“Maybe the controlling interests in cricket are not politically progressive. So they have a problem when Lungi Ngidi wants to do something different.” – Wahbie Long, psychologist, academic and author
Telford Vice| Cape Town
TIME ticks towards a match in a stadium that shimmers with promise. These are the snap, crackle, pop moments when hope knows no bounds. Anything could happen in the coming seconds, minutes, hours, days.
Where you have come from to be here doesn’t matter. Neither does your race, gender, sexual orientation, size or age, nor to which religion, culture or worldview you ascribe. What does matter is that you are here now, united in the cause of supporting your chosen player or team. Can there be a more pristine democratic space in any society, emptied of agendas and utterly apolitical?
Except that politics is everywhere here, and not least in South Africa. Can you spare the money to buy a ticket? Are you among the masses in the stands or have you set yourself apart in the splendid isolation of a private suite? Do you belong to the credentialed classes in that bubble of contending egos and ideologies, the press box? Or are you working a proper job: behind a broom, a bar or a food counter?
How did you get here? In a bus, a minibus taxi (or three), an Uber, or your own car? Do you live close enough to walk or ride a bicycle? Are you in your comfort zone of town, or have you had to leave the township for the suburbs, or the suburbs for the city centre?
Each of these questions has a political dimension. You aren’t at the stadium by happenstance. You are here because of decisions, large and small, taken by you and others. Some were made hundreds of years ago by people who held the power to shape your destiny.
Although these truths should discomfort us, they are unlikely to anger us. But, should the players we have come to watch dare to state their position on issues that go beyond the narrowly defined boundaries of sport, outrage there will be. Certain issues, that is.
When the Proteas turn out in pink to raise funds for and promote the fight against breast cancer, no-one objects. When they take a stand against rhino poaching, no-one objects. When they give all the credit for their success to their idea of a god, no-one objects. But the gods help them should they decide to oppose racism, the most murderous, debilitating chronic disease of all time: the objections drown out every other opinion.
“I’m thinking of Lungi Ngidi wanting to take up the Black Lives Matter (BLM) cause and getting a lot of flack from white former players,” Wahbie Long, a clinical psychologist and academic and the author of “Nation on the Couch: Inside South Africa’s Mind”, told New Frame. “Maybe the controlling interests in a sport like cricket, in South Africa, are not politically progressive. So they have a problem when a sportsman like Lungi wants to do something different.”
Ngidi is not alone. From Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick to Naomi Osaka, players who make plain their politics have been vilified by a public that wants them to turn up, play, and go home — like that old Fatti’s & Moni’s television commercial where the wisened Italian nona is wheeled out of the kitchen cupboard to cook and then spirited out of sight once the pasta is ready. Have we confused sport with video games? Players aren’t human; they’re simulations that go back into their boxes after the game.
LeBron James and Kevin Durant felt the sting of that view in February 2018 after they released a video criticising Donald Trump, then the US president. Trump, James said, didn’t “give a fuck about the people”.
Laura Ingraham took offence on Fox News: “Must they run their mouths like that? Unfortunately, a lot of kids — and some adults — take these ignorant comments seriously. Look, there might be a cautionary lesson in LeBron for kids: this is what happens when you attempt to leave high school a year early to join the NBA. And it’s always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid a hundred million dollars a year to bounce a ball. Oh, and LeBron and Kevin: you’re great players but no-one voted for you. Millions elected Trump to be their coach. So keep the political commentary to yourself or, as someone once said, shut up and dribble.”
Invariably Black players suffer more for holding political opinions. Is that unavoidable in a white supremacist world, or a reflection that, too often, their white teammates don’t stand with them? When they do — as in England’s football team taking a knee — the shock and horror in the stands and beyond is palpable.
In 1967, when Ali refused to be drafted into the US military because of his opposition to his country’s involvement in the Vietnam War, he was fined, sentenced to prison — he remained free on appeal — and stripped of his world title. He also wasn’t spared in the press.
Here’s Jimmy Cannon, doyen of New York’s tabloid sport columnists: “The fight racket since its rotten beginnings has been the red light district of sports. But this is the first time it has been turned into an instrument of mass hate … Clay is using it as a weapon of wickedness. I pity Clay and abhor what he represents. In the years of hunger during the depression, the communists used famous people the way the Black Muslims are exploiting Clay. This is a sect that deforms the beautiful purpose of religion.”
Here’s another luminary of the New York sport press pack, Red Smith: “Squealing over the possibility that the military may call him up, Cassius makes as sorry a spectacle as those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the war.”
The feeling was mutual across the country, with Jim Murray writing in the Los Angeles Times: “Cassius Marcellus Clay, one of the greatest heroes in the history of his people, has decided to secede from the Union. He will not disgrace himself by wearing the uniform of the army of the United States … From the safety of 103 years, he waves his fist at dead slave owners. Down to his last four Cadillacs, the thud of communist jackboots holds no dread for him. He is in this country but not of it.”
The use of Clay instead of Ali, which the boxer had adopted three years previously, was no oversight. It took another three years for the New York Times to require its reporters to call Ali by his chosen name — to accept his dictum, which he had unfurled after beating Sonny Liston in 1964: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want.” Cannon, Smith and Murray were, like most of their editors and readers, white: still the colour of power and authority in the many societies where whites think it is their right to define Blackness. It has fallen largely to Blacks to expose and oppose that reality.
“Causes like BLM are going to resonate with players who come from under-privileged backgrounds,” Long said. “They are going to want to be active on those kinds of platforms, and then they’re going to run into problems like Lungi has. The establishment, in certain instances, doesn’t look kindly on political activity by sportspeople.”
Even Black players who don’t take political stances are targets for racist abuse. As we learnt from social media during the Euro finals in July, having a penalty saved while Black is a crime against football. But should a white player balk at explaining his decision not to take a knee, or raise a fist, or stand to attention in support of the fight for social justice — but be happy to discuss rhino conservation — the fans come down on the reporters who had the audacity to ask him why. Will the real Quinton de Kock please stand up.
But De Kock, too, is not alone. Bafana Bafana have played 15 matches since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020. Not once have they taken a knee. Why?
“If I think about how racially divided South African society is, and the fact that South African football is a predominantly Black sport, then it may well be that our Black footballers are moving mainly in Black circles,” Long said. “So all that stuff that kicks in when social comparisons are activated isn’t relevant. For someone like Lungi Ngidi, who is a Black man from an under-privileged background moving in white circles, race and privilege are more salient. All those contrasts are in your face. It’s hard to not feel some degree of resonance with a cause like BLM.
“There’s that great passage from Marx where, to paraphrase, his point is that the problem with inequality is not that you live in a shack but that the shack is in the shadow of a palace. That’s what fuels the tinderbox of emotion.”
Some don’t need injustice spelled out so clearly. Graham Mourie refused to captain the All Blacks against apartheid’s Springboks in 1981. Thousands of New Zealanders protested the tour, and were met with state violence. Socrates’ Corinthians insisted on filtering everything they did through a political prism: “Ganhar ou perder, mas sempre com democracia.” Win or lose, but always with democracy.
Sadly, for every Mourie, woke Kiwi, Socrates or Ngidi, there’s a Roland Schoeman — once an Olympic swimmer, now the author of bumptious letters to Cyril Ramaphosa offering his services as minister of sport. “For far too long politics and ideology have polluted sports to the point that many federations are in dire straits,” Schoeman wrote on August 3. “We need a minister of sport who is more interested in getting our young men and women to the point of success on major international platforms than the politics of federations and sports clubs. Surely we want to win as a nation?”
And surely we’re willing to sacrifice anything for victory — integrity, conscience, the responsibility of not only being in a society but also of it. That’s what’s coming soon to a stadium near you. Anything could happen, but not if it’s political.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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“I would have thought the one set of sportspeople in the world who should have been taking the knee was in South Africa.” – Peter Hain
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
THE refusal by South Africa’s men’s cricket team to take a knee in support of racial justice has been slammed by noted anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain. Teams from several other countries have offered the gesture in recent months, as have figures in a range of different sports. But not the XI representing the country where the legacy of apartheid continues to determine the course of millions of lives based on their race.
