do about racism in the game in South Africa, by the end of November. A veteran senior counsel who worked on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he is in a unique position to change cricket’s relationship with issues of race, which it clearly needs to do.

Holding is a 1.92-metre tall tower of integrity. What he says carries great power, but how he says it is important. As is the fact of who is doing the saying. For the unfortunates who claim not to see colour, Holding is an example of excellence. In the real world, he is an example of black excellence. He is his own best argument against the ancient myth that black and brown people are inferior to whites. And, with the rise and spread of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, he is hopeful that the evil lie is on its way to becoming a shibboleth. “People are coming together and recognising that the world needs fixing,” he told Ntsebeza.

That was three days after Quinton de Kock refused to play in South Africa’s T20 World Cup match against West Indies in Dubai rather than take a knee, as the players had been instructed to do by CSA. And a day after De Kock apologised and changed his mind: he would kneel, after all.

You wonder what Holding would make of all that. In June he told the UK Press Association: “If you don’t support it, if you don’t kneel, I know where you stand. You can’t just sit back and say ‘I’m not racist’. You have to point out racism and speak up against it.”

That players from, of all countries, South Africa should have to be compelled to take a knee — that some of them won’t embrace the globally recognised symbol of opposition to racism voluntarily — is a national embarrassment. It should be a source of shame among those players.

“Taking the knee and BLM is not supposed to separate people; it is supposed to bring people together,” Dale Steyn said on Tuesday. “Quinton de Kock missing a game not just through his own mindset but through a kind of forced way of doing things is not what we want in world cricket. That’s not what we want in the world. We don’t want to see people missing out on things. This movement is not about that. This movement is about bringing people together and having a better understanding of things, not pushing people away and ridiculing them.”

Some will say Steyn is trying to whitesplain BLM, including to people who are black and brown. But at least there is nuance in his view, an attempt to consider the bigger picture and not focus on isolated, partisan shards of the whole. Others will wonder why Steyn’s comment — made to a group of Sri Lankan reporters at the T20 World Cup, where he is commentating — hasn’t been published until now. Maybe, in a largely homogenous society like Sri Lanka’s, race is not news.

But it would seem to be in India, where one website posited the theory that De Kock “didn’t take a knee because a majority of whites in South Africa, half-a-million, are dispossessed. In Pretoria alone, there are 80 white squatter camps. In today’s South Africa, whites are the blacks of yesterday, hidden from our view.” None of this is true anywhere near true. Worse, it is damagingly wrong and fuels a dangerous narrative.

“Someone has to draw a line somewhere — there’s so much crime, there have been so many farm murders,” was the meaning that a white trader at a market in Cape Town gave to De Kock’s refusal. That, mind, after De Kock had kneeled in the match against Sri Lanka in Sharjah on Saturday. And after he had said he felt taking a knee was an empty gesture that he hadn’t thought he needed to perform because: “For me, black lives have mattered since I was born. Not just because there was an international movement.” As for the truth about homicide, 21,022 people were murdered in South Africa from April 2018 to March 2019. Only 57 of all South Africa’s murder victims in 2019 were farmers.

But, in the internet age, untruth and ugliness is more easily spread than ever before. Last month, fast food giants Nando’s cancelled their five-year sponsorship of an online radio show hosted by Gareth Cliff, a South African self-confessed “shock jock”, in the wake of the outrage that followed him telling a black guest on the programme that her experiences of racism were “anecdotal” and “unimportant”. The company’s action was widely welcomed. But few asked why Nando’s had involved themselves with a figure who has been going out of his way to offend people for far longer than five years, especially as most of the company’s clients are black and brown.

This is the poisoned water in which South Africans swim. That includes representative teams. Are they drinking it? The view from the men’s dressing room would suggest not. “We’ve had time to have long, hard conversations, and it’s been really good getting to understand things,” Anrich Nortjé told Cricbuzz. “I don’t think we’re ever going to be done speaking to each other on this topic. We’re going to go on and on and on. Everyone has learnt. Everyone has been able to be honest in the environment we’ve created. There’s been a lot of things said in a safe space where we can express our feelings.”

