Peter Hain – Bulletproof Truth

Wickets, words and wondering: André Odendaal’s three Ws

“To explain racism in sport you’ve got to go back to colonialism; the first British warships arriving, and cricket bats and bayonets coming off together.” – André Odendaal

Telford Vice | Cape Town

IF André Odendaal says he isn’t writing a book, collaborating on a book, or about to have a book published, call a doctor.

Since December alone he’s put out “Pitch Battles: Sport, Racism and Resistance” with Peter Hain and “Robin Island Rainbow Dreams: The Making of Democratic South Africa’s First National Heritage Institution” with Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi, Noel Solani and Khwezi ka Mpumlwana.

Stand by, in April, for “Dear Comrade President: How Oliver Tambo Laid the Foundations of South Africa’s Constitution” with Albie Sachs. It will be the 13th book he has written or co-written.

When last hasn’t Odendaal been busy with a book? “That’s a good question … I started at university, which means I’ve published every decade for the last five,” he tells the FM. “That makes me a hell of an old toppie!”

Queenstown born and raised Odendaal is 67. A writer in residence and honorary professor in history and heritage studies at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), his Wikipedia page lists his 61 on debut — his only first-class half-century — for Cambridge immediately below the fact that he earned a PhD in history in the famously spired city. It seems rude to ask which he prizes more highly.

After Cambridge he was at UWC for 13 years, establishing and leading the Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture in 1991, and in 1996 becoming the founding director of the Robben Island Museum. In 2015 he retired after 10 years as chief executive of the Western Province Cricket Association. He has since published or co-published 20 books in his African Lives Series.

“When I left Newlands I said to my wife [civic activist Zohra Ebrahim], ‘I’ve been running organisations for 20 years. I’d love to just go read, write and do research for a couple of years. Call it a second PhD.’ So I’ve been writing fulltime for the last six years. In the last 12 months I’ve signed off on three books. But they came from six years of process and engagement.”

All of Odendaal’s works deal with sport, politics or, more often, both. He runs towards that nexus. The second chapter of “Pitch Battles” — which ends with an examination of what the pandemic and Black Lives Matter mean for sport — is titled: “Empire and the British roots of sports apartheid”.

“I said to Peter that we must explain how racism became embedded in South African sport. To do that you’ve got to go back to colonialism; the first British warships arriving, and cricket bats and bayonets coming off together.”

The Robben Island book was informed by what he encountered there: “I went through a very profound experience taking it from a prison to a museum, and a privilege in terms of my own identity — who I am and how I think. On top of that, we were a pilot case for state capture. The same tactics and, in some cases, even the same people were involved.” Chapter 13, “Downward spiral of an institution and its vision”, begins: “Farce became reality on Robben Island after the banal campaign to replace the management in 2001 and 2002 and the travesty of a staged ‘hunger strike’ in the hallowed former prison, which made a mockery of the ‘triumph of the human spirit’ vision of the museum.”

More happily, Odendaal says: “I spent six New Year’s Eves on the island looking at fire crackers going off at different times of the night in Cape Town. Twelve o’clock wan’t the same everywhere in the city.”

A chance meeting with Sachs at the memorial service for activist Sadie Forman in 2014 led to bigger things: “He said come and join our project on the making of the constitution.” And so to the Tambo book, which deals with the important but under-explored events of 1985 to 1991: “It’s about how the ANC turned to constitutionalism in the middle of a revolutionary struggle. Everybody starts this story with De Klerk unbanning the ANC in 1990. But, strategically, the ANC were miles ahead of the apartheid government by then. When they started negotiating they had their principles in place. The state was going left, right and centre; it had no plan.”

Odendaal has been whirling through words for more than an hour. Told that the coffee sat in front of him must be cold, he reaches for the crestfallen flat white anyway.

“Ag,” he says in his untouched Eastern Cape accent, “I drink cold coffee.”

Straight, no chaser.

First published by the Financial Mail.

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South Africans to take stand against racism

“The guys have come up with a meaningful gesture and you will see that.” – Mark Boucher

Telford Vice | Johannesburg

SOUTH Africa’s complicated relationship with anti-racism gestures is back in the spotlight. Having refused to take a knee in the T20I series against England last month, they could do so — or do something in the same vein — in the first Test against Sri Lanka at Centurion on Saturday. That follows a public outcry and high level disapproval, including from CSA’s interim board, over the team’s lack of action.

“We appreciate the board isn’t looking to compel the team into doing anything one way or the other, and that they are happy to allow the team to go through their process and come up with something meaningful to them,” Mark Boucher told an online press conference on Thursday. “We are happy to engage further with them and what they would like to discuss at a more appropriate time.

