Bridge the divide in SA sport

For years, it seems, we have been fed a lie by South African cricket – that the Protea team was a microcosm of the wondrous, united “Rainbow Nation”.

It was heartbreaking to hear the truth yesterday, as Makhaya Ntini, the former South African fast bowler, describe how he felt lonely and isolated in a team of white players. He recalled sitting on his own at breakfast because his team-mates – the very ones who celebrated for the cameras when he took wickets – wouldn’t sit with him.

He even started running between stadiums and hotels because he felt shunned by his white colleagues, who avoided sitting near him on the team bus. That’s the pain behind the façade – and the sort of suffering which, hopefully, will start to be assuaged somewhat by today’s dramatic “taking of the knee” by white players at the Solidarity Cup tournament, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

White players, including former captain Faf du Plessis, Dwaine Pretorius, Rassie van der Dussen and Anrich Nortje, will join black players in the symbolic gesture. Cricket SA’s director of cricket, former Proteas captain Graeme Smith, has said he will join in. Smith said that when it comes to the principle of black lives mattering, then there is “no room for neutrality”.

The stand taken by the players – most of them from the younger, upcoming generation – will not be welcomed by some whites and cricket supporters, who will see it as an attack on them and their race. That is not what it is about.

Today, on the field, the players are saying – and we should be saying, too – that this country was built on racial inequality and the oppression of black people. We all have to acknowledge that if we are to bridge the divide between us.

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