Outside of that bubble, different rules apply: “The media have been trying to make things up or trying to get people talking about certain aspects when those issues haven’t been raised in the team. Someone will write something about what they see and people will harp on that, and it becomes a topic of discussion. But we’ve been getting along really well in the team. We had our first culture camp in Skukuza in August last year, and we’ve kept on building.”

If Nortjé wants to offer his teammates a lighter view on these weighty topics, here’s a line from another Caribbean cab driver; this one in St Kitts during the 2007 World Cup: “And over there, in 1492, the Amerindians discovered Christopher Columbus on the beach.”

Get the joke, and we’re getting somewhere.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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For the game, the whole game and nothing but the game

“There were too many whites involved in a short period of time. Was it procedurally unfair? Not at all. Did a black board approve it? Yes, they did.” – Jacques Faul

Telford Vice | Cape Town

IT’S not a witch-hunt after all. Nor is it a platform for hearing the views of some of the people all of the time. It isn’t biased, uncaring or lacking in empathy for any of those concerned. It’s CSA’s Social Justice and National-Building (SJN) project, and this week it has proved that it exists to serve the game, the whole game and nothing but the game.

The first round of SJN hearings, from July 5 to August 6, necessarily dealt with testimony from people who alleged they had been victims of racism since cricket in South Africa was supposedly unified in 1991. Their anger and hurt was palpable, and led to tears being shed on the witness stand.

Cricket has been played in the country since the first years of the 19th century, and for most of the ensuing time by people of all races. But the SJN was the game’s first honest look in the mirror. The reflection wasn’t pretty. South Africans didn’t so much see the inner workings of a sport as they saw another tumour in their sick society. Cricket, like everything else, had been diseased by racism — even after the defeat, at the ballot box, of racism as the law of the land. Apartheid was dead. Long live apartheid.

But black and brown people exposing injustice, while vital for their own healing and for denying whites their crutch of denial, was never going to start the difficult dialogue on race so sorely lacking in all areas of life in South Africa. Mark Boucher’s written submission, dated August 9, was the vanguard voice from the other side. He admitted his failings, apologised and laid out how he was trying to improve the present to help build a better future.

Even so, the coldly legal tone of Boucher’s affidavit — inevitable given the quasi-legal setting of the SJN hearings — allowed his most irrational critics to parse the phrases they didn’t like from those they chose to ignore and to rage still more loudly.

That was no surprise. Given the toxicity of cricket’s nascent race discussion, simply writing to the SJN will only give the vexed — particularly the cynically vexed — more ammunition with which to dominate the conversation. There is, as there is for most things that need doing well, no viable substitute for turning up in person or at least electronically. If you can’t look into someone’s eyes when they’re telling you what they say is the truth, how do you decide whether they are telling the truth?

That said, pitching up, either in the flesh or on a screen, does not seem an option for Boucher. He was in Ireland with his team when the hearings started and, if they adhere to their current schedule, he will be at the T20 World Cup until after they conclude. Contrary to what some might want us to believe, finding a few free hours to talk to the SJN while you’re trying to win a tournament is far easier said than done. The haters are no doubt relieved at that: the last thing they need is for the totem of their abhorrence to prove himself human despite all allegations to the contrary.

But Graeme Smith, another figure with a target on his back, has no excuse for not testifying. After this week, he should also not need convincing that appearing before the SJN is the only way to defend himself with integrity. And, by doing so, call the bluff of those who would seek to rubbish him at every turn.

Proof of that was delivered in the space of 24 hours, starting with the testimony of Mohammed Moosajee, the former long-term manager and doctor of South Africa’s men’s team, on Wednesday afternoon. He was followed by former selection convenor Linda Zondi, and, on Thursday morning, by former CSA acting chief executive Jacques Faul. All had been accused of wrongdoing, to varying degrees, in the first round of hearings. And all were able to refute, with solid evidence, many of the claims made against them. They also owned up to their roles in the problems cricket had stumbled into. Most importantly, they sketched the complexities of realities that hitherto had been painted in starkly simplistic terms.

