September 28, 2003

Violence is nothing new for the apartheid-weary South Africans, yet they tried to find a reason to chicken out and put their Pakistan tour into question

TOURING Pakistan has never been as life threatening and as dangerous as it has been made out to be in the aftermath of attack on the twin towers in New York and a bomb blast in front of the Pakistan and New Zealand players in Karachi last May. The South African request to shift the matches from Karachi and Peshawar, therefore, is understandable, but for more reasons than one, unjustifiable.

Surely those who have raised the alarm to brief the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA) about security fears are themselves well aware of travelling in their own country, South Africa, which happens to be one of the most beautiful countries to go and yet the most dangerous place anywhere in the world. Murder, mugging and robbery are all part of that country’s day to day life which most of the people who visit South Africa easily find out, often at their personal cost.

Whether it is Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town, you walk or drive with your life in your own hand facing the risk and also the threat of being shot for a mobile phone or money at every nook and corner of the city. Only last December while touring with the Pakistan team and during the World Cup, I attended three funerals of young men who were shot at point blank for refusing to hand over a mobile phone or to part with the keys of their business. A surgeon and two petrol pump owners had lost their lives, members of the families I knew on my six visits to South Africa.

Visit South Africa for cricket or for leisure and you will discover that one virtually becomes a prisoner in his own house. In every locality whether it is affluent or shanty the houses have double doors and are surrounded by barbed and razor wires with dogs patrolling.

Only few months ago their own cricketer, all-rounder Andrew Hall, was beaten up, robbed and dumped in the township of Soweto. Luckily he survived despite profuse bleeding.

The legacy of subjugation and segregation inherited from the ‘apartheid’ regime is still very much in existence, though in a different form. The game of cricket is not excluded. One only has to dwell into their cricket history to marvel at what they have achieved and what they had failed to because of the constraints and rigours of a rather abnormal life during apartheid. Normality in life is still long way away. Only a handful of non-white, cape-coloured players have so far played for their country, but the Asians are still waiting to make the grade despite all the talent that is available.

During my stay there in connection with the World Cup, I was not surprised when a group of South Africans of Indian descent heckled and jeered at a group of cricket officials and South African cricket supporters after a match at Centurian, “Come on, play the ‘Coolies’ (Indians) in your team now if you want to win the Cup,” was the general sentiment.

Coolie, of course is the derogatory and insulting word which has been used for the Indians who were brought to South Africa as indentured labour in the 1860s to build the railways and cultivate the sugar cane industry and who later through sheer hard work established themselves as a useful member of society to help the country grow stronger economically.

Sadly though none of the players from their community has so far been included in a South African National team despite the abolition of ‘apartheid’ (law of racial segregation) in 1991. Although Omer Henry, Paul Adams, both cape-coloured, and Makhaya Ntini and Monde Zondeki, both black Africans, however, did make their mark with their inclusion and will be touring Pakistan.

The local Indians are, however, still firm in their conviction that they are being overlooked and ignored by the United Cricket Board which proudly boasts and brags about its cricket development campaign, most of which is meant to encourage the black youngsters and not Indians who, despite their talent, are still waiting on the line.

“Young men like Ahmed Amla and his brother Hashim Amla, Rivash Govind and Ghulam Bodia in the Kwazulu Natal team have been doing well for junior and senior South African teams and yet they feel they are being overlooked for reasons other than cricket,” says Aslam Khota a commentator of the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation.

“After 21 years of isolation from the game because of the apartheid policy of the South African governments and its entry in the international arena after its abolition, one would have thought that things will be rosier for the non-white cricketers, but there is still a lot to be desired,” says Khota.

Painful stories of the game during apartheid are always cited as you travel in South Africa, the reason why the older generation of Asians and blacks have still not been able to come to terms with South African cricket and still do not support their team.

“It is only the younger generation that now has affiliation with the South African national team. But even amongst them a lot of them support India, Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka because of the horror stories that they hear from their elders and read about the days when the whites ruled supreme,” says Khota.

During apartheid the non-whites travelled in separate train compartments, attended separate churches. The rest were not allowed to enter city centres after working hours, could not inter-marry and lived in townships outside the city marked for Asians, cape-coloured and blacks. For the Asians the most famous of such townships were Laudium in Pretoria and Lanesia near Johannesburg, and for the blacks, the shanty Soweto to which Nelson Mandela belonged, and Alexandra.

I remember when Colin Croft, the West Indian fast bowler, and Alvin Kallicharan the batsman, came to play in South Africa during the 1980s with the rebellion cricket teams and by mistake or by ignorance entered a train carriage meant for the whites. They were immediately thrown out on the platform despite their plea that they were West Indian cricketers.

Recent books on the non-white cricket written by local Indians like Krish Reddy, Ashwin Desai, Aslam Khota and Mohammed Allie are eye-openers and for once give the reader a deep insight into the humiliating treatment and inhuman treatment that was handed out to the non-whites under the degrading law of apartheid which had started to take its root in 1948 by the National Party.

Non-white spectators during local and international matches were shoved into barbed-wire cages on Test grounds and were not allowed to sit with the whites even when they had bought tickets to sit under the shade. The cages have now been dismantled and the grounds have free seating with the crowd of every creed and colour mingling with each other.

During apartheid, the non-whites were not allowed to play on grassy grounds and only gravel pitches and barren patches of land were permitted, for the purpose.

Says Khota, “One early winter evening at Queenspark in Johannesburg, there were few pockets of practice games on, when we were caught flat-footed and a cop with his dog charged at us. We had to risk injury to jump for cover and safety over a metre-fence. One coloured boy from the 18th Street, Julius, who was between 10 or 12 years old, did not make it. I still have the vision of the police dog biting into his shorts and buttock. I never stood to look, but ran home for dear life. It was clear that to sustain the inhuman laws, the law itself was allowed to act as inhumanly as possible.”

South Africa was thrown out of international cricket in 1970-71 after the then prime minister of the National Party, John Vorster, disallowed the England team selected by the MCC in 1968 to tour South Africa because England had selected Basil D’Oliviera, a cape-coloured in their team. Because of no travelling permit granted to non-whites of any visiting team the tour had to be called off which attracted worldwide condemnation of the South African government.

Vorster described the England team then as, “MCC, a team of anti-apartheid movement”. South Africans only played with white teams like England, Australia and New Zealand since being the founder member of the ICC.

After the 1970-71 South African win over Australia in a Test series in South Africa, the country was barred from most areas of life both economic and sporting till Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. The South African Cricket Board of Control (SACBC) of non-whites and South African Cricket Union (whites) merged into the United Cricket Board (UCB) in 1991 before the South Africans were allowed to re-enter as full member of the ICC.

Krish Reddy a cricket historian of South Africa, says, “It will take a while before the youngsters of the Indian community make their mark in the national team. The sooner the people who control this game here see the light, the better it will be for the game in South Africa. They may call us a ‘Coolie’ but we do have the talent to deliver.”

With so many skeletons in their own cupboard, the South Africans should have had no fears and concerns. After all, the worst they fear in Karachi and Peshawar is an every day happening across in their own country!

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