“We’ve had a lot of discussions since we’ve come into the bubble about this, especially after the board statement. The guys have come up with a meaningful gesture and you will see that. That’s something the players will share with everyone before match day.”

Nineteen of the 24 players in South Africa’s squad for the series against England were part of the 3TC match at Centurion on July 18 — when all involved took a knee and raised a fist in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM). But, in the national team’s first engagement since BLM swept the world and fuelled a fiery debate over racial injustice in the game in South Africa, they somehow lost the will to do so. Instead, tacked to the stands for two of the three T20Is against England were banners that read: “We stand in solidarity against racism and gender based violence. CSA stands for equality.”

The players released a strong statement on November 25 making clear their commitment to working for a more just society, but their lack of action on the subject stirred anger in many — particularly as many teams in a range of other sports had and are continuing to show their stance by kneeling before competing.

“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,” Peter Hain, a veteran anti-apartheid activist and former UK cabinet minister who spent his childhood in South Africa, said on December 2. “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.”

The interim board weighed in on December 18 with a release in which chairperson Zak Yacoob highlighted the team’s stated pledge to “[explore] the significance of taking the knee and a raised fist”. Yacoob had “expressed concern about the implications of this statement. The interim board believes that the subsequent public and media criticism has justified these concerns.” The board “reaffirmed the significance of the current worldwide movement against systemic racism in sport, noting that it was not a sectarian political cause but a broad social justice campaign garnering wide support from athletes all over the world, bringing together a coalition of support across national, racial, class, religious and generational lines”.

That seems to have goaded the team into expressing themselves more visually. But they are in dangerous territory. If they kneel on Saturday, why didn’t they save themselves a lot of bother by doing so against England? If they do something else intended to have the same effect, why couldn’t they simply kneel like so many others have and still are doing? Either way, how are their compatriots meant to believe their gesture is sincere and not prompted by the reaction to their refusal to kneel?

Boucher and his team have already lost that fight. Best they stay on the right side of the battle against Covid-19, especially in the wake of England abandoning their tour without playing half their six matches because of positive tests inside the squads’ shared bio-bubble. CSA say they have tightened restrictions — which were loosened at England’s behest — for Sri Lanka’s tour. So far this time, all the South Africans have tested negative, most recently on Thursday.

Asked what he thought of England going home in a huff, Boucher said, “I don’t like to micromanage. There are certain people who have been put in places to do certain jobs. My job is coaching the team. So if it’s not my job to control the bio-secure environment, it’s not my job to speak to England to see how they are feeling or speak to Sri Lanka to see how they are feeling. We get given information from our medical staff on what they feel is going to be the best and the safest way for this tour to go ahead.

“Do I want to play cricket? Absolutely. There’s no cricket going in South Africa at the moment, which is disturbing. We want the best for the players and we want to try and get these guys onto the field. It’s no use talking about the game of cricket. The best way to better yourself as a player is to get out there and play.

“If we have to go through certain hoops, albeit very strict things, to get us to play a game of cricket then we have to do it. I will drive that from a coaching perspective. With regards to the other stuff, that’s not my job to worry about. I will abide by what I have to do.”

Saturday’s match will be both teams’ first Test since the onset of the pandemic and Sri Lanka’s first in any format.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Hain hits SA where it hurts

“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.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Bring back the boycott

South Africa’s problems are all South Africans’ problems. Not one of us is innocent. All of us are guilty. We need to own that guilt.

TELFORD VICE in London

HANDS up if you remember the long summers and winters of empty ache while, far away across the world, seasons runneth over with international sport played by people who were not us.

The way white people spat the words “Peter” and then “Hain”, the shameless lying in the press and on air that the dross dished up on rebel tours was Test cricket and rugby, the Springboks shamefully allowed to keep touring and playing long after the extent of the evil was known, the denial writ large on the blank faces of the delusionists pretending all was normal …

I remember. I was there. I lived through it. South Africa’s forced exclusion from world sport was the white noise of my growing up. I could hear the black noise of anger on the street. At least, I could before it dissipated into the smell of fear as state oppression mounted.

The Olympics? Test rugby and cricket? International football? They were for other, supposedly better people. Not for us.

I knew that was as it should have been. That until all South Africans had the same chances in life — not only in sport — the least the rest of the world could do was not allow the apartheid government to, as we say these days, sportwash the murderous truth away.