During the T20I series against England, banners at Newlands proclaimed: “We stand in solidarity against racism and gender based violence. CSA stands for equality.” The players themselves have done nothing beyond release a powerful statement outlining their commitment to anti-racism.
Asked on Wednesday if he was disappointed by the team’s lack of action, Hain said: “Yes, I am, to be frank. Because I would have thought, of all countries in the world, given the history of apartheid and the legacy of apartheid that still is with us [they would take a knee].
“Siya Kolisi only became the Springbok captain [who led his team to triumph at the 2019 men’s World Cup] because he went to Grey [High School]. He was plucked out of the township and poverty where he wasn’t getting a decent meal a day to become one of the best internationals in the world.
“So the legacy is still there, and I would have thought the one set of sportspeople in the world who should have been taking the knee was in South Africa; to send a signal to the world that South Africa actually understood its apartheid history.
“What’s struck me about the contemporary debate, especially around cricket, is that attitudes among some of the white cricketers haven’t changed. Viewed from outside, it’s as if people simply haven’t imbibed the nature of change.”
Nairobi-born Hain was raised in South Africa until, in 1966 when he was 16, his parents moved the family to the United Kingdom to escape harassment and persecution from the apartheid state for their activism against the regime. There he led protests against tours by South Africa’s all-white teams, and later became a Labour member of parliament and a cabinet minister.
He was speaking at a webinar to promote a new book, “Pitch Battle: Sport, Racism and Resistance”, which he has co-authored with André Odendaal, a cricket historian and administrator. The work’s publication next Tuesday might seem timed to coincide with the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), which has gained prominence in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis on May 25 this year.
Odendaal said it was the other way around: “We were trying to explain how systemic racism developed in sport, and BLM broke out as we were writing the concluding pages. Together with the pandemic, that delayed our book by six months. But it enabled us to end it in a very relevant way.
“This is a time when we must rethink; rethink how the world works after Covid-19 and also rethink how sport works and the tremendous shortcomings there have been in the decolonisation project. We’re talking about 500 years of systemic violence with these ideas of discrimination and exclusion that have developed in our country particularly in the last 200 years since sport took on its modern form. It’s a good time, in new languages and new contexts, with young people asking questions, to revisit where we are and what we can learn from the struggles that went before.”
Odendaal is part of CSA’s interim board, which has been compiled with the help of government.
Some christians in South Africa’s squad have religious objections to kneeling, which no-one had at the 3TC game.
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
IN a change of heart, South Africa will articulate their support for racial injustice at Friday’s first men’s T20I against England at Newlands after all, Cricbuzz has learnt from an impeccable source. The issue has raged since it was confirmed on Tuesday that the home side would not take a knee — the now familiar gesture offered in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM).
In a powerful statement on Thursday, the players explained their embrace of anti-racism and said they would work towards helping to create a better society in a country that still suffers from the devastation caused by more than 300 years of brutal racial oppression. But they did not give reasons for their decision not to take a knee. A CSA media manager barred questions on the subject during a press conference on Wednesday.
Cricbuzz understands some members of the squad who subscribe to christianity have said they have religious objections to doing so, as they believe they should kneel only in prayer. But that doesn’t square with the fact that all involved in the 3TC game at Centurion on July 18 — which featured 19 of the 24 players in the T20I squad — did take a knee. What form Friday’s gesture will take is still to be seen, but it is unlikely to require kneeling.
The attention on the issue has been heightened by the fact that South Africa have not played a match since the BLM movement gained prominence in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police on May 25. Asked during an online press conference on July 6 whether South Africa’s players would have their own conversation on race issues, Lungi Ngidi said they would and offered to lead it. His comments sparked a backlash from white former players, which prompted black and brown former players to cite racial abuse they claimed they suffered during their careers.
Even as players in a range of sports and countries were taking a knee without objection — the practice continues before matches in the English Premier League — an increasingly heated race debate tore through South Africa: a country where race has been used to divide and conquer, and is central to the fact that it is the most unequal society on earth.
Friday’s action won’t change that, but it will help put the players on the right side of the fight to do so.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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“It was a team decision not to kneel. However, BLM will always be relevant and something that I will always believe in.” – Kagiso Rabada
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
NOT for the first time cricket was sidelined at a star player’s press conference on Monday. Rightly so: Kagiso Rabada has a duty to do more with his celebrity than use it to explain how to bowl fast, live large and leave a good-looking record.
In the time of a pandemic that has killed 1.4-million and the uproar over the injustice of too many of the lives lived by black and brown people, that has never been more true. Rabada seemed to get that during his online presser: “It’s important, if you have a platform, to spread the right message. There is huge responsibility in the things that you say and things you stand up for.”
So he must have anticipated that Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter (BLM) would take precedence over mere batting, bowling, fielding and team tactics heading into South Africa’s six-match white-ball series against England at Newlands and in Paarl, which starts on November 27.
“Guys are getting in the preparation that they need to,” Rabada said of South Africa’s build-up to their six-match white-ball series against England at Newlands and in Paarl, which starts on November 27. “The team is doing well at sticking to the strict rules that have been set in place. It’s challenging and bizarre, but we’re training well and communicating quite well as a group.”
CSA said on Wednesday that a player in the 24-man squad had contracted the disease and that two others had been in contact with him. All three were asymptomatic and had been isolated. On Friday came the news that another player had tested positive. Consequently the practice matches scheduled for Saturday were cancelled. The England squad is staying at the same hotel but have not reported any cases.
“You’ve basically lost your freedom,” Rabada said. “It’s almost like luxury prisons that we’re in.” Happily, he didn’t stop there. Instead he recognised his privilege.
“You have to remind yourself that we are fortunate. People have lost their jobs, people are struggling at the moment. So I just try remind myself that we must be grateful for the opportunity that has been given to us. First of all to earn some money, and second of all to do what we love.
“We don’t get treated too badly. We’re staying in great hotels, we get the best food. It’s like a spoilt kid not getting what they want at the candy store. But it can be quite tough because you’re surrounded by four walls most of the time, and that can be a factor mentally. But just reminding yourself of all the good things that are happening should get us through.
Once we start playing it will take away from the desolate times.”
And once he steps onto the field Rabada will have the opportunity to show his support for BLM. Would he? By, for example, kneeling?
Rabada said he had made plain his views on the subject and that he would “see if I want to express them again”. He conceded that “it’s something that needs to be a constant reminder”.
BLM was also a prominent topic at Mark Boucher’s presser on Thursday. Asked if his team, who haven’t taken the field since March — before George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police sparked worldwide protests — would take a knee in the matches against England, South Africa’s coach said: “It’s not something that we have to continue to show. It’s more something that you have to live.”
Boucher said the South Africans were considering wearing black armbands to recognise the impact of the coronavirus and the ongoing epidemic of gender-based violence in their country.
“We spoke about it as a group,” Rabada said. “There are lots of things to look at these days. To me, black lives matter. Now we’re looking at gender-based violence. Black lives will always matter. All lives will always matter. The situation now is that black lives matter.”
It didn’t help Rabada get his point across that his screen and audio then froze. When his situation thawed, he said: “Black lives matter 100%. It’s something that I will always stand for. I speak for myself. It was a team decision not to kneel. This is to look at gender-based violence and to devote ourselves to another cause. However, BLM will always be relevant and something that I will always believe in. I speak for myself there. Mark has stated that the team will not be kneeling and that’s how it’s going to be.”
Many will wonder why, if South Africa’s players are willing to show their stance for all to see on some important issues, they appear less inclined to do so on racial justice. Do they consider it less pressing? Do some think it is but others think it isn’t? Not for the first time, what happens on the sidelines will be more watched than what goes on in the middle on November 27.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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“This Covid thing is bigger than sport. That’s why we’ve got to look after the actual person who’s got it, rather than thinking about a sports team.” – Mark Boucher
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
MARK Boucher was sore. He had a good idea why. “I had been throwing to a couple of guys in the nets and my body was aching and paining a bit. I thought it was just because I hadn’t thrown balls for so long.” That wasn’t the reason. This was: he had been infected with Covid-19.
