South African cricket and the poisoned legacy of apartheid

Oborne & Heller on Cricket

As England’s tour of South Africa gets under way, the two latest guests of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller on their cricket-themed podcast offer deep insight into South African cricket past and present. Mo Allie, of the BBC Africa service has reported on South African sport for many years and is the author of More Than A Game, telling many heroic stories of South Africa’s non-white cricketers in times of racial segregation. Cricket historian and analyst Arunabha Sengupta has written Apartheid – A Point To Cover, the story of South African cricket to 1970 and of the successful Stop The 70 Tour campaign.

Mike Atherton delivers an appeal for the MCC Foundation. For a week from 1 December donations will be doubled in value, and will help to give cricketing experience and access to coaching for disadvantaged boys and girls. See https://donate.thebiggive.org.uk/campaign/a051r00001eojcBAAQ

Mo explains the turmoil in South Africa’s cricket administration which almost caused the cancellation of England’s tour. He and Arunabha also analyse the bitter conflicts within South Africa over taking the knee in support of BlackLivesMatter. They have their roots in the poisoned legacy of apartheid, which created inequalities and imbalances in South African society which will take generations to eradicate, in the present violence which engulfs the country, and in a failure, not only in South Africa, to shake off cultural attitudes and racial myths formed in colonial times. Mo conveys the shock in South Africa when Makaya Ntini, the “poster boy” for its newly integrated cricket, revealed the loneliness he experienced in the team through enduring racism. He reveals that white players who took the knee earlier this year received death threats.

Arunabha shows how racial segregation was embedded in South African cricket long before it was formalized and developed under apartheid, citing particularly the case of Krom Hendricks, a brilliant pace bowler of mixed race, denied international selection as far back as 1894 at the behest of Cecil Rhodes. He was the first of many non-white cricketers excluded by a “100 per cent white” quota system. Mo gives moving personal testimony of the losses experienced by his family through waves of discriminatory laws, especially from enforced removals, and of what it was like for him to grow up under apartheid. Many non-white people, not only in sport, had to go overseas to get a career, and the talents of millions more were lost to the world.

Arunabha traces the impact of exclusion from international cricket and sport generally on the image and self-confidence of a sports-crazed nation, and how Nelson Mandela later saw integrated sport as an agent of change. He cites Mike Procter and Clive Rice on the effect of playing in multi-racial English county cricket in taking South African players out of their “white bubble.”

Mo expresses deep worry about the shortage of selfless capable leaders not only in South African cricket but in other sectors. Racial quotas and stereotypes are too often blamed for failures. The “rainbow nation” may be dissolving as communities retreat into their own laagers and compete for scarce resources in a deeply troubled economy. However, both he and Arunabha see signs of positivity and hope, not least in the public efforts to promote inclusion through cricket by former cricketers such as Lance Klusener, Paul Adams, and especially Gary Kirsten, who is developing the talents of disadvantaged young players at his cricket academy. They also cite the successes of South African women in cricket and other sports and the efforts led by Professor André Odendaal (a future guest) to recapture the lost history of non-white players and make the nation aware of its full sporting legacy.