Politics was sport. Sport was politics. Is, was, always will be. Anyone who believes differently is, at best, stupid, at worst, on the high road to fascism. That offends you? Noted.

I cheered like mad during the 1981 Bok tour to New Zealand — for the protestors. I grew taller with pride every time my father, someone I was irreparably distanced from in all sorts of ways, defiantly and in the face of vicious opposition loudly supported the man he always called “Clay”.

He did so not because Muhammad Ali was a wonderful boxer. He did so because Ali invariably said and did the Right Thing. That my father was an ardent student of the art and craft of smacking someone in the face for a living but knew that Ali’s political bravery was exponentially more important than anything he would do in the ring has shaped me in ways I’m still, at 53, trying to understand.

And here we are, all these years later, and not nearly enough has changed. We still don’t have democracy. What we have is a pretence of democracy for the five minutes it takes to put a cross on a ballot paper every five years.

That’s for those of us who still bother to vote. The rest of us know that’s a waste of time. Whether we vote or not, the government will run on corruption and stink of ineptitude. Just like it did when it was white — when none of the legally available alternatives were noticeably less corrupt and inept, just as they are now.

Too many of us believed the bullshit of the 1995 rugby World Cup. That wasn’t unity. That was marketing. Nelson Mandela was dangerously wrong: sport does not have the power to change the world. Not, at least, for any longer than it takes the cheesy fakery of a beer commercial to shamble across our television screens. That’s even less than the five minutes we fool ourselves, every five years, that we’re a democracy.

The Springbok is the swastika of sport, the symbol of what white supremacy used to do on Saturday afternoons. Yet there the filthy thing still is, leaping on the left sleeve of the jerseys of the team who will, so they have been sold to us, represent South Africa at the men’s World Cup.

Why has the Springbok survived? Because it is a valuable brand. Because it makes money. That it is also a significant part of the story of the depths human depravity has sunk to matters less, apparently. How does that make you feel? How does it make me feel? Sick.

I would feel better if international rugby’s suits, having been reminded this week of how abnormal South African society still is and will be for too many decades hence, threw the Boks out of the World Cup.

Or if India — important figures in South Africa’s expulsion and readmission to international cricket — uninvited the Proteas to their tour there later this month.

At least Zambia have had the balls to tell Bafana Bafana not to turn up in Lusaka for their friendly on Saturday. The South African Football Association’s response has not been to reflect on why that has happened and to empathise with the Zambians, but to try and find replacement opposition. How completely disgusting.

Worse, Banyana Banyana played Botswana in the CAF Olympic qualifiers on Wednesday. It is an outrage that the match went ahead — could the players and the crowd at Orlando Stadium smell the hate drifting in on the smoke from the fires set by the xenophobes they consider compatriots?

How do you talk sense into the heads of people swept up in the irrationality that those who have come from far worse realities than theirs to make lives no-one wants to live are stealing “their” jobs and “their” women? Black South Africans, you are a disgrace.

But you have a way to go to join white South Africans at the bottom of the barrel. There is no reconciling with people who, having done everything wrong for hundreds of years, think they have the right to be treated as equals despite retaining all of their privileges.

The latter calamity has, of course, led to the former. How could it not? And how did we think the main victims of centuries of systemic, institutional racial violence — black men, without whom colonialism and apartheid could not have existed — would manifest their dysfunction if not against women?

All that’s more pathetic than women calling for the death penalty for perpetrators of gender-based violence is men seeking to distance themselves from those perpetrators by issuing confections of affront at their actions.

Some women seem to think you should go to jail if you kill a man and be executed if you kill a woman. But only if you’re a man. Nevermind that the death penalty doesn’t work, or that men are far more likely to be victims of male violence than women.

As for the shrieks of protest by men about other men, if you had lived their lives would you be that different? Or are you trying to say that being born black and male means being born bad?

Much of the noise made by these men and women rises from that swamp of affluence we call the middle class. How dare we lump these fine citizens with those other, dirtier, poorer South Africans? How could we possibly equate swinging a panga in anger with the lethal buzz of an electric fence securing ill-gotten gains?

South Africa’s problems are all South Africans’ problems. Not one of us is innocent. All of us are guilty. We need to own that guilt if we are to have any hope of rehabilitating ourselves.

It will take a lot more than sport to heal South Africa. But reviving the boycott would be a start. It is the least sport could do. Bring back the boycott now and bring it back properly, and to hell with how much money would be lost and whose careers would be cut short.

Hands up if you’re quietly aghast to be South African but will make noise in support of the Springboks at the World Cup?

Shame on you.

Dad? Thanks.

First published by Times SELECT.