That was in July. Happily, he has recovered. “I was one of the lucky ones,” Boucher told an online press conference on Thursday. “I didn’t even know that I had it. I’d been training for quite a few big runs that we do during our off-season, so I was still running.
“Thankfully I didn’t get a bad dose of it. It lasted for two or three days and it was done. Hopefully that happens to a lot of people who do get it. It’s sad when people get it to the extent that they lose their lives. We’ve got to respect that situation.
“This Covid thing is bigger than sport. That’s why we’ve got to look after the actual person who’s got it, rather than thinking about a sports team.”
As South Africa’s coach, Boucher is having to walk that talk. CSA said in a release on Wednesday that one of the 24 players selected for six white-ball men’s matches against England, starting on November 27, had tested positive for the virus that has killed almost 1.5-million people worldwide and more than 20,000 in South Africa. Two other players were in close contact with their infected squadmate. All three are asymptomatic, and are isolating. None can be named because of medical confidentiality. Another case was reported on Friday, forcing the cancellation of Saturday’s practice matches.
“We’ve prepared for this situation, which is very real in today’s world,” Boucher said. “Yes, it does affect us. But it’s more about the welfare of those players and looking after them from a mental perspective. It’s a very tough thing to go through. The care factor needs to be there for those guys. Sitting in rooms for up to 10 days is quite tough. When they do come out of it, hopefully on the right side, they come back into this environment and they feel nothing’s been lost.”
Coming to terms with coronavirus is only one of the challenges cricket in South Africa has faced since the last time the national team was on the field, in March. Perennial tensions over unresolved racial injustice exploded in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement gaining momentum, which happened after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis on May 25. Two days later CSA fired Thabang Moroe as chief executive for serious misconduct. There was more chaotic self-harm among the suits: the entire board resigned, the members council — which regards itself as CSA’s highest authority — was all but forced into accepting an interim board proposed by government, and the twin threats of state control and suspension by the ICC still hang over the game.
“Everything happens for a reason, and we had some tough [racial] issues to deal with at our Skukuza [culture] camp [in August],” Boucher said. “We dealt with some hard issues that governments worldwide haven’t been able to deal with. I’m very happy with where the guys are. We started afresh. We restructured our values; we built them from the start.
“The CSA issues are there. You can’t hide behind it. We’ve got to try and put that behind us. We understand that we’re in a position to bring some good news to the game of cricket in our country. If we start playing a good brand of cricket and leading from the front, in that perspective, hopefully we can change a couple of perceptions about the game in our country.
“The Covid issue has obviously been a very tough time for everyone. We haven’t had a lot of training sessions together — I know the guys have been training with their franchises — but we’ve done everything we could have done. The amounts of chats we’ve had over Zoom calls to try and get the players more experience just by chatting …
“We’ve had some good consultations with different people; good group chats. I think we’ve done what we can to build players while they’re not actually playing the game. In theory it’s all there. Now it’s about getting onto the field and performing.”
As the England series will mark the first time South Africa are in action since BLM swept the world, it would seem fitting for players representing a country with an ongoing history of brutal racial oppression that stretches back more than 350 years to take a knee in solidarity with black and brown people everywhere. That happened at the 3TC game in Centurion on July 18, but the cause surely deserves more respect than it was shown in what amounted to a sponsor’s gimmick.
“It’s an ongoing thing for us,” Boucher said when asked whether his players would take a knee. “It’s not something that we have to continue to show. It’s more something that you have to live. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do in our dressingroom at the moment. If the guys who brought it up are happy with it … if they feel that we have to do more, they’re certainly open to express their opinion. Our new value system is about respect, it’s about empathy and belonging. All of those lead to an environment in which we feel free to talk about these hard issues.”
Boucher said the team would fly its flag at half-mast and may wear black armbands in accordance with a call by Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, to show respect for victims of Covid-19 and gender-based violence, which is widespread in the country.
That is admirable. But South Africa’s team not only need to make sense of the country’s racial realities to themselves. They also have a responsibility to reflect and understand the pain still being suffered by millions of those in whose name they take the field.
Boucher spoke about the chances of the internationally retired AB de Villiers making a comeback — “If there’s good value in bringing him into the Proteas set-up, then I stand by what I’ve said before; why not have the conversation with him?” — and about the impressive showing of South Africa’s players in the IPL — “The guys who got good opportunities really performed well. It can only stand us in good stead.”
But, in a new world where cricket is even smaller than it used to be, those themes don’t matter nearly as much as what does. There are, as Boucher said, bigger things.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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“I needed to bowl at 150 kilometres an hour for people to notice me. I got injured because I had to work harder than the white guy next to me.” – Mfuneko Ngam
England U21 hockey player Darcy Bourne cuts to the chase. Photo: Twitter (@MissanHarriman)
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
DOROTHY Tsotsobe is formidable. Not solely because she is a woman, nor because she is a black woman. And from the Eastern Cape, no less, where South Africa raises, from the depths of hardship, giants in all areas of life. Neither is she celebrated only as the wife of a fine rugby player, nor as the mother of three children, two of whom carved careers in international sport. Tsotsobe is, in her own right, in her tall, confident, focused, serious, smiling self, in the very fact of her life, formidable.
As someone who was born into a time when millions like her had their lives systematically broken by evil engineered to do exactly that, she had no choice. She had to stand tall, confident, focused and serious or, like so many others, be broken.
So did another Tsotsobe, Anthony, who was among three members of uMkhonto We Sizwe, or the Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the then outlawed, now ruling African National Congress (ANC), who were condemned to death for high treason in 1981 after, in 1980, attacking a police station and a state-owned oil-from-gas installation. Their sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1983, when they were moved from death row to Robben Island, the infamous prison off the coast of Cape Town where Nelson Mandela, the world’s most renowned political prisoner, spent 18 of his 27 years bend bars.
The head of the snake was chopped off in 1994, when for the first time South Africans of all races exercised the right to vote. But apartheid’s scaly carcass writhes still, its coils stunting the lives of the generation born of those it had lawfully subjugated, violated, imprisoned and murdered.
Living while black in South Africa’s cities remains an unfairly heavy burden, and exponentially more so in the black residential areas, where the mass media rarely go, where police are part of the problem rather than the solution, and where politicians pitch up only every few years trying to secure votes with promises and T-shirts, both of questionable quality. Anthony Tsotsobe is a case in point. He was released in 1991 and served as a bodyguard for Mandela and other ANC luminaries. On September 2, 2001, the night before what would have been his 47th birthday, he was shot dead in front of his house in Soweto.
Authority and needs don’t disappear because they have been abdicated and unmet. Sometimes they end up in the wrong hands. Other times good people stop the buck. People like Dorothy Tsotsobe, who in 2004 capped her career in sport by becoming the first woman to serve on the South African Rugby Union’s presidents’ council, the game’s highest authority in this country.
Three years earlier she achieved something more impressive. Prejudice has poisoned all of South Africa’s communities, not just the white component. Women playing rugby? In the Eastern Cape, where black men have kept rugby’s heart beating for longer than anyone has been alive? Who did she think she was establishing rugby for women in KwaMagxaki, a black area in Port Elizabeth?
“Some men [on club executives] don’t want to be told by a woman what to do,” she said in 2017. “They are holding on to the African mentality that women have no say; only men must speak.” In 2012 parents were in her firing line: “When a child is in a [formerly white] model C school the parents will attend all the activities. But if the child is in a [black] township school you hardly see parents watching their own kids playing or attending meetings. We will always complain that there is development in other areas while we are not promoting sport and events or programmes in our areas, and complaining about crime and substance abuse. What are we doing to combat these challenges?”
We have achieved little in the past 26 years besides making a pitifully small percentage of blacks as affluent as most whites.
Tsotsobe’s daughter, Nomsebenzi, played in South Africa’s inaugural women’s rugby international, against Wales in May 2004, and was named captain for the next match of that series a week later. Now 41, she became the team’s manager in May last year.