Here’s Moosajee on the touchiest subject of all: “In my view the targets or quotas gave opportunities to people of colour, and many of them proved that they could be world-class performers on the international stage. Examples include Makhaya Ntini, Herschelle Gibbs, Ashwell Prince, Hashim Amla, Vernon Philander, Kagiso Rabada, and Lungi Ngidi. They were undoubtedly good enough, but they may not have been given the necessary opportunities if it was not for the quotas or targets.

But there were also “unintended consequences” in trying to remedy racism in this way: “Certain players become ‘undroppable’ because their inclusion in a team is necessary to meet the quotas or targets. A few of these players allowed their fitness levels to wane and were guilty of disciplinary misdemeanours, but these misdemeanours went unpunished because there were concerns that the quotas or targets would not be met.”

Zondi spoke of working hard to engineer opportunities for black and brown players who had been unfairly overlooked, only for some of those players to spurn their chance: “[Imran] Tahir was dominating and, for future purposes, we needed a spinner who could bat and bowl. But [Aaron] Phangiso wasn’t playing red-ball cricket for the Lions. The South Africa A side was in India at the time [in 2015] and I asked Phangiso to play for them. To my surprise, he turned the offer down. We took a different player into the South Africa A side and he ended up playing for the Test team.” That player was Keshav Maharaj, now South Africa’s first-choice Test spinner.

Faul rued the whiter shade of pale CSA’s top brass showed to South Africans in December 2019, when he took office and Smith became director of cricket. Smith appointed Boucher, which prompted the demotion of Enoch Nkwe, who is more qualified than Boucher and had served as interim coach. Boucher signed Jacques Kallis and Paul Harris as consultants. Black and brown outrage, stoked by the suspension days earlier of Thabang Moroe as CSA chief executive, duly followed.

“The optics were totally wrong,” Faul said. “We should have been politically more sensitive; it’s something I regret. We should have been emotionally more intelligent around that. We struggled to fully anticipate the outcry and it was a huge outcry. We didn’t anticipate that we would be viewed as a white takeover. If I knew that this was going to be the sequence of events, I would not have taken the job.”

But those white people hadn’t appointed themselves: “Out of nine board members at the time there were seven people of colour. There was only one objection and that was to the duration the coaching staff would be appointed. [Former board member] Angelo Carolissen objected to the duration because Mr Smith only signed for four months [initially] and he was appointing people for a three-year period. [Former board member] Stephen Cornelius said it is best practice to appoint them for that duration. The appointment of all of that staff happened more or less the same way and was approved by the board.

“The appointments that were made for cricketing reasons, but I admit we got it wrong. There were too many whites involved in a short period of time. Was it procedurally unfair? Not at all. Did a black board approve it? Yes, they did. Should they have been wiser? I think so. We should have been smarter.”

There was far more where that came from. The wilder conspiracy theories wielded like flamethrowers by previous witnesses were doused by the inflammable infallibility of fact and logic. But, mostly, Moosajee, Zondi and Faul concerned themselves with the seriousness of leaving cricket in a better state than that in which they found it. As importantly, the SJN ombud, Dumisa Ntsebeza, protected the space in which they wrestled with that responsibility and showed their efforts due respect.

No-one who has yet appeared at the SJN can claim they have not been properly and fairly heard. So what’s stopping others from answering the charges that have been made against them? Irredeemable guilt is one answer. Another is that they don’t care, and that’s far worse.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Toxic inaccuracy blights SJN hearings

“It will no doubt be a painful process for those speaking about their experiences, and it may be an uncomfortable one for those against whom allegations are made.” – Lawson Naidoo, CSA board chair

Telford Vice | Cape Town

“NOT everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.” James Baldwin isn’t often quoted in a cricket context. But the process CSA started last year doesn’t focus on cricket often enough.

