CAPE TOWN – My inbox was flooded in the past week, mostly from white supporters telling me to get a life, to move on and to stop being so divisive. Why must it always be about race? This is 2020 for God’s sake, was a consistent theme!
My crime was to question the ease with which Proteas vice-captain - only one series ago - Temba Bavuma was dropped from the Proteas squad, but the ease with which underperforming white players kept their place. It was a question based on performance, perceived prejudice in relation to race and the history of South African sport, when it came to racially biased selections.
The vitriol on social media is a constant response whenever transformation is mentioned, but this very vitriol is why we can’t shy away from the topic of transformation, discussion around transformation and challenge the belief that transformation is specific to an occasion. Transformation is not a one-match target or a one-tournament achievement to shut up those who see transformation as a way of life in South Africa.
The white voice, for such a minority in this country, remains potent and powerful. The scorned white voice roars, especially when it comes to local sporting opinions. The majority black voice isn’t strong enough and neither is the insistence to battle white privilege.
Former Sport minister Fikile Mbalula was non-negotiable on transformation. He refused to equate a lack of black playing opportunities in South African elite sport with performance. Results would come, he argued, with playing opportunities. Mbalula was brash and belligerent when it came to Springbok and South African rugby post the 2011 and 2015 World Cups. He refused to be intimidated by South African international sports’ white past and he fought only for South African sports’ future; a future that spoke to the majority in this country more than it bowed to a minority.
Mbalula was always willing to engage in debate as to how best to achieve transformation in South African sport, but he refused to debate the significance of transformation because it was not a debate but a reality.
Rugby’s leadership, in particular, was squeezed on a refusal to transform since international readmission in 1992. The leadership, led by SA Rugby Union president Mark Alexander, acknowledged rugby’s failure to transform and committed unconditionally to a South African national team that at the 2019 World Cup would reflect the demographics of this country.
The naysayers held on to the glory of two World Cup triumphs that could never be repeated again. The consensus was that a multicultural Springbok team that spoke to quality in selection and sincerity in belief, when it came to selection, could never succeed against the world’s best. Now that very same multicultural Springbok team is the world’s best.
Temba Bavuma was dropped from the Proteas squad for the Test series against England.
Photo: Gerhard Duraan/BackpagePix
Cricket’s leadership, in this instance, needs the likes of Mbalula squeezing at their throats about their failure regarding black players, especially at Test level. The Proteas leadership can’t continue to sprout the clichéd nonsense that they don’t see colour, when there is just one black player in the team. They clearly do. What this leadership doesn’t see is the bigger picture of South African sport.
Alexander, in several chats with me, said the majority in this country would ensure a future for the sport beyond 2030.
In Rassie Erasmus, the SA Rugby Union leadership identified a man who believed in transformation. Erasmus saw colour, in that he knew the Springboks could no longer speak exclusively to a minority audience.
Cricket’s leadership needs to look through those lenses and actually see colour because then they would finally have to acknowledge why it is that they believe they don’t see colour.
@mark_keohane
Keohane is an award-winning sports journalist and a regular contributor to Independent Media Sport