She was an imposing presence on the flank. Her father, Toto, sped down the touchline on the wing for the Leopards, the black national team during South Africa’s racially riven past. He played against the British and Irish Lions in 1974, for an Invitation XV against France the next year, and against the All Blacks the year after that. Also in 1974, he was part of a squad that — unusually for black representative teams of that era — was let out of the country. Toto Tsotsobe scored three tries in the six games the Leopards played in Italy.
These are a few of the bare bones in the immense body of work the Tsotsobe family has done for sport, much of it against the grain of what it meant and still means to be black in South Africa. To be born healthy, to grow up strong, to garner an education, to earn decent money, to forge a life — simply to survive — was and is far more difficult for black South Africans than it is for whites. Democracy has succeeded apartheid as the law of the land, but not as the everyday reality. We have achieved little in the past 26 years besides making a pitifully small percentage of blacks as affluent as most whites.
Not only did the Tsotsobes survive. They prospered, in a community rather than a material sense. And so others prospered, too. If a Tsotsobe was involved, you knew what needed to be done would be done. And done well. They are firmly among the giants the Eastern Cape has produced, an honour roll that includes Mandela.
But mention the Tsotsobe name outside of the province now and none of those good things are evoked. Instead, because of the choices made by a single member of the family, there is cutting disapproval and the stink of fecklessness.
Here it comes, what you might have been waiting for since the second word of this piece: Lonwabo Tsotsobe was a lazy, uncommitted, failed fixer who was lucky to get away with an eight-year ban for his part in South Africa’s 2015 T20 spot-fixing scandal, which cost seven players their careers. He admitted to 10 charges, among them an attempt to manipulate a match — Cricket South Africa said no fixes were successful — and there is evidence to support the other claims made against him.
In 2011, while on a short contract with Essex, Tsotsobe tweeted: “I’ve never felt like this ever. This is the worst two months of my life. And you know when you start regretting yourself it ain’t good. It’s just impossible to work in this environment.” The county promptly sacked him, with coach Paul Grayson telling the BBC Tsotsobe’s “attitude and work-rate are not to the standard of an international cricketer”.
Tsotsobe shouldn’t have vented on social media, and not only because in three first-class matches for the county he had taken five wickets at 77.60. Maybe he shouldn’t have signed to play for a team in damp, dreary England in the first place. Or perhaps he was expected to be grateful that a country built on the profits of enslaving blacks, that colonised his, that had been instrumental in establishing, maintaining and protecting apartheid and entrenching systemic racism, that has done much to ensure that black lives don’t matter as much as others, had seen fit to exploit him.
It’s difficult not to go there in light of some of Grayson’s other comments at the time: “We’ve given him a great opportunity to come and play county cricket and what he has said about us is downright rude. He has got to take a look at himself. He has not made the most of this opportunity. To hear the things he said about our dressingroom, it’s very annoying.”
Thami Tsolekile was there, he was ready, he was able, he had spent years preparing himself for the moment. And yet Mark Boucher’s place went to AB de Villiers.
Two years later Tsotsobe was again in the headlines for questionable reasons. Having upped sticks at the Warriors, where he spent his first six seasons as a senior player, he went to the Dolphins, playing nine list A games in four weeks but nothing else in his only summer there. In 2013, after he had left Durban, his coach at Kingsmead, Lance Klusener, told us what he really thought of him: “He is unfit. Bottom line, plain and simple. Just look at him. I’m a big fan of ‘Lopsy’. I think he is a very good bowler when he is fit. That’s why I was so excited to get him to Durban, but all in all I was generally disappointed with his attitude and his workload with us.”
Earlier that year, coaches and reporters waited almost an hour-and-a-half past the appointed time at the Wanderers on a grey off-season day. When Tsotsobe eventually turned up for his net session, he offered a veiled admission as the reason for his move to the Lions: “This is about my career. If I stay in the same place and slip into a comfort zone I become lazy. I wanted to associate myself with a team that’s good in all formats. I’m not saying the Dolphins weren’t — the coach and the players were great — but I need to get out of my comfort zone.”
Heads nodded. At his first two franchises he had earned a reputation for going missing — he played no first-class cricket from January 2012 to February 2014, but not least because he featured in 50 games for South Africa during that period — and for being indulged by administrators — he was in the squad that toured Sri Lanka in July and August 2013 despite falling short of the required fitness levels. But, that day at the Wanderers, it seemed he had finally wised up to what was expected of him. He was 29. It was not too late …
Alas, it was. Tsotsobe was hounded out of the game two years after that with the disgust of the nation burning his ears. Long expected to come to a sticky end, he duly did. Let his fate be a lesson to all. But what is that lesson?
Tsotsobe has admitted that his work ethic was not what it should have been. Tellingly, more than that has been held against him. He was mistrusted for his entire career, and for reasons that have not been properly explored. Besides, it’s not as if working hard is any gaurantee of opportunity.
Thami Tsolekile did plenty of that as Mark Boucher’s understudy, series-in, series-out, tour-in and tour-out. When Boucher had to be replaced after his career was ended by an eye injury on the first day of South Africa’s tour of England, in 2012, Tsolekile wasn’t given his chance. He was there, he was ready, he was able, he had spent years preparing himself for the moment. And yet Boucher’s place went to AB de Villiers.
That undoubtedly strengthened South Africa’s batting. De Villiers’ genius was such that he had taken guard everywhere from No. 1 to 8 in the 125 Test innings he had had by the time he settled in behind the stumps at the Oval in the first Test of that series. If you could find a spot for him, you did. If someone had to make way for him, tough. But what did denying Tsolekile say to all of South Africa’s players who were not in the Test XI, particularly if they were black?
At the time Makhaya Ntini, South Africa’s original black Test player and still the only one among the nine with more than 50 caps, dared voice what many thought: “Tsolekile would have been playing if he was white. People will say we are talking politics but we need to say these things.”
Whiteness has stood in the way of truth for centuries, and so well that many blacks believe the lies conjured to keep them in chains.
The converse applied in Tsotsobe’s case: people said he was picked for South Africa because he was black. Unlike other black and brown cricketers who reach the top in South Africa, he was not an emphatic player. He had neither Ntini’s relentlessness nor Kagiso Rabada’s outrageous ability. Herschelle Gibbs cut sixes for fun. Hashim Amla set himself to bat for days. Paul Adams fetched a bowling action from the far side of human physiology, and has somehow retained a straightish spine. Mfuneko Ngam and Monde Zondeki were similarly freakish in the load they put on their bodies, but their bodies couldn’t cope.
“I needed to bowl at 150 kilometres an hour for people to notice me,” Ngam said in 2013. “I got injured because I had to work harder than the white guy next to me. It’s always a survival situation for black cricketers. Talent alone is not going to make it happen.”
Why hark back to what Ntini and Ngam said long ago? Because South Africa have capped 33 players in Test cricket since Ntini made his assertion, and only four of them are black. Eight are brown. The rest — 21, or almost two-thirds — are white. Arching over that awkward truth is another: that South Africa is, economically and socially, the most unequal society in the world. Mike Marqusee, a cricket-loving American activist and author, was never more right than when he wrote that “the level playing field is enclosed within a society which is anything but equal. Access to the level playing field has always been unequal.”
From that inequality came Tsotsobe. Discounting his batting inability and unwillingness to put in the hard yards, he was a left-arm facsimile of Shaun Pollock: accurate, canny, subtle; a player who thought as much as he bowled, who always had a plan. Thus he wasn’t what South African cricket expected, and still doesn’t expect, of black players. Aaron Phangiso also didn’t fit the mould. Nor does Andile Phehlukwayo. Will they share, along with their initials, a career curve that droops into disappointment? Will cricket waste the keen intelligence of Temba Bavuma because, while easily good enough, he is not stupendous enough? Did Ntini play as many as 101 Tests by sheer force of will alloyed to an outsized public persona?
Accordingly, to silence his critics, Tsotsobe couldn’t be merely good enough to play international cricket. He had to be super good enough. For a while, he was. The No. 1-ranked bowler in ODIs? Tsotsobe, for six months in 2012. The fastest South Africa bowler to reach 50 wickets in ODIs? Tsotsobe, in 26 games. The record stood until March when Lungi Ngidi — another out-and-out black star — got there one match faster.