Dumisa Ntsebeza, the senior advocate who serves as the ombud of CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) project, used Baldwin’s words to frame what the project hopes to have achieved by July 23, when the hearings that started on Monday are scheduled to end. CSA expects a report, including recommendations, by September 30.

Ntsebeza said 58 written submissions had been received; 11 from what he called “scene setters”, 23 from “players past and present”, and 24 from “cricket unions and other interested organisations”. Affidavits have been required by those who have given written testimony, while oral submissions would be made under oath.

But other aspects of the hearings would not stay within a strictly legal framework, as Ntsebeza explained: “The SJN proceedings are not a criminal inquiry, and as a result I will use the civil standard of proof in making my findings. I will make findings based on a balance of probabilities, provided that where a factual dispute cannot be resolved without cross examination, I may either allow cross examination, limited cross examination, or record the factual dispute without resolving it.”

The potential for conflict was made clear in an address by CSA chair Lawson Naidoo: “It will no doubt be a painful process for those speaking openly and publicly about their experiences, and it may be an awkward and uncomfortable one for those against whom allegations are made. Despite this, it is a necessary process if we are to heal and maximise our future potential. As the final terms of reference make clear, there is a need to ensure fairness for all participants — both those who make allegations and those against whom allegations are made. For this reason, those against whom allegations are made will be given notice by the ombudsman’s office and will have an opportunity to respond to the allegations made against them.”

Some of that unease was apparent in May, when the hearings were originally due to start. One reason they were postponed was that Ntsebeza was busy at the African Human Rights Court in Tanzania. But another was that problems with the envisaged process were highlighted by, among others, David Becker, a lawyer who represents Graeme Smith and CSA’s anti-corruption head, Louis Cole.

Smith’s appointment as CSA’s director of cricket is a bone of contention in black and brown circles in the game, while only one of the seven players punished for their roles in a failed fixing plot during the 2015 franchise T20 competition was white. Some of those players have since featured in the media proclaiming their innocence, have previously their guilt, and complained about the way their cases were dealt with. Becker, who had led successful ICC fixing investigations, assisted CSA as an external independent lawyer.

The SJN was established in the wake of Lungi Ngidi, in answer to a question during an online press conference on July 6 last year, saying South Africa’s players had and would address issues of racial injustice. That prompted a backlash from white former players against Ngidi’s stance — and a statement, released on July 14, from 31 former players and five current coaches, all of them black or brown, alleging they had been victims of racist abuse in South African cricket since unity was achieved at administrative level in 1991.

South African cricket is part what remains a deeply racist society, even though apartheid was defeated at the polls in April 1994. So there is no question the game was riddled with unfairness when racism was the law of the land. Cricket is still stuck with that legacy. For instance, only one of the country’s 13 grounds that have staged international matches since re-admission in 1991 is not in a historically white area.

Attitudes do not change easily given those concrete realities. So CSA’s efforts to correct the imbalance are often disapproved of by whites who, blind to their own undoubted and unearned privilege, see these attempts as the unnecessary politicisation of a game they politicised in the first place.

The SJN, then, is an important opportunity to move the conversation forward in valuable ways. So it was disappointing that the first person called to give testimony on Monday wasn’t someone on that page. Instead, Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw took the stand and made, under oath, toxically inaccurate statements. One was that the South African Cricketers’ Association paid players’ salaries, and that white players earned more than others. Both are blatantly untrue.

Kula-Ameyaw’s submission achieved little except to undermine the SJN’s credibility. Worryingly, her unexplained assertions went unchallenged, which will no doubt leave those implicated to clean up the mess she has made using, perhaps, legal action. The process might now have to go backwards to undo damage before it can make progress.

If Kula-Ameyaw’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she was part of the CSA board that performed dismally enough to be persuaded to resign en masse in October. Before that happened she engineered the placing, without proper approval, of a newspaper advertisement that cost CSA the equivalent of more than USD36,000. She was under investigation by CSA’s social and ethics committee because it was feared that some of her social media posts could have put her in breach of the directors’ charter. CSA has yet to reveal the outcome of that probe.

