Ken Borland

The Proteas are back in Australia, but this time they will be in white clothing as they prepare for their crucial three-Test series, their shock exit from the T20 World Cup a month ago in Adelaide put behind them, according to interim head coach Malibongwe Maketa.

Seven of the crestfallen T20 squad are also in the Test group, including players such as Temba Bavuma and Kagiso Rabada, who had poor World Cups, and a player like Marco Jansen who did not get to play a game.

“It’s a totally different format and we made sure the T20 players had a longer break both mentally and physically,” Maketa said in Brisbane on Tuesday.

“The players who were here during the World Cup have been able to contribute in terms of conditions and I have challenged them to bring energy to the team.

“In terms of their mental space, the turnaround has happened sooner than expected, so that is really positive. And some guys are coming off good performances at home.

“We have one warm-up game and it’s important for us, we will get all the batsmen to have a chance and monitor our bowlers. It’s crucial for us to get exposed to the pitches,” Maketa said.

The Proteas have already been tested with questions about the acrimonious previous Test series between the two teams – the Sandpapergate Tests of 2017/18 – with the Australian media hoping someone will put their foot in their mouth, but the South Africans have so far brushed off the controversy as something in the past.

“It’s most definitely not an issue for this group. There were only a handful of us involved and it changed people’s careers because it was an unfortunate incident. But that was way back then,” Maketa said.

The 42-year-old, seasoned coach also seems to have been wearing his drill sergeant cap since the Proteas arrived in Australia.

“It’s important as a coach to remember that the only way I can affect the game is through preparation. I know some of the guys are not liking me at the moment because I have put them through some really hard sessions.

“But when the Test starts, I hand over to Dean Elgar and the players. Then it’s about how we support them as coaching staff, constantly thinking how we can turn things around or stay ahead in the game.

“We give that info to the players and it’s down to them. We must never get in the way of the players, we have to trust the work we’ve done and ensure the environment is conducive for them to perform,” Maketa said.

Eduard Coetzee admits that, during his playing days, he moved to France for nine years because he did not believe, as a White player, that he had a future in South African rugby. Now, as CEO of the Sharks, he is spearheading one of the most ambitious and successful beacons of transformation and inclusive culture in the game.

The former Sharks and SA A prop left Durban in 2005 and played for Bayonnais and Biarritz, before returning to Durban in 2012 and working in the financial sector. He was appointed as the Sharks’ commercial and marketing manager in 2014, chief operations officer in 2015 and became CEO in July 2019.

Coetzee’s business savvy – he has a doctorate in Inclusive Business Model Innovation – and vision certainly played a part in one of the biggest investments ever in South African sport when the MVM consortium became private equity partners of the Sharks.

But the Sharks don’t just have plenty of financial capital; there is also the sense that they have tremendous moral capital in the bank because of the nation-building project that is going so well at Kings Park.

“When we discussed transformation back in the day, all the heads – Black and White – used to drop in the team room,” Coetzee recalls. “It was seen as a punitive thing.

“Whites would feel they had no future in the game and agents played a big hand in that. I was in France for nine years because I believed I had no future here.

“But transformation, in terms of gender, race and mindsets, is a business priority. A lot has changed and ‘I See Colour’ is the cornerstone of our culture. I’m White, you’re Black and that’s cool. We can’t act as if colour doesn’t exist.

“It’s not about apologising for who I am but about being sympathetic to other people. And I had an upbringing that paralleled Steve Hofmeyr’s – Affies, Tuks, the Bulls,” Coetzee points out.

The 42-year-old knows, of course, that on-field success is what the Sharks will ultimately be measured on, however, and even there, ambitions are high.

“We have ambitions of being global competitors. We want to win the Heineken Champions Cup. Previously we were just trying to survive as South African franchises, we would build players up and then lose them.

“But we weren’t an unsuccessful franchise, we were happy enough. But MVM have brought an attitude of we want to try to be the best. They are thinking big.

“We want to invest in people and uplift the community. It’s not about turfing out our history but amplifying it and the global reach of what they believe is an undervalued team,” Coetzee says.

One of the notable gifts of the married father of three sons is the ability to see the potential in others.

“There are guys here who really come from nothing and when you discuss their previous life with them, you realise what that actually means.

“And then you throw them into a situation with lots of money and pressure and no support. That’s where our life coaching and educational development programmes come in.

“I’m still studying and I tell the players that if I have time to do it, then so do you. We have created a structure that gives them enough time to study, with the help of tutors.

“If they do want to go into business, we help them with seed capital through our business development office and our investors draw people of influence into the Sharks environment,” Coetzee points out.

Next time you’re in Durban, pop into the coffee shop at Kings Park, which is run by players, or the local chicken shop which the Sharks have invested in and which has 10 franchises in KZN and five others in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

It is all part of the Sharks’ policy of treating their players unbelievably well … and thereby getting the best out of them on the field and hopefully keeping them in Durban.

It was an interesting day for CEOs of Cricket South Africa both past and present on Tuesday as the fired Thabang Moroe saw his plot to return to office delayed in the Labour Court and the acting incumbent Kugandrie Govender suffered the embarrassment of the organisation backtracking on her statement that White consultants would no longer be used unless there were exceptional circumstances.

Moroe approached the Labour Court on Tuesday to have his dismissal set aside because he believes the disciplinary process was unlawful, but he first of all had to convince the court that his application was urgent. CSA’s lawyers argued that the matter was not urgent and the court reserved judgement as to whether the matter should be held urgently or not. The court is expected to make its decision during the week.

Govender stated last week in a text message to Sport24 that following a meeting with the minister of sport Nathi Mthethwa, CSA “are now required to enforce Black consultants only until such time as the numbers are moving in the right direction and we can then revise this. It’s an internal measure to enforce that the change that should have happened organically over the years but didn’t, does actually now happen”.

The announcement created a storm of protest, with civil rights lobby group AfriForum threatening legal action against CSA and the Institute for Race Relations writing to the International Cricket Council to report the organisation for failing to respect the governing body’s constitution in terms of racial discrimination and political interference.

CSA issued a statement on Tuesday saying they were saddened by the media reports around their use of consultants. They called the stories “factually incorrect” even though they were quoting their own CEO verbatim.

“CSA has not taken and will not take a decision to work exclusively with Black consultants. The media reports around the statements made by our Acting Chief Executive are not a correct reflection of the sentiment that CSA had sought to convey. CSA therefore reiterates that it does not have a policy of excluding any racial grouping.

“As part of our corporate business model, CSA has adopted and subscribes to the country’s BBBEE Act and Affirmative Action policy. This means CSA has a moral and legal obligation to implement these two prescripts, while still embracing the need for all South Africans to live their cricketing dreams regardless of background, culture or ethnicity, and this includes the services that we procure from external service providers,” their statement said.

CSA went on to say transformation is a pillar for the organisation.

“It is, therefore, imperative that we constantly remind ourselves of its [transformation] importance in the way in which we conduct our business. As a democratic and non-racial institution, CSA is well aware of the need to provide equality and quality of opportunity to all and we do also emphasise that this has to be seen in the context of our unhappy history that for more than a century deprived the majority of our population from living their cricket dreams both on the field of play and in many other areas.”

The change of stance by CSA will now obviously attract the attention of Minister Mthethwa, who has been critical of the number of White faces in prominent positions at CSA. It is believed using exclusively Black consultants unless there are none available at the level required in order to keep the Proteas at the top end of the world rankings is exactly what CSA promised Mthethwa at their meeting last week.

It is also a loss of face for Govender, whose meteoric rise at CSA saw her appointed acting CEO on August 19 after Jacques Faul stepped down.

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.”