And yet, despite Tsotsobe’s talent and skill, the progress he made, and the granite grounding given him mostly by his mother — his father died when he was nine — he faltered in a way that is, for many, unforgivable. Tsolekile went the same way, and is similarly despised.
Less so Hansie Cronjé, whose family are as prominent in sport in their community as the Tsotsobes, and who worked as hard at his game as Tsolekile. From what we know, Cronjé was significantly more crooked than Tsotsobe or Tsolekile. But, 21 years after his corruption was exposed and 18 years after his death in a plane crash, honesty about Cronjé’s fall from grace is difficult to find.
Either his innocence is steadfastly proclaimed or his guilt is explained as an act of nobly “taking the fall” for others, who are never named. Or it is accepted faithfully that, as Cronjé wrote in a confession he faxed to his pastor, Ray McCauley: “In a moment of stupidity and weakness I allowed Satan and the world to dictate terms to me. The moment I took my eyes of Jesus my whole world turned dark.”
Unlike Cronjé, Tsotsobe and Tsolekile have not had their misdeeds cushioned. Instead they have been branded, simply and simplistically, as bad. After their banning they faced uncertain futures at every level. So did the ringleader of the 2015 scandal, Gulam Bodi, who sold vegetables to get by in the wake of his expulsion.
That’s another contrast with Cronjé, who at the time of his death was working as a financial manager for an earth-moving equipment company and was studying towards a MBA. His life was back on track, his respectability largely restored. How can his whiteness not have been an important factor in his blithely accepted rehabilitation? How can the blackness of Tsotsobe and Tsolekile not be part of their ongoing vilification? What difference might being able to hide behind and lean on the privileges of whiteness have made to their lives before, during and after they transgressed?
We cannot know, and that is the real sadness. Whiteness has stood in the way of truth for centuries, and so well that many blacks believe the lies conjured to keep them in chains. “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction,” Toni Morrison wrote. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
This article was commissioned a month ago, a dozen days after George Floyd’s lynching lit a righteous fire that roared around the world. Even though the piece was always going to involve many more words than other articles, and despite the unusual challenges presented by the requisite complexities, it should have been published before now. But it has faced another hurdle: the writer is white, the relevant sources black.
There can be no constructive discussion on what whiteness has done to blackness, and how to begin to try and repair the damage, without talking to blacks. But who can blame blacks if they are tired of talking? Some 494 years after a Portuguese ship left the shores of Africa bound for Brazil to mark the first voyage in the transatlantic slave trade, 213 years after slavery was outlawed in the UK, 156 years after it was abolished in the US, and 26 years after apartheid was officially scrapped, blacks are still having to argue that their lives matter.
It is the necessary duty of the rest of us, not blacks, to make that case and to ensure it is won and stays won. This is a white problem, not a black problem. Maybe that was why several blacks in cricket who have for years been happy to talk on and off the record on a range of subjects — some political, others not — found reasons to, politely, demure.
Lonwabo Tsotsobe was approached, told the premise of the piece, and asked for his mother’s number, which he kindly provided. Dorothy Tsotsobe was briefed on what was to be discussed with her, but did not respond to two messages. Asked if he would agree to be interviewed, Lonwabo Tsotsobe said: “No. I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Black lives matter only if they propel administrators’ careers by serving the elite — professional cricketers — while the majority of black cricketers, young players and amateurs, are left in the wilderness to fend for themselves.” – Omphile Ramela
Happily, not all the doors knocked on remained shut. Omphile Ramela is another of those black cricketers who reject the boxes others try to squeeze them into. For one thing, he is a batter. For another, he holds a Masters in economics from Stellenbosch University, one of the country’s best and previously a bastion of white academia. He has toiled away at a decent first-class career, playing for the Cobras, the Lions and South Africa A, without reaching the senior international stage. At 32, that now seems unlikely. But, as a senior pro, he has given the game much that is not fully appreciated except by those in his dressingroom. The game needs solid citizens like Ramela, and the fact that he is the serving president of the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) is testament to his status as exactly that.
He declined to be interviewed, but offered a written statement. Here it is, unabridged: “In 2011 it was a pipe-dream for South African domestic cricket to have one black African cricketer per team. In other words, on a weekend with all six franchise teams playing you would have fewer than six black players on show.
“In fact, my estimates suggest that for a period spanning 20 years since unity in 1991, black African representation was around 4% to 5% in four-day professional cricket. In international cricket, for the same period, black African representation was at an estimated 10%. In Test cricket, for the majority of 20 years, Makhaya Ntini was the dominant black African representative.
“From 2012/13, government insisted that CSA take action against the lack of transformation within the game. Gradually, each team would be compelled to play one black African for year one; next season two per team. The targets settled at three black Africans per team. This radically shifted black African representation from a low base of 4% 5% to a minimum of 27% in three years. International cricket would similarly move from a low base to 27% black African representation. This policy implementation coincided with the buoyant national mood for transformation under former president Jacob Zuma’s administration.
“I, fortunately, was a beneficiary of the policy. In all fairness, without the policy, I would not have had the privilege to play professional cricket, be president of SACA and even write this. In fact, many black African players that fans have come to admire would never have made it.
“What does the future hold? We have had approximately eight years of targeted transformation for greater black African presentation. More specifically, we have had five years of stable implementation of this policy, at three black Africans per team.
“However, there are already two opposing schools of thought. The cricket community is divided: one group believes targets should be done away with and often cite meritocracy as their defence. The other group says without a transformation policy the system would gravitate towards its discriminatory nature. In my view, meritocracy arguments are used to insinuate that black players are not competent relative to their white counterparts. And they often hide racism. The reality is black African cricketers have had five years of affirmative action. It goes without saying that it is not enough and it is clear that cricket was unable to self-transform and lead the process. As a country, if we are serious about transformation, we will demand more of it. And we will demand that the system gives us the best version of ourselves.
“I’m sharing this chronology of events in the hope that it is self-evident that, firstly, cricket was struggling to self-transform, and, secondly, the need for transformation given the inherent discrimination within the system.
“However, despite the upward trajectory in transformation at a professional level, there has been significant decline in grassroots and developmental cricket within the township and rural areas. The throughput rate of quality is lower. Young people are getting less exposure and opportunities to showcase their talent. This is symptomatic of our times, where black lives matter only if they propel administrators’ careers by serving the elite — professional cricketers — while the majority of black cricketers, young players and amateurs, are left in the wilderness to fend for themselves.”
Not all of us are capable of offering arguments as impeccably reasoned as Ramela’s. Not all of us are as formidable as Dorothy Tsotsobe. Not all of us have Anthony Tsotsobe’s patriotism and sense of duty. Pray none of us suffer his cruel, unfair end. None of us have Ntini’s inexhaustible energy. Few of us have had the privilege of his company when he is alone and earnest and out of the cocoon of craziness he wears like a shield. All of us should know that Rabada has a razor-sharp mind, which he applies to cricket and a lot more besides. And that Bavuma is a philosopher in pads wising up the world one well-considered word at a time. Also that some of us, like Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Tsolekile, will veer off the straight and narrow and be disproportionally punished.
It’s tempting to represent these lives as shades of grey. That would be wrong. They are, each of them separately and all of them together, a handful of the myriad and varying black lives that have given the world so much, had so much taken from them or not been given so much of what is rightfully theirs.
All lives should matter. Millions of black lives do not. That must change, and keep changing. Until there is no them. Only an us.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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“CSA believe they have the privilege and prerogative to decide whether black lives matter.” – Omphile Ramela, SACA president
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
CONTRASTING reactions to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement have ripped the band-aid off the still gaping wound of racial disunity in South African cricket’s broader community. That follows Lungi Ngidi’s expressed support for BLM, and Graeme Smith’s suggestion that Cricket South Africa (CSA) will mark the tide rising globally against ongoing systemic racism towards blacks. Ngidi’s stance will be welcomed far and wide, but he has been chastised by former players from his own country on social media.
South Africa, which emerged from centuries of racial oppression 26 years ago, remains the most unequal society in the world with the white minority controlling a disproportionate amount of the country’s wealth. It will not escape notice that Ngidi is black and his detractors white, and that all of the latter owe their playing and subsequent careers in large part to the privilege afforded them by laws that advantaged those of their race.