Maybe the puzzle of why such a blighted figure was called as the SJN’s first witness is solved by the fact that she was instrumental in establishing the project and in Ntsebeza’s appointment as the ombud.

In cricket terms, what happened on Monday was the captain of a team called SJN taking a look at an under-prepared neon greentop and choosing to bat first, anyway. An hour in, they’re 17/4. Good luck.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Racism hearings loom, as do credibility questions

“There is something out there that needs to be confronted. This country needs to deal very purposefully with the subject of transformation.” – Dumisa Ntsebeza, CSA social justice ombud

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CSA’s social justice and nation-building (SJN) project will begin hearings on Monday, marking a milestone for conversations about vexed questions of race and racism in South African cricket *. But the prominence afforded tarnished figures or those who have tenuous connections to the game could undermine the credibility of the process. Another focus will be on what happens when serious allegations are made against prominent people.

“We’ve been working flat out, and we’ll still be working,” Dumisa Ntsebeza, a senior advocate, told an online press conference on Thursday about the efforts made since he took up his appointment as SJN ombud on April 6. “But I can confirm that we are ready to start these hearings. We have lined up people who have agreed to start the ball rolling.”

The first of the people Ntsebeza mentioned was Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, who left cricket under a cloud in October. She was an independent member of CSA’s board, which was pushed to resign en masse as part of government’s bid to resolve the incestuous and damaging governance failings that have plagued the game for years.

Kula-Ameyaw, who bills herself as a “transformation and gender expert”, sat on CSA’s board only for five months. But in that time she engineered the questionably authorised publication of a newspaper advertisement that cost CSA the equivalent of USD35,500 and forced CSA to issue an apology for what it called her “unfortunate and unwarranted” social media posts about an outgoing major sponsor. She also prompted the resignation as CSA’s acting chief executive of Jacques Faul — probably the country’s most competent administrator — and managed to tell an online press conference: “I only watch the highlights of cricket, not the whole game. I don’t have time for that.”

Her only tangible positive achievement at CSA was to successfully agitate for the establishment in July last year of the SJN in response to the allegations of racism black and brown former players and coaches said they had experienced since the unification of the game’s disparate racially aligned structures in 1991.

Ntsebeza nevertheless gave Kula-Ameyaw a glowing testimonial: “I can think of no-one more vocal, who has been moving heaven and earth in articulating in their own way what transformation is all about … than Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw. [She] has made bold talk about what transformation is and what it is not, and how transformation should not be construed as merely a mechanism for introducing politics into sport, or to set targets which are not targets but quotas. My experience of her is that she understands those dynamics. She’s able to separate fact from fiction, and she will lay the necessary background to the topic.”

Another of Monday’s appearances will be made by Dumile Mateza, a respected broadcaster and administrator — he has served on the board of Boxing South Africa — who has become a prominent commentator on social and political issues in sport. His input could prove valuable, but he hasn’t had significant close involvement with cricket for years and runs the risk of being dismissed as out of touch with the game’s current realities. Ntsebeza said Mateza’s “perspective of a journalist” would “not only … give a historical view” but “would also inform us”. South Africans will wonder what made the SJN decide against enlisting a journalist who has a fresher and thus more relevant grip on the issues cricket faces.

Ntsebeza said the SJN hoped to hear from players by Wednesday “because this is about them, whether they are active or no longer active. They are people who have stories to tell.” Around 50 submissions had been received in writing, with others delivered verbally. Some of them could create conflict.

“When people are pouring their hearts out, and this is a platform we have created for them to do just that, people are going to be mentioned — perhaps to their detriment,” Ntsebeza said. “Some testimonies may be against the interests of those people. No-one is going to be treated unfairly. When someone has been mentioned in a way that is not favourable they must be able to respond. They should and will be given an opportunity to rebut everything that has been said about them. We believe the process must be fair also for those about whom complaints are going to be made.

