Ken Borland

The Black Lives Matter logo might not be printed on their playing shirts when cricket returns on Saturday with the Solidarity Cup three-team event in Centurion, but leading White Proteas have now joined the movement and publicly expressed their support for the anti-racism drive.

Cricket South Africa director of cricket Graeme Smith has indicated that the playing shirts had already been printed, for an event that was originally meant to take place on June 27, when the cricketing world began to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.

Nevertheless, when former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis “takes the knee” on Saturday along with other White players like Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortje, it will be a powerful moment of solidarity with Lungi Ngidi and the other Black players who have spoken out in support of BLM.

Du Plessis has even taken matters further by apologising for his comment that the team “don’t see colour” when Temba Bavuma was left out of the Newlands Test against England at the start of the year.

“I surrender my opinions and take the knee as an intercessor. I acknowledge that South Africa is still hugely divided by racism and it is my personal responsibility to do my best to empathise, hear the stories, learn and then be part of the solution with my thoughts, words and actions. I have gotten it wrong before. Good intentions were failed by a lack of perspective when I said on a platform that I don’t see colour. In my ignorance I silenced the struggles of others by placing my own view on it.

“A race problem is a human race problem, if one part of the body hurts, we all stop, we empathise, we get perspective, we learn and then we tend to the hurting part of the body. So I am saying that all lives don’t matter UNTIL Black lives matter. I’m speaking up now, because if I wait to be perfect, I never will. I want to leave a legacy of empathy,” Du Plessis said in an Instagram post on Friday.

Van der Dussen and Pretorius, who both play for the Central Gauteng Lions and have had to wait a long time to kickstart their international careers, said they too support BLM.

“I will be proudly supporting the BLM movement and I will be taking a knee on Saturday. I honestly and wholeheartedly believe it’s the right thing to do. I also believe taking the knee is only the start. To me the BLM movement stands for the most basic right all people across the world deserve and that is the right to not be judged or segmented because of his/her colour, but rather for WHO they are.

“It’s not a movement that says Black lives are MORE important than any other colour. It’s my brother from another mother asking me please see me for WHO I am. Don’t persecute me because of my skin colour. Give me the same benefit of the doubt you would give someone with the same colour as you. Yes, the movement says ‘Black’, but I believe it’s relevant to any colour and race,” Pretorius said on Facebook.

Van der Dussen was asked on Twitter by journalist Max du Preez where he and several other Proteas stood on BLM, and the 31-year-old batsman tweeted in Afrikaans: “I support BLM, I’m against murder, I’m against all murders: physical, character and cultural murders. I support equal opportunities for all. Just because I support BLM does not mean I support violence or Marxism, so I refuse to be labelled by people.”

Racial tensions have been laid bare in South African cricket over the last 48 hours with 31 former Black players and five current Black coaches sending a letter to Cricket South Africa urging them to support the Black Lives Matter movement and confront racial divides in the game, while the president of the players’ association, Omphile Ramela, sent a letter to the sports minister asking him to throw the lawbook at the organisation for their lack of transformation.

Cricket South Africa, through their acting CEO Jacques Faul, have already issued a statement saying they stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Former franchise players have provided a window into their experiences of racial discrimination as well, with their overwhelming narrative being that systemic racism upholds and perpetuates all the past wrongs.

The Titans, perhaps because they have been the most successful franchise, but more probably because Faul and Proteas coach Mark Boucher come from there, have attracted the most attention. Ethy Mbhalati, the leading wicket-taker in Titans history whose career ended in 2015 due to his involvement with matchfixing, said “there is institutionalised racism at Northerns” and “unfortunately when you questioned things, the system kicked you out and we were scared to lose our jobs”.

But Tebogo Siko, the current president of the Northerns Cricket Union and Titans cricket, has been involved in the administration of the franchise for many years.

“I can tell you that the Northerns Board is 70% Black and if the structures were blocking change then I don’t think that would have happened. Of course we are never in a position to say the status quo must stay the same, but the Titans seem to be being attacked left, right and centre based on our achievements. Which include having a Black coach [Mandla Mashimbyi] and assistant coach [Geoff Toyana],” Siko told The Citizen on Wednesday afternoon.

Siko also issued a statement on Wednesday responding directly to Mbhalati’s claims: “We’ve recently come to learn of the experiences of racial discrimination, cultural bias and remuneration bias Mr Mbhalati was faced with. There was never a formal complaint laid by Mr Mbhalati and this makes it difficult for us to deal with such a matter. We can also go on record and say Mr Mbhalati was among the top earners at the franchise towards the end of his career.