And that they would likely not have had those careers had they been born black. Conversely, Ngidi would have been barred by law from fulfilling his talent had he been born in the country his critics grew up in. Those laws no longer exist, but their ongoing effects are impossible to explain away. Black lives did not matter in the old South Africa, and it is difficult to believe they matter currently.
None of which informed a Facebook thread on Wednesday that started with Rudi Steyn, who played three Tests and an ODI for South Africa during the 1990s, posting an article quoting Ngidi on BLM and commenting: “I believe the Proteas should make a stand against racism, but if they stand up for [BLM] while ignoring the way white farmers are daily being ‘slaughtered’ (sic) like animals, they have lost my vote.”
Boeta Dippenaar supported Steyn: “If you want me to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, Lungi, then stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me with regards to farm attacks.”
Former international umpire Ian Howell was on the same page: “Agree with you Rudi: all lives matter. [Ngidi] is entitled to his opinion but he should not be in a position to force it on his teammates.”
Brian McMillan wrote: “Opinions always accepted. But [Ngidi’s] current one, in my opinion, is crap and political! All lives matter!”
Pat Symcox weighed in with: “What nonsense is this. [Ngidi] must take his own stand if he wishes. Stop trying to get the Proteas involved in his belief … Now when Ngidi has his next meal perhaps he would rather consider supporting the farmers of South Africa who are under pressure right now. A cause worth supporting.”
Vince van der Bijl, a former fast bowler who served as the ICC’s umpires’ and referees’ manager, was a rare white voice arguing the other way: “BLM does not say other lives don’t matter … Respect is allowing others to have their opinions. You are allowed yours. We do not have the space to state all the things that we talk about. And agree on. Saying one thing does not exclude other beliefs. We ache for so many things in this country. Hopefully we can help the healing as opposed to widen the divides.”
According to the UN, South Africa has the ninth-highest murder rate in the world. Government statistics say 21,022 people were murdered in the country from April 2018 to March 2019. Only 57 of all those who suffered that fate in South Africa in 2019 were farmers. Many wealthier farmers are white, and the conspiracy theory that they are being wantonly attacked is widely spread by global far-right and neo-fascist political groups who propagate the myth an international “white genocide” is underway.
“Black Lives Matter. It is as simple as that.” – Jacques Faul, CSA acting chief executive
Dippenaar told Cricbuzz he took issue with the way BLM presented itself: “It’s got all the characteristics of a leftist movement — ‘If you don’t agree with what I propose you do, then you’re a racist’. The movement itself has gone beyond what it stands for. It’s now nothing short of thuggery — ‘I throw stones and break windows because I stand for this’.”
Most reports of violence at BLM protests have been shown to be untrue. More often protestors have been attacked by police, often without due cause.
Asked if he agreed that whites of his generation had benefitted unfairly from apartheid, Dippenaar said: “Of course we did. There is no doubt that it was a repressive, repulsive institution. And that it left us with a lot of scars. Things that happened during apartheid haven’t changed overnight, but as long as we use the excuse of apartheid we’ll never move forward. It’s a bit like being a drunk — he can only help himself the day he realises he’s an alcoholic.”
The spark for all that was Ngidi’s answer when he was asked, during an online press conference on Monday, whether South Africa’s players had or would talk about supporting BLM. “That’s definitely something that we will discuss once we are together in person,” Ngidi said. “We have spoken about it and everyone is well aware of what’s going on. It’s a difficult one because we are not together, so it’s hard to discuss. But once we get back to playing that is definitely something we have to address as a team.
“As a nation as well, we have a past that is very difficult because of racial discrimination. So it’s definitely something we will be addressing as a team and if we are not, it’s something I will bring up. It’s something that we need to take very seriously and, like the rest of the world is doing, make a stand.”
Even though he clearly spoke in his personal capacity, Dippenaar regarded his comments as prescriptive: “The thing that’s wrong is Lungi Ngidi saying that CSA, as if he is speaking on behalf of everybody, should take a stand.”
At another online presser on Wednesday, director of cricket Smith did not give a direct answer when he was asked to clarify CSA’s stance on BLM: “We are very aware of what’s going on around the world and of our role at CSA. Lungi answered it very well when he said we are all in our own little pockets, and I think it’s important that in the future we all come together and figure out how we can play our role in the BLM movement; how we can be effective in doing that.
“My belief in these things is that it’s important to have buy-in and that of everyone invested in it as well, and I have no doubt that will be the case. But the discussion in each team environment and as CSA about how we handle it going forward is important.
“We do have the 3TC [a game in a new format] approaching on Mandela Day [July 18], where we are doing a lot for charity, and that will be our first occasion with the BLM movement. But as far as our iconic men’s and women’s teams are concerned there needs to be discussion.
“We’re discussing various ways of handling it. The kit has gone to print already. We need to figure out how we can be effective about it as well, also authentic, and spread the messages that are meaningful to us as South Africans. And how that affects us on a daily basis.”
That has been interpreted as unacceptable vacillation, not least by South African Cricketers’ Association president Omphile Ramela, who hit back in his personal capacity in a Facebook post on Thursday: “The fact that CSA is ‘pondering and seeking buy-in’ about how best to partake in the [BLM] movement is shameful! They believe they have the privilege and prerogative to decide whether black lives matter. Well, here is an answer to their ponder … Black lives do matter as stipulated by the law and transformation policies. It is a just, human, and lawful matter which requires no pondering nor buy-in from anybody.”
Ramela accused CSA of “regressing the gains of transformation in senior administrative representation and on the field of play”, a reference to the appointment of several whites — including Smith — in high profile positions in December, and to the fact that of the 176 places available in the XIs picked for the 16 matches South Africa’s men’s team have played since then, only 80 went to black and brown players. CSA’s transformation targets say at least six players in every team should not be white: two black and four brown. The teams picked since December thus fall short by 16 black and brown player places.
Ramela called for introspection: “Nobody is to be spared, starting with the white leaders across the entire cricket fraternity from the sponsors to the executives of unions and the mother body. Until these individual leaders collectively demonstrate contrition and consciously build a more inclusive future for the game, rather than preserving ill-gotten white privilege, they have no right to speak a word towards a global movement that has been sparked by the most grotesque incident [in Minneapolis on May 25, when the black George Floyd was killed in full public view by a white police officer].
“What the BLM movement is calling for, especially in the business of sport, is for the black and white members of the sport fraternity to start holding accountable those we entrust with the power to lead and preserve the integrity of the game,” Ramela wrote. “Sport continues to be a microcosm of society, yet it remains one of the most forceful tools we have to break the shackles and bondages of the past.”
That, as social media luridly laid bare on Thursday, is a long way off. Ngidi should be admired and respected for using his platform as a prominent player to become an activist in the cause for long denied justice that has, rightfully, won millions of followers of all races worldwide. But, for some, he has done the wrong thing. You have to wonder what those who feel that way made of Ngidi’s franchise, the Titans, issuing a release on Thursday to “add their voice and unwavering support to the [BLM] movement, as well as reiterating their unwavering intolerance of gender based violence”.
CSA, in particular, need to tread carefully. Having wasted one opportunity to put themselves on the right side of history, they can’t afford to stumble again. Nothing less than a strongly expressed anti-racist stance — non-racism is a cop-out — will suffice. A release on Thursday, which arrived long after all of the above had been spewed out, showed a shift in approach.
“CSA stands in solidarity with the BLM movement,” it began. “CSA was founded on the principles of non-racialism and inclusion at unity. The vision of CSA, to become a truly national sport of winners supported by the majority, finds resonance in the ethos of ‘Black Lives Matter’.”
The acting chief executive, Jacques Faul, was quoted as saying: “Black Lives Matter. It is as simple as that. As a national sporting body representing more than 56-million South Africans and with the privileged position of owning a platform as large as we do, it is of vital importance that we use our voice to educate and listen to others on topics involving all forms of discrimination.