“What the law requires is that an opportunity should be extended to anyone who has been prejudiced or would be prejudiced by what is said without being heard. This law is as old as the bible. They must not say they were unfairly treated, so that we can balance what they probably would say are misrepresentations of their motives, or what they did, or are downright lies.”

Theories that racially wronged players would be financially compensated abounded while Kula-Ameyaw was driving the SJN. Was that still on the agenda? “The reparation part of the SJN project had to be suspended, possibly for the future,” Ntsebeza said. “That is yet to come. That is not for this round [of the SJN’s work].”

He was less equivocal about the importance of what the project had set out to do: “There is something out there that needs to be confronted. This country needs to deal very purposefully with the subject of transformation. It’s not just in cricket. If we don’t have this dialogue … then we are adopting a head-in-the-sand attitude. Just because our heads are in the sand doesn’t mean we are not exposed. We [must] deal with issues that are troubling with an aim to healing the wounds of the past and the present. The sooner we do that the better.”

When the reporters present were told they could make appointments to interview Ntsebeza, he said, “I hope there are none today because I am attending an opera at the Market Theatre [in Johannesburg].”

The theatre’s website said Thursday’s performance of “Coloratura — the Virtuosity of Opera” would feature “arias, overtures and intermezzos” exploring “love, betrayal and tragedy”. Ntsebeza should be prepared to hear much more on those themes before cricket’s fat lady sings.

* CSA have since postponed the hearings.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Race ombud faces struggle at stubborn, disunited CSA

“I don’t have a magic wand and I’ve not been mandated to carry a big stick and go after people and get them to do things I said need to be done.” – Dumisa Ntsebeza on the chances of CSA implementing the SJN’s recommendations.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

DUMISA Ntsebeza, the newly appointed ombud of CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project, has six months to investigate evidence of racism in the 30 years of supposedly unified cricket in South Africa. His work will entail interviewing a wide range of stakeholders, holding public online hearings, and writing a report that will include recommendations.

All that? In six months? And while having to navigate the culture of an organisation that has a poor record for implementing independent recommendations, and is so wracked by division that it is at odds with itself on whether the players should take a knee before games? Good thing Ntsebeza is among the country’s most senior advocates: he served on the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which from 1996 to 2003 aimed to give South Africans restorative justice in the wake of apartheid.

“I will adjudicate all complaints that I will have received, which, by and large and overall, relate to unfair discrimination in cricket,” Ntsebeza told an online press conference on Thursday. That he had been given only six months to do so engendered “a sense of urgency”, he said. But he was hopeful of being granted more time should it be needed. He said he wanted to speak to “former players, current players, SACA [the South African Cricketers’ Association], administrators, employees, educators, sponsors, the media and government”, and that he planned to start in the first week of May. He would like to see a transformation conference organised for July to coincide with CSA’s 30th anniversary.

Ntsebeza was prepared to talk to those who didn’t think he had anything to investigate: “There are many people out there who may feel that there is nothing wrong with cricket, either as a sporting good or as a game in South Africa, that has to be transformed. Therefore all attempts at seeking to over-analyse what is happening in cricket might be [seen as] interference in an aspect which already has taken significant strides in the direction of transformation.

“I want to speak to those who feel that transformation might be just one form of interference. Some may even go so far as to say it’s one form of bringing politics into sport. But I’m interested to hear those voices, because they are going to shape my recommendations.”

The establishment of the SJN was prompted by a statement released on July 14 last year in which 31 black and brown former players and coaches said they had been victims of racist treatment and attitudes during their time in the game after apartheid. Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, a former CSA independent director, drove the SJN’s creation.

“One third of the total black Proteas representatives in the 30 years since unity revealed that they’d all suffered racial discrimination and forms of cultural alienation within the CSA set-up during their careers,” André Odendaal, a member of the interim board, told Thursday’s press conference. “This required CSA to go beyond targets and beyond box-ticking to face deep, often intangible cultural issues and the resilient structural discrimination still operating in our cricket 25 years into democracy.”

