Anton Harber: Crossfire
George Lai Thom was South African open and welterweight judo champion in 1965. The Sunday Times wrote that “Mr Thom is said to have done more to further judo in the republic than any other man.” He had won a title every year since 1962 and, at 24, was described as the only amateur judoka in the country to have been awarded a black belt as a second dan in Japan.
To enter the following year, Thom had to qualify at the Transvaal amateur championships at the Roodepoort Town Hall. When he arrived on the day of the contest, Thom recalls, he immediately felt a tension in the dressing room.
“I knew something was going on. And then one of the officials asked if I was Japanese or Chinese. I refused to answer his question, but I knew then that something was wrong.”
Clearly the officials knew too. Because a while later one of the white contestants refused to fight his designated opponent because he was of Chinese descent.
The referee and the judges, it was reported, quickly conferred and – with a logic that could only hold in a truly sick society – awarded the match to the man who refused to fight it.
When the unnamed “loser” left the competition, he was joined by Tam, another Chinese fighter; Thom, who is of Japanese descent; and “a number of white supporters”, according to reports at the time.
The organisers explained later that they had a true apartheid “dilemma”: the man who refused to fight had said that he would lay a complaint with the police if his opponent was not disqualified, and they would have stopped the entire tournament. They did it for the sake of the sport and the tournament.
A determined Thom tried once again to qualify for the national championships. It so happened that the contest in another division – two weight categories above his – had to be restaged in a gym where he happened to be training two weeks later. Thom asked to enter and was allowed to. He promptly won the division, qualified for the championships and presented the organisers with another headache. A few days later they telephoned him to say that he still could not compete.
The story is replete with all the ironies of apartheid South Africa. It was not as if the sport had even been integrated – black judo fighters took part in an entirely separate competition.
Thom’s closest friend and training partner, for example, was black and had never been able to see his friend compete, because of the country’s race restrictions. In fact, he had tried to attend and watch the Roodepoort tournament for the sake of his friend. Not compete, just watch. He was barred from entry and took up a position at a window outside to try and sneak a glimpse of his friend fighting.
A major newspaper reported that the “future of judo” was under threat because “three competitors walked out” – not because a racist had won a free passage through the first round of the tournament by refusing to fight. Thom left South Africa shortly after that. He also had a white girlfriend and they were being harassed.
They settled in Canada, where he took up judo again but could not compete in that country’s championships for a number of years, and his competitive career effectively ended.
I first met Thom and his wife when they were fierce anti-apartheid activists in Vancouver in the late 1980s. They were passionate about South Africa, but Thom hid his personal hurt and pain.
Thom did a spell as head of physical education at the African National Congress’s Solomon Mahlangu College in Tanzania. Taking pride of place among his cuttings and pictures of the 1964 racial incident and his departure from the country are the pictures of his judo and karate classes in Tanzania.
Thom is back now and working as a conflict mediator in Johannesburg. In the spirit of the times, and in keeping with his gentle, self-deprecating dignity, he wants to use what he learned to take his sport to the townships. He is eager to get back into the sport that turned its back on him and drove him away 33 years ago.
Thom told me his story on the day South Africa named a black person in their cricket squad for the first time.
As I write it, there is a call from the National Sports Council and a parliamentary committee for action to force the speedier breakdown of racial barriers in sport.
And Louis Luyt – the epitome of those quick to forget their own dirty past and strike moral poses against the new order – fights in court against government attempts to investigate his haven of the old racial order, the national rugby administration.
Thom’s is just one story among myriad of those forgotten from that period. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear from the other athletes, those who stayed and those who walked out with him, from the judges, from the man who refused to fight against a Chinese opponent, and piece together the human drama of that single episode of the apartheid drama?
It makes me wonder why Desmond Tutu has not included sports administrators in his search for truth and reconciliation. Certainly, there are some harsh truths to be told about the damage they did to countless individuals such as Thom.
Maybe this is why sport has become such a half-baked source of reconciliation – why we can all rally behind the rugby team only to find that they still tolerate the old flag, or still talk behind closed doors in the racist language of the past. Maybe it’s because nobody has cleaned out the dirt in the cupboard before they hung the new clothes up in it.