“During our celebrations of Nelson Mandela International Day on 18 July, CSA will further spread the message of anti-racism through the BLM campaign while we also speak out against all forms of violence and in particular, the scourge that is gender based violence and various other causes that are of importance to our society and the organisation.”
From non-racism to anti-racism. From not saying enough themselves — or not saying it clearly enough — to listening to others. From a rotten past to a difficult present, but striving for a better future. Keep at it, CSA. The world is watching.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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“It’s something that we need to take very seriously and, like the rest of the world is doing, make a stand.” – Lungi Ngidi on Black Lives Matter.
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
THE world was different the last time Lungi Ngidi stood at the top of his run, ball in hand, ready to wreak havoc. That was on March 4 in Bloemfontein, where a flat pitch and a vast, fast outfield reduces bowlers’ bang to a whimper.
But Ngidi wreaked havoc regardless, taking a career-best 6/58 — the finest figures yet by a fast bowler in the 30 ODIs played in Bloemfontein, where only Imran Tahir and Lance Klusener had previously claimed five or more wickets in a match in the format. Three of Australia’s top four — David Warner, Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne — were among Ngidi’s victims, the latter two removed by consecutive deliveries.
Never short of pace and presence, Ngidi brought patience and precision to the party. Janneman Malan’s unbeaten 129 followed him becoming, four days earlier in Paarl, the only man to be dismissed by the first delivery he faced in international cricket. That probably cost Malan his place in the squad to play three ODIs in India that was announced two days before the Bloem game. So he stole the headlines. But Ngidi did at least as much to win the match, which South Africa did by six wickets to clinch the series with a match to spare.
Rested for the last game of the rubber in Potchefstroom three days after that, Ngidi no doubt looked forward to wreaking more havoc in India. The first match, in Dharamsala on March 12, was washed out and the last two were cancelled because of fears over a virus that seemed to be named after a brand of Mexican beer.
Almost four months on the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 500,000 people around the world and put much of life as we know it — cricket included — on hold as authorities scramble to try and slow its spread.
That’s not all that’s changed. George Floyd’s graphic, public and, importantly, videoed killing by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25 has galvanised the globe in protest against systemic racism. But Floyd is one among many: since Ngidi was last on the field US law enforcement officers have killed 156 people. Last year 327 lives were taken this way. This year the total is already 327. Most of the killed have been black men. Most of the killers have been white.
There’s not a lot of sport to watch due to the pandemic, but much of what there is to see has been graced by gestures in support of the Black Lives Matter movement raised to combat the epidemic of police killings. Like players in football’s English Premier League have done since the season resumed on June 17, West Indies’ cricketers will wear “Black Lives Matter” on their shirts in their Test series in England, which starts on Wednesday.
Will they also “take a knee” — kneel — during the playing of national anthems? This form of protest against racial oppression was pioneered by NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016 and has gone viral since Floyd’s death. So much so that those who have remained standing during anthems have been slammed on social media and felt the need to explain their inaction.
Like the rest of South Africa’s cricketers Ngidi has not yet had the opportunity to join that conversation in public. But that doesn’t mean he and his teammates haven’t been talking politics in private.
“That’s definitely something that we will discuss once we are together in person,” Ngidi said during an online press conference on Monday. “We have spoken about it and everyone is well aware of what’s going on. It’s a difficult one because we are not together, so it’s hard to discuss. But once we get back to playing that is definitely something we have to address as a team.
“As a nation as well, we have a past that is very difficult because of racial discrimination. So it’s definitely something we will be addressing as a team and if we are not, it’s something I will bring up. It’s something that we need to take very seriously and, like the rest of the world is doing, make a stand.”
South Africans lived under racism from 1652, when Europeans first settled there, until the inaugural democratic elections in 1994. The 342 years of brutally racist repression used to govern the country between those landmark dates created what remains, according to several authoritative sources, the world’s most unequal society.
Covid-19 has only served to widen the disparities, with the largely black poor — who comprise more than 80% of South Africa’s population — significantly less able to ward off the virus. Their residential areas are more dense than affluent districts and they are less likely to have access to water. That hinders social distancing and regular hand-washing, two key defences against the spread of the pandemic. Poorer South Africans are also more likely to have to endure unwarranted violence from the police and army during lockdown. The country got its own George Floyd on April 10, when Collins Khosa was beaten to death by soldiers at his home in Johannesburg.
“There’s temperature checks at the gate, there’s hand sanitisers, we fill out forms. It’s a whole process before you can actually bowl a cricket ball.”
Ngidi is far removed from all that, but Covid-19 has had a dramatic effect on his life despite the fact that, on June 26, government cleared South Africa’s cricketers to return to training and playing. “It’s difficult and it’s different,” he said. “We have to book [training] sessions now, so there are certain groups of guys that come in at a certain time and when they are done another group comes in. I don’t think we are exceeding numbers of about five at the moment.”
Cricket South Africa named a 45-man high performance training squad last Monday. The players are practising at their nearest franchise ground, which in Ngidi’s case is at Centurion.
“As the bowlers we each have our net. We each have our balls. There is no touching, hardly any communication as well. Before going to the gym you have to let them know so they can sanitise the area before you come in and sanitise once you leave, for the next group.
“There’s a whole lot of things you need to remember as well. We have to test regularly now. There’s temperature checks at the gate, there’s hand sanitisers, we fill out forms. It’s a whole process before you can actually bowl a cricket ball.
“It’s very frustrating but also very necessary at this point and especially with us coming up with the 3TC game next week. Even though it is a bit of a schlep and it is hard work, we still need to do it because we’ve got a game to play next week.”
On July 18, three teams of eight players — including Ngidi — will trial a new format, 3TC, in a single match of 36 overs at Centurion. Organisers hope the Solidarity Cup will raise as much as USD177,000 for charity.
“From what they explained to us, it is going to be very different,” Ngidi said of the complicated rules, which allow for the last not out player in an innings to keep batting. “I still don’t fully understand what’s going on. I know it’s going to be a different type of game. It is still a bit confusing but with everything they have explained, I am looking forward to how it’s going to play out.”
For now, Ngidi is getting used to the strangeness of the new normal in a country that has one of the fastest coronavirus infection rates in the world: “It feels like some biohazard kind of event has happened. There’s no touching, you barely ever take your masks off other than when you are within a certain distance of people. The filling out of forms, the bookings, it’s a mess to be honest with you but its very necessary because obviously its a very serious pandemic.
“I don’t believe Covid is something we can take lightly. It does feel like something out of a movie because the safety precautions that are being taken are something you have never experienced before as a player. We no longer go into the changerooms. You get changed in your car and you go straight to the field or straight to the indoor nets. We don’t gather in groups anymore and it feels weird since it’s a team sport. You’re playing by yourself but everyone is still there. It is very different.”
One of the differences is that players will no longer be able to spit on the ball to help their team’s bowlers. “The first thing we are coming back to is white-ball cricket and I am well aware that it only swings for the first three or four overs anyway,” Ngidi said.
“A few of the boys have complained. Once [the ICC] said there’s no saliva, a few of the batsmen posted on the group that now they are going to be driving on the up.”
Without saliva keeping one half of the newer ball shiny, and weighting one half of the older ball, it will be less likely to swing. Thus batters will be able to trust that the ball will arrive on the same line at which it was delivered. That will allow them to decide, earlier than usual, which stroke to play and help them execute it more forcefully.
“Already we can see what type of mentality the batsmen are coming with, so now we have to find a gameplan to get the ball to swing,” Ngidi said. “Maybe a damp towel is the best thing but you’ve got to find something to shine [the ball].”
That and other issues will make Ngidi a keen watcher of what happens when England and West Indies mark the return of the global game at Southampton on Wednesday.
“I am glad that someone else is playing before we do so that we can see how everything is going to work. The basics of the game will still apply but just to see how everyone is going to be handled off the field and how interaction is going to work with camera staff and all those guys, and to give us a blueprint of what to do to get our cricket going again …”
The world is different. How much more different it will become we don’t know, although it’s a given that Covid-19 and cops will keep killing people. As for the rest, we’re about to find out.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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A half-breed like Hendricks in South Africa’s Test team? Unthinkable. No matter how good he was as a player, he was born not good enough.