Theories that CSA were considering compensating wronged players financially have swirled, but Odendaal said that had not been decided: “There’s been a lot of talk about restoration funds and a large amount of money that CSA is going to pay. We must let people know up front that there has not been a budget for such a fund, and neither have we created a budget for one. What we are going to let happen is to ask our independent transformation ombud to engage with the cricket stakeholders, look at the issues, see how we get to understand that systemic racism persists, and then come to the board with suggestions and recommendations. At that stage CSA, in the light of advocate Ntsebeza’s findings and recommendations, will have to sit and look at the report and decide on the strategic objectives that need to be taken forward, and the process and the budget that go with that.”

CSA has a history of doing exactly the opposite. In August 2012 it promised to “implement the letter and spirit of the recommendations contained in the Nicholson report”, which followed financial corruption within the organisation. Chief among the recommendations was a board consisting of a majority of independent directors. CSA have spent nine years trying to wriggle out of that commitment, which remains unfulfilled.

Did Ntsebeza have any confidence that what he said should happen would happen? “There is no provision, either in the terms of reference nor in any statute, that any recommendations I make must be enforced. [But] the resources and the time that will have been spent on this project should not have been in vain. Did I sense in the discussions that I had with CSA that there is a commitment, an appetite to do this thing, and make sure the recommendations are implemented or implementable? I got that sense, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the job.

“I don’t have a magic wand and I’ve not been mandated to carry a big stick and go after people and get them to do things I said need to be done. I would hope that those to whom implementation of the recommendations fall will rise to the occasion.

“I have read the Nicholson report; I’ve read all manner of reports about recommendations that were not implemented. I’ve even asked myself why, in the light of all these past failures, are we seemingly doing something that has not achieved anything. My answer is that if we never went back to evaluate what had been done and to find out out what went wrong, and from there getting the benefit of that analysis — trying to see if it could be done differently or if no persuasion can come about which causes the nature of things to change — then the world would have been at a standstill. Changes come about because people who failed in their first experiments went back and tried to achieve a different result.”

That’s an admirable perspective, but Ntsebeza shouldn’t expect it to be shared by everyone he deals with in the coming months. A glimpse of South African cricket’s fraught internal politics was had in November, when the men’s national team refused to take a knee — the global gesture of support for racial justice — before matches in their series against England. They have clung to that position, as have the women’s national team.

“We were a little disappointed that our team did not take the knee, which we explained to them at the time,” Odendaal said. “The board discussed it and were very supportive of such a move. The chairperson [then Zak Yacoob] wrote to the team and to the director of cricket [Graeme Smith] and the answer was that while the team supported the stand against racism and it had been through a pre-season course of bonding and discussing these matters, they decided on a slightly different approach which the group as a whole had bought into.”

That was to raise a fist after the national anthem before the first Test against Sri Lanka in Centurion on December 26. The board differed. “The board, while maintaining its own position, given the strength of Black Lives Matter and [of the] taking the knee action throughout the world, felt in a country with our history that would be most appropriate,” Odendaal said. “It was not something for us a board to decree should happen. It brought across to us that CSA should have a broad policy that all components buy into and that we would continue to talk this through with the players and the team going forward.”

Ntsebeza should thus be under no illusion that he is in for anything but a challenging time. He has, of course, been here before. The TRC was criticised for achieving little in the way of reconciliation, and it lacked the authority to punish the guilty for their crimes. But maybe that is misreading its mission, as Ntsebeza suggested: “Once people are given an opportunity to say, in their own words, the things that hurt them, then that process in and of itself has the magic of restoring to them their dignity.” And that is priceless.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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More than money needed for social justice to succeed

“There’s nothing wrong with compensating people who have lost income, but every case will be judged on its own merits.” – Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, CSA transformation chair

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

COMPENSATING victims of racism financially would not damage the integrity of Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) project, independent board member Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw said on Friday. The scourge of prejudice tainted the game as much as it did every other aspect of the country’s society, and paying former players and others afflicted has been floated as a way to acknowledge wrongs and try, in a small way, to right them. But it could also explain why allegations of racism have mounted in recent weeks: some could see profit in pain.

