“Not everybody would necessarily know what the Protea badge stands for, but you can’t go anywhere in the country and find someone who doesn’t know the flag.” – Rassie van der Dussen
Telford Vice / Kolkata
YOU know South Africa’s society is fractured and fissured along many lines with little light at the end of the still separate and unequal tunnels. But, if you’re not from there, you might struggle to understand the complexities. Here’s a flavour, in the cause of adding context to South Africa’s men’s World Cup semifinal against Australia at Eden Gardens on Thursday.
On Wednesday the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) issued a statement criticising as “unfortunate and ill-advised” comments in the media on several cases of corruption, some of them involving former president Jacob Zuma.
The remarks in question were made on a television show by South Africa’s chief justice, Raymond Zondo — the father of Khaya Zondo, who has played five Tests and six ODIs. Casac’s executive secretary is Lawson Naidoo, who also chairs CSA’s board.
On October 22 in Johannesburg, at a function where he accepted a “rising star” award, 18-year-old David Teeger, South Africa’s under-19 men’s team captain, said “the true rising stars are the young soldiers in Israel”. Teeger spoke as the death toll in the Israeli government’s attacks on Gaza neared 5,000. By Wednesday more than 11,000 had been killed by Israel in retaliation — widely condemned, including by the United Nations — for the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 that claimed the lives of 1,400 and saw more than 200 taken hostage.
South Africa is home to a significant Muslim community, who identify with the Palestinian struggle more strongly than some of their compatriots and have been angered by Teeger’s assertion. Cricbuzz was alerted to the saga by a brown lawyer who has successfully defended white clients on racism charges. Like we said, South Africa is complex, fissured and fractured.
Even the Springboks, the men’s rugby union team who won a record fourth World Cup in Paris last month, do not inspire blanket unity. On November 5, Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a relentlessly populist political party that offers little substance to back up its outlandish claims, told a rally in Johannesburg that the “Springbok is an apartheid symbol”, that “the Springboks must fall”, and asked why “are we being forced to salute the emblem that was saluted … by murderers who were killing our people wearing the same jersey in celebration of butchering of black people?”
The Springbok was indeed among the most potent symbols of the racist system of apartheid. But its commercial value — estimated at USD117.2 last month — the team’s perennial and enduring success, which builds support and popularity, and the fact that the team now brims with star black and brown players, means the badge is unlikely to be scrapped anytime soon.
Does anything round South Africans up, point them in the same direction, and make them at least imagine they are united in any cause? There is. It’s red on top, blue on the bottom, and has an angular arrangement of black, yellow, green and white running through the middle.
Or, in the strange language of heraldry, it’s “a horizontal bicolour of red and blue with a black isosceles triangle based on the hoist-side and a green pall, a central green band that splits into a horizontal Y, centred over the partition lines and was edged in both white against the red and the blue bands and yellow against the triangle, in which the arms of the Y ends at the corners of the hoist and embraces the triangle on the hoist-side”.
It’s the flag, and it is beloved like nothing else in South Africa. You see it everywhere you go in the country, which might sound normal for people from other places. But other places are not irredeemably divided South Africa. You also see the flag on the front side of both shoulders of the South Africans’ playing shirts at this World Cup. It makes for a striking design element, but does it add weight to their shoulders?
“Representing your country and playing for the Proteas is always about something more,” Rassie van der Dussen said. “Wearing the [Protea] badge and the flag puts a certain responsibility on us to carry the hopes of the people of our country. So, in this instance, the flag does not make that more or less relevant. We already know who and what we’re playing for.”
But that didn’t mean everybody did. Van der Dussen had that covered, too: “Not everybody would necessarily know what the Protea badge stands for, but you can’t go anywhere in the country and find someone who doesn’t know the flag.”
At 34, Van der Dussen is the oldest member of the squad and spent more than the first five years of his life in an apartheid state. His father, Nico van der Dussen, was among the relatively few whites who joined Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress to fight injustice.
What did Gerald Coetzee, at 23 the youngest South Africa player at the tournament, who was born more than six years after apartheid ended officially, think of the flag on the shirt?
“My dad and my mom [Johan and Liz Coetzee] have sacrificed their time so I can play cricket,” Coetzee said. “I play for them first and then for the country. We’re very patriotic as South Africans, as we see in all sports. We want to do well for the country and make the country proud. It’s such a beautiful and magnificent country and we want to represent that.”
Reeza Hendricks concurred: “I do really like the shirt. It means a lot to the country and it’s quite special to have the flag on it. It’s a proud moment every time we step out onto the field to represent the country. This shirt is special one, and we all like it.”
That included David Miller, whose enthusiasm got the better of him as he tried to put into words how much he liked the shirt: “Most of the time, because of the angle of the TV cameras on us, it’s going to be fully on screen. We’ll keep that wave flagging.” He meant keep that flag waving, of course.
But Quinton de Kock, ever the clear-eyed see-ball, hit-ball, see-nothing-else, hit-nothing-else player and person that he is, looked past all that warm fuzziness: “I wouldn’t say it’s the shirt. It’s what I represent having the shirt on. I don’t really see a shirt. I know what I represent and the people I represent, and the team I’m representing.”
Even in the squad, then, there are thoughtfully expressed differences of opinion about the flag and its presence on the South Africans’ shirts. But, at Eden Gardens on Thursday, it will help round them up, point them in the same direction, and solidify their unity in the cause.
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