TELFORD VICE| Cape Town
THREE white men are at a Cape Town bookshop talking about a work two of them have written about a black cricketer. Three of the questions from the audience come from women. Two of the questioners are black. Discuss.
Not that there is a lot of discussion in South African cricket. What there is a lot of is shouting — from whites at blacks who question why they do not have a bigger presence in the game in all avenues and at all levels, from blacks at whites who highlight failings by those who are black, and from brown people who lament that once they weren’t white enough to be considered equals and now they aren’t black enough. All too often, the shouting is a kneejerk defence against the indefensible.
Chris Nenzani, Cricket South Africa’s president until their annual meeting on September 5, when he is due to vacate that office, is a lightning rod for much of that anger. Respected for most of a tenure that started in February 2013, he will leave the game stained by the past 18 months, which have seen galloping financial losses, compound fractures of governance, dwindling sponsorship and mounting public and stakeholder disapproval.
Thus, and perhaps unfairly, Nenzani, who is black, will go down as CSA’s worst ever leader. But say a word against him and, regardless of the unimpeachable facts of the matter, if you are white or brown you will likely be met by irrational, abusive screeching in his defence. The reasons why go beyond what one person, black, brown or white, competent, mediocre or inept, could ever achieve.
“What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.” There’s a chilling jolt of currency in those words in the wake of the public killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25, and the nuclear reaction that has spread far beyond that street of unnecessary death. But they were said by Lyndon B. Johnson in the angry aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.
Forty years later enough of the United States’ white majority voted for Barack Obama to make him their country’s first black president. Four years after that, they kept him in the job. But then, in retaliation for eight years of what looked like progress, they elected Donald Trump, a shameless juggernaut of retrogression and division who represents the seething rejection of racial and gender justice. For Americans of every stripe, it’s back to the past.
Similarly, not nearly enough about the reality of black South Africans’ lives have changed since they won their freedom 26 years ago. Instead, whites remain on top of almost any pile worth measuring, including cricket.
Thirty-six men have captained South Africa’s official Test team since March 1889. Thirty-four have been white. Of the 29 debuts handed out across the formats since the start of 2019, only four have gone to black Africans, who comprise more than 80% of the population and form the majority of cricket’s player base and following. These figures are crude but rude with the truth that the game, despite significant efforts to darken it, remains unbearably white.
Among the major sports only football puts national teams on the field that demographically represent the nation more or less accurately. Much has been made of the racial rainbow that was the South Africa rugby side that won the 2019 World Cup, but only five of the XV who started the final against England were black African. Then there’s the shibboleth that in South Africa blacks play football and whites play rugby and cricket. It is a lie invariably peddled maliciously.
Apartheid was consigned to history in April 1994, but anyone who argues that the country isn’t still in structural and systemic racism’s dismal grip lives in a universe parallel, and at least as warped, to that occupied by Chris Nenzani’s noisier supporters.
On June 4 the minister of sport, Nathi Mthethwa, met with the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) and, a release said, “was concerned about the lack of implementation of the EPG team recommendations; and went as far as proposing an enforcement mechanism using legislative instruments to ensure that all the transformation objectives are realised”. The EPG reported that “more than 50% of the audited federations have achieved their transformation targets”, but also that “black Africans and women are underrepresented in every sphere of South African sport”.
The same could be said about all aspects of modern South African life. Apartheid was consigned to history by Nelson Mandela’s election as president in April 1994, but anyone who argues that the country isn’t still in structural and systemic racism’s dismal grip lives in a universe parallel, and at least as warped, to that occupied by Nenzani’s noisier supporters.
How much of all that might Krom Hendricks have helped change, for the better, had he been given the opportunity he earned rightfully? Considering the forces ranged against him, maybe no more than minimally. But it is a thought worth exploring nonetheless.
Hendricks was a rock star fast bowler from the Cape who was in his pomp in the 1890s. Tall, broad and moustachioed, he ripped through batting orders like a demon — the English team that toured South Africa from December 1891 to March 1892 compared him favourably to Fred Spofforth himself — and he should have roared into the Test team. Doubtless he would have if not for the accident of his birth.
Hendricks’ father was white. His mother was black. Such mixing and matching in the gene pool was not unheard of in Cape Town, a port city, after all, where the world’s disparate peoples met on more equal terms than in less liberal places. But the products of such unions were not welcome in the polite white society that held their superiority in all circles — including on the cricket oval — to be at once self-evident and inviolate.
A half-breed like Hendricks in South Africa’s Test team? Unthinkable. No matter how good he was as a player, he was born not good enough. Nothing could change that. As one of the members of South Africa’s inaugural Test XI, Augustus Bernard Tancred — his best friends, all of them white, no doubt, called him “AB” — wrote in the Standard and Diggers News of February 14, 1894 of the possibility of Hendricks being picked to tour England later that year: “To take him as an equal would from a South African point of view be impolitic, not to say intolerable, and I would not have him on those terms if he were a better bowler than [former England ace George] Lohmann.”
Tancred’s vile words live and breath again on page 62 of Too Black to Wear Whites, a study of Hendricks’ life and career and the context in which he lived. Two of the white men at that Cape Town bookshop were the authors, Jonty Winch and Richard Parry. The third, André Odendaal, wrote the foreword. All are historians, and cricket people with a gift for marrying research with passion to tell stories that enrich our understanding of the past and so the present.
Hendricks deserves his due, not least because he has never had it before. He would have been, in his day, prominent in any reckoning of who the best and quickest fast bowler in the world might be. But, in 848 pages of Maurice Luckin’s supposedly authoritative history of South African cricket, published in 1915, Hendricks appears in prose only once, as “the Cape coloured boy, Hendriks [sic]”, and features in a solitary scorecard.
He was a victim of his time and his circumstances, with powerful figures like arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes personally involved in stymieing his progress. This disgrace reached the level of preventing Hendricks from earning a living by playing professionally for clubs. But he was not about to go quietly, writing bristling letters to newspapers and even enjoying the support of some of those the white elite considered “gentlemen”.
Hendricks himself was not above apparent prejudice, firing off a missive to the Cape Times in January 1894 in which he “must disclaim any connection with the Malay community. My father was born of Dutch parents in Cape Town, and my mother hails from St Helena — then why am I termed a Malay?” Why was he anxious not to be counted among the Malays? Perhaps because they were Muslim. Or because they were brought to the Cape as slaves. Or he was pulling the race card to try and be regarded as white, and so be permitted to earn money from playing cricket.
Winch and Parry have done the game a great service by delving deeply into their subject to knot the loose ends of Hendricks’ previously barely told story, and in the process weave a vibrant vision of the South Africa of the time. While much has changed, it is depressing how much has not.
Hendricks was indeed too black to wear whites at a high level in his country in the 1890s, and he would have been for the next hundred years. More than 130 years have passed since his outrageous talent for taking wickets became impossible to ignore. South Africans are now parsing the difference between who is merely black — indigenous and mixed race brown people and those of Asian heritage — and who is black African, and on that basis making important decisions about the lives of individuals as they attempt to redress the viciously legislated social engineering of the past.
Mostly, care is taken to ensure this happens with due regard for all involved: there is no question that Kagiso Rabada, a black African, is South Africa’s best fast bowler in a generation. But it is equally true that black Africans are, rightfully considering the grotesquely skewed reality that went before, afforded more life and career opportunities than other race groups. Whether they are able to take them in a society where too much of the past infects the present in ways far bigger than cricket — the World Inequality Database reports that 1% of South Africans earn 20% of the country’s income, while 90% take home only 35% — is a different conversation.
Rabada, for instance, is the son of middle-class parents. But they rose from the desperately difficult beginnings universal to black lives of that time to become a doctor and a lawyer. Would their son be where he is had their hard work not paid for a place at a prestigious school that had produced seven international cricketers?
Rabada’s route to fulfilling his potential would not have been open to Hendricks, no matter how much talent he had or how hard his parents toiled to see it fulfilled. Even now he might consider the door half-closed rather than half-open. Then, he was not white enough. Now, he may not be black enough.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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Bulletproof Truth 