“We are still going to raise the funds to see how we’re going to restore,” Kula-Ameyaw, who is CSA’s transformation chair, said during an online press conference. “There are a lot of companies, even government, that are ready to restore people. Yes, money will change hands at some point.”

And she had no problem with that happening: “I don’t understand what will be harmed when you try to restore. When people work in an asbestos factory and they are affected by [tuberculosis], they get compensated. There’s nothing wrong about that. The modalities of compensation, we’re still going to work on that. There’s nothing wrong with compensating people who have lost income, but every case will be judged on its own merits. That will not harm credibility. Ask those who work in the mines, in asbestos factories, even some insurance companies; organisations do pay for restoration or some form of redress.”

How CSA go about deciding who is compensated and by how much promises to be difficult. Makhaya Ntini has claimed he was given the cold shoulder by his teammates and so chose to avoid taking the team bus. Assuming that needs to be proven and is, is it a more serious slight — and thus worth more — than Aaron Phangiso being the only player in South Africa’s 2015 World Cup squad not to play a single game in the tournament? Or Khaya Zondo being removed from the XI to play an ODI against India in Mumbai in October 2015? What of Geoff Toyana not being named South Africa’s coach in August 2017, which then CSA president Chris Nenzani has since described as “a missed opportunity”? What happens if white players who consider themselves unfairly treated by South Africa’s current racial selection policies demand payment? Or if victims of the previous racial selection policies — the first 247 Test players were all classified white because the quota was 11 whites per team — also want what’s coming to them? Will lost earnings be used as a measure, or will the levels of hurt experienced come into the equation?

Kula-Ameyaw avoided that level of detail. Instead she said things like: “What I don’t like about cricket is they don’t predict how long they will play.” And: “Football is 45, 45 [minutes]; then you are done.” And: “I only watch the highlights of cricket, not the whole game. I don’t have time for that.” And: “Am I done? Can I go sleep?” It’s only fair to make clear she was joking, and to emphasise cricket boards include independent directors because they do not have ties to the game and so do not bring vested interests in cricket with them. But it is also true that Kula-Ameyaw will only give the board’s legion of detractors ammunition by bringing flippancy to a serious subject.

An accompanying release quoted CSA acting president Beresford Williams as saying: “Today I can boldly say that despite the challenges CSA has endured we are committed to a new path anchored on the mandate set out by the [SJN]. We owe it to the former players, coaches and administrators and the general public to act decisively. We need to ensure the ills that may have been inflicted on them are not extended to the next generation.

“As the board of CSA we took the country into our confidence and accepted responsibility for not establishing adequate channels for reporting of acts of racism and discrimination at the time that they occurred. We acknowledge this oversight and apologise to the cricket stakeholders with a promise that we will immediately strive to remedy what happened in the past.”

Nine SJN ambassadors were named: Toyana, former men’s internationals Ntini, Monde Zondeki, Gary Kirsten and Lance Klusener, and women’s players Marcia Letsoalo, Shandre Fritz, Nolubabalo Ndzundzu and Dinesha Devnarain. They would seem well-qualified for their role, as does Dumisa Ntsebeza, who was named SJN ombudsperson but, unfortunately, did not attend the press conference. Ntsebeza is an advocate who completed his law degree while imprisoned for political activities during South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. He has lectured in law and served as an acting judge. He chairs the Desmond Tutu Peace Trust, and is a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation as well as the chancellor of the University of Fort Hare. Good people are hard to find in cricket, but cricket seems to have found one.

Faced with the choice between right and wrong in the past, CSA made poor choices too many times. Having engineered this opportunity to get it right and taken promising steps towards doing so, is it too much to hope that they don’t get it entirely wrong? This will take integrity in every sense. Putting money where the mouths of former players are won’t be enough.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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