“The history of South Africa is a very dark one and we are well aware that remnants of our past live on 26 years later. It is clear that in our society people still battle with the difficulties from pre-1994 and some of these difficulties are experienced even within the game we love. As citizens of South Africa, we understand what we have been through and as a union and franchise we acknowledge that past and where we are currently. With this having been said, it is important that we make it clear that we do not tolerate racism and discrimination of any sort at franchise level, provincial, or anywhere within our pipeline.

“We have never had any complaints of racism in the past or in the present. Players and staff are aware of the processes they need to go through to lay a complaint. Our board has a Transformation and Ethics Committee, which is responsible for dealing with such matters should they arise,” Siko said.

Typical of the nation-building, reconciling force for unity he has always been, former Proteas batting star Hashim Amla made a rare foray on to social media in order to back Lungi Ngidi’s call to support BLM and also state that he stands with all those who are oppressed.

“The Black Lives Matter campaign has relevance for everyone. The person who believes the imagined superiority of Whites over Blacks or Blacks over Whites, or one nationality over another, is simply delusional. Many of us, including myself, have borne the brunt of these delusions and have crazy stories to tell, which is why it makes it even more admirable to see exceptional youngsters like Lungi Ngidi doing his bit to represent us all.

“The end product of being racist is only self-destruction.There are oppressed people here in this country and the world over, of all colours and walks of life, cricket included. However the darker-skinned people have had the worst of it. I stand with all those who are oppressed. And I stand with Lungi Ngidi,” Amla said.

South Africa’s movement towards becoming a complete team ahead of next year’s World Cup was halted in Pretoria on Saturday, with atrocious conditions throwing up an unexpected stumbling block which saw their pack exposed by Argentina.

In the end, the Springboks scraped home 13-6 in their opening Rugby Championship fixture, but they spent the final minutes desperately defending their line as Argentina went after a late goal to level the scores.

Torrential rain and hail began falling during the anthems and kept up for the first half. Although conditions eased after the break, there was still steady rain throughout and the pitch was sodden. So there was no chance of the expansive style of play the Springboks are trying to develop, and they even struggled to get their more typical forward-dominated driving game going as the Pumas pack presented a brick wall of defiance.

Springbok captain Jean de Villiers, who has grown up in Cape Town, where winter storms blowing up from the Antarctic are common, described the conditions as “probably the worst I have ever played in”.

“The ball was so wet and so difficult to handle, you couldn’t play at all,” he said, before describing a comical situation in which Pumas flyhalf Nicolas Sanchez tried to kick off, but the ball refused to bounce up off the waterlogged surface.

“The All Blacks kick more and we now run the ball more, we wanted to play exciting rugby today, but we have to be able to play this sort of game as well. There will be more games like this, especially at the World Cup, and I’m not totally happy that we didn’t get a better platform up front,” coach Heyneke Meyer said.

“But even an arm-wrestle was difficult in these conditions, it was so wet that you just couldn’t get going. The rain made it a 50/50 game and 70% of Argentina’s team play in Europe and are more used to conditions like that. They have big, strong forwards and they like a slower game, because their tactics are more about contesting for the ball than continuity.”

The Pumas, despite their epic performance, were sad after the game because they saw it as a missed opportunity to register their first ever win over South Africa.

“We have had very few opportunities to win against the Springboks and we think that was one that we let pass. South Africa have a very good line-up and it’s maybe only today that they did not have their top game. So we are not happy, today was an opportunity to beat them,” Argentina coach Daniel Hourcade said.

The Pumas successfully dominated the Springboks in both the scrums and lineouts to deny them any solid first-phase ball, but referee John Lacey often penalised them at the scrums to give the under-pressure home side a reprieve.

“We complicated their lineout and we’ve worked very hard on our scrum and I think you could see that on the pitch. We consider that we were very good at the scrums, but we were penalised,” captain Agustin Creevy said with more than a hint of frustration.

The late withdrawal of Willem Alberts with a hamstring strain was part of the Springboks’ problems as it meant they were forced to play two openside flanks with Marcell Coetzee coming in for the enforcer in the Springbok pack. The wet ball also meant they focused their lineout throws on the front, where Argentina contested superbly.

Man of the match Francois Louw, the Springbok number six, admitted that his team could have adapted better to the conditions.

“We didn’t execute as well as we should have in the scrums and lineouts. It was a bit loose underfoot for the scrums and lineouts are always difficult in those conditions because you simplify your options and that gives them the chance to effectively compete.

“Those conditions require an immediate mindshift, you’ve got to tighten up and kick more, and our execution of that could have been sharper. We want to continue improving towards the World Cup so that we are on top of our game every time, in any place,” Louw said.