Bruce Murray
Crossfire
Last week’s article, “D’Oliviera affair’s shameful secrets”, got only half the story, as it took no account of the new documents now available in South Africa. These include Cabinet minutes unearthed for the truth commission.
Two questions had remained unanswered: would the government have accepted Basil d’Oliviera as part of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)team had he been selected in the first instance; and, if not, was this made known to the MCC and did it influence the decision not to include him?
The Cabinet minutes now make it possible to answer the first question. At its meeting on August 27 1968, the day the MCC selectors decided on the tour team, the Cabinet resolved: “MCC kriekettoer (cricket tour)1968/9. As D’Oliviera gekies word, is die toer af (If D’Oliviera is chosen, the tour is off).”
The decision represented a defeat for John Vorster’s attempt to “liberalise” South Africa’s sporting policy. When he took over as prime minister in September 1966, Vorster attempted to arrest South Africa’s slide towards international isolation through his “outwards policy” and to stave off sporting isolation by relaxing apartheid restrictions on visiting teams. In the face of fierce opposition from the ultra-conservatives, or verkramptes, he thrashed out a new policy designed to avoid a repetition of the cancellation of the 1967 All Black tour.
On April 11 1967, Vorster announced his new sports policy to the House of Assembly. He insisted that no mixed sport would be permitted between South Africans in South Africa, but interstate matches were in a different category. Mixed-race teams would be allowed to tour South Africa, on the conditions that this did not impair relations with other countries, was not exploited for political purposes and did not disturb relations between the people of South Africa.
At the time, Vorster’s speech was perceived as clearing the way for D’Oliviera to tour South Africa. The general sense was summed up by Sir John Nicholls, the British ambassador to South Africa, who reported to the Foreign Office that although Vorster “did not say so specifically, it is a reasonable assumption from what he said … that Mr Basil d’Oliviera may come here as a member of an MCC team”.
However, as commentators later realised, Vorster’s statement was “cloudy and cryptic”, and his last proviso related directly to D’Oliviera.
Thereafter the government refused to be drawn on the issue. It was only on August 27 1968 that the Cabinet formally decided not to admit an MCC team with D’Oliviera in it. Vorster’s strategy until then was to avoid staking out a position. The Sunday Times commented: “The prime minister was taking a gamble, in the hope that the whole thing would sort itself out with the omission of D’Oliviera.”
For a while it seemed the gamble would pay off. It was the unexpected return of D’Oliviera to the England team for the final Ashes Test in August that obliged the Cabinet to make the definite decision that there would be no tour if D’Oliviera were included.
But Vorster had earlier reached the conclusion that it would be politically impossible to allow an MCC tour with D’Oliviera in it. This was communicated to Lord Cobham, a former MCC President, when the two discussed the issue in March.
Vorster was struggling in 1968 to assert his ascendancy over the verkramptes. To allow D’Oliviera into the country would simply galvanise verkrampte opposition to him.
If the first test of Vorster’s new sports policy had been a handful of Maori rugby players, he might have stood his ground. But for a South African-born coloured to be the first beneficiary of the new policy was more than the Nationalists, not only the verkramptes, could tolerate.
The attitude of the National Party rank-and-file was made evident at the party’s provincial congresses in August and September. At the Transvaal congress Louwrens Muller, the new minister of police, interrupted his speech to announce that D’Oliviera had not been selected by the MCC. He was cheered loudly. When Vorster informed the Free State congress that he would not accept D’Oliviera’s inclusion, the applause was deafening.
The fact was that Vorster’s first attempt at “liberalisation” had failed. It was a failure that helped ensure South Africa’s cricketing isolation.
What enabled Vorster to disguise his retreat was the MCC’s mishandling of D’Oliviera’s selection. It allowed Vorster to claim that the MCC had bowed to political pressure by belatedly including D’Oliviera, and to suggest that intervention by South Africa’s “political enemies” had forced his hand. Vorster even went so far as to lie to the British ambassador, assuring Nicholls that had D’Oliviera been included in the first place, the tour would have gone ahead.
Nicholls cabled the Commonwealth Office on September 17: “Prime minister raised the subject with me yesterday, before he knew of the MCC’s decision. He said that, had D’Oliviera been chosen in the first place … he would have accepted it… But the mounting agitation in the United Kingdom had unfortunately made this into a political issue.”
By not selecting D’Oliviera in the first instance, the MCC had let Vorster off a major hook.
In January 1968, the MCC had, in fact, written to the South African Cricket Association (Saca) requesting assurances that no conditions would be laid down regarding their choice of players. Saca formed a subcommittee of Saca president ER Hammond, vice-president Jack Cheetham and Arthur Coy to “deal with the matter on a confidential basis” -nothing was committed to writing, no formal answer was sent to the MCC and no reports to the board were minuted.
But the MCC committee decided in March to proceed with the tour arrangements “on the assumption that the selected team would be accepted by the South African government”. This it did on the advice of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the former Conservative prime minister and former president of the MCC, who had spoken to Vorster and Saca officials during his visit to South Africa in February.
The decision to proceed on the assumption that the MCC’s selection would be accepted by the South African government was never reconsidered, even though evidence to the contrary filtered in. No sooner had the committee accepted Douglas-Home’s advice, than Lord Cobham informed MCC secretary Billy Griffith that his discussion with Vorster indicated that a team with D’Oliviera in it would be unacceptable. This was conveyed to MCC president Arthur Gilligan and treasurer Gubby Allen but evidently not to the full MCC committee.
In July Coy visited England, and while he made no “formal representations” to the MCC, “he expressed the view privately that D’Oliviera’s selection would endanger the tour”. When Vorster announced his ban on D’Oliviera, Hammond said: “We understood the position for some time, and have done everything possible to obviate any misunderstanding.” The implication was that the MCC had been appraised of Vorster’s attitude.
Supposedly, except for Gilligan and Allen, the selection committee was kept hermetically sealed from the warnings of Lord Cobham and Coy.
The selectors’ attempt to justify the initial omission of D’Oliviera on purely cricketing grounds was derided by many. The real complaint was that the committee and selectors did indeed think in purely cricketing terms, that their vision did not extend beyond the boundary.
D’Oliviera’s inclusion would have represented the first test of Vorster’s new sports policy. By omitting him, the MCC evaded the test. We now know for certain Vorster would have failed the test.
Bruce Murray is professor of history at Wits. His most recent book is Wits: The “Open” Years