“For black African players who are not Kagiso Rabada or Temba Bavuma, even now, nothing has changed.” – Aaron Phangiso.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
DO rainbows burn? South Africans are trying hard to set alight what they have been told is theirs. Last week vast sections of Johannesburg and Durban, the country’s biggest cities, were in actual flames stoked by inequality. Also last week a blaze, fuelled by the outrage of those who have suffered decades of racism in cricket, started raging through the game. Those two fires are part of the same engulfing inferno.
Many among Desmond Tutu’s “rainbow people of God” will feel as if that shining image has been destroyed. Was the rainbow worth saving? Did it even exist? No, on both counts. Last week’s ructions made plain that it was at best an invention, and testimony at CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project has helped explain why.
Some of the testimony, at least. There was always a danger that the SJN would be used to try and launder reputations, and three of the seven black, brown and white players who admitted to attempting to fix during the 2015 franchise T20 competition — and were banned — took that chance. It seems the SJN saw them coming.
“This forum was not set up to review matchfixing,” Sandile July, one of SJN ombud Dumisa Ntsebeza’s assistants, said during the hearings this week. “We were listening to the other players. It was the process that made them unhappy, which according to them were injustices meted out against them. We are in no way interested in dealing with the details of the matchfixing.”
A link between how black and brown players have been treated within cricket and the consequent descent of some of them into corruption may yet be made, but that would be just a symptom of the disease. More urgent is what the game is going to do about the vast hurt that has been caused, about the causes of that hurt, and about what is going to be done to ensure it stops being caused.
We cannot know whether it has stopped because some of the people who stand accused of inflicting the hurt are now in powerful positions. They have the right of reply at the SJN, and until they exercise it all there is against them is allegations. But there are too many of charges to be dismissed. And they are too serious to look past.
“I was called ‘brown shit’. It used to be a song when we won a game and we were in fines’ meetings. They would sing, ‘Brown shit in the ring, tra la-la la-laa …’ When you are playing for your country, when you have had that victory, you don’t make sense of it. You brush it off but it’s blatantly racist.”
That was Paul Adams.
“It was a humiliating incident where his face was painted with white paint and he felt that he had to reprimand him for having dirty shoes by painting his face white. I was so upset because you can’t do that to young players. It will break their hearts and their spirit. He may have thought that it was going to make him harder and more determined, but you don’t do that. You don’t paint people’s faces white, because you have to go back in history to see what was going on.”
Adams again, on a white coach’s treatment of a black player during a provincial match.
“After my experiences in the Proteas set-up and those of my closest friends, I felt that as a South African I could not support a team that portrayed a false image in public — that it was a united South African team. Since [then] I have rejoiced at every Proteas downfall. I believe that if the South African team had succeeded, then that success would not have been the way that a South African national team should succeed.”
That was Thandi Tshabalala.
“You know, for black African players [who are not] Kagiso Rabada or Temba Bavuma, even now, nothing has changed.
That was Aaron Phangiso.
There have been many more where those stories have come from, and there will doubtless be many more still. A common theme has been the struggle of black players in South Africa’s squad to win selection to the XI — which, apart from the damage done to their psyche, means they earn less than their white counterparts. Another frequently raised issue has been the cold shoulder white players have offered their black and brown squadmates: instances of being shunned socially. Black players have highlighted not being allowed to speak their first language in the dressingroom — which wouldn’t be an issue if Afrikaans, the mother tongue of many whites, wasn’t freely spoken in the same space.
The media has also come in for scrutiny, as it should. How black players are written about and spoken of has differed from the way white players are written about and spoken of, and in unfair ways. Indeed, the way the SJN is being covered is a case in point. Black and brown reporters have delivered daily accounts of testimony. Some white reporters have published barely a word. Another approach — which you see being employed here — is to keep a close eye and wait for themes to develop before trying to put them in context.
But what did we expect? That centuries of systemic, institutionalised, legislated racism disappeared from our society in February 1990, when Nelson Mandela emerged from prison and — instead of demanding justice — told all South Africans to just get along? That whites who had, until then, lived in a world they controlled at the expense of all others would see the evil of their ways and give up their privilege? That all South Africans would, in fact, just get along? That cricket could escape all that? How?
The unrest in our streets last week was an inkling of how big this thing already is, nevermind how big it could get. The affluent must not be allowed to get away with the fudge that people risking contracting Covid-19 and arrest to steal baby formula from looted supermarkets are common thugs. We live in a dystopia where property owners think nothing of using garden hoses to wash the homeless off the pavements in front of their houses and apartment buildings, and think that because they have private medical insurance they are entitled to a bed in a hospital ahead of those who are forced to rely on the state.
Cricket is a small part of all that, but it is a prominent part. And even more so now that the SJN hearings are underway. South Africa’s men’s squad is far away in Ireland. Mark Boucher spoke freely when asked about the violence at home, and what impact it was having on the squad. But, approached for comment on claims made at the SJN, he reportedly demurred and was quoted as saying his “full focus and energy is concentrated on the Proteas”. How could proceedings at the SJN not affect him and his players?
South Africans would be right to be gobsmacked by the inconsistency, as they might have been during the tour to West Indies when Quinton de Kock was happy to discuss his support for rhino conservation but would not go into his reasons for refusing to kneel before matches. While we’re at it, some of the reporters who were quick to ask Boucher for his thoughts on the riots have steadfastly ignored anything to do with taking a knee.
And so we come to the end of the rainbow that never was. There is no pot of gold here. There are only ashes. Now what? “These things should never happen and if we take this forward in the right way we will have a lot more respect for each other. It is something that should not be brushed under the carpet. We should air it‚ if we want our teams within CSA to have the right ethics‚ the right mentality‚ the right respect for one another‚ we should air these things.”
Paul Adams for president.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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