David Beresford
ANOTHER COUNTRY
In a country like South Africa where there seems at times to be an unhealthy subscription to fundamentalist belief it comes as something of a relief to hear laughter directed at Hansie Cronje for his evocation of Satan as the real culprit in the match-fixing scandal.
At the same time one cannot help but question the source and nature of the derision.
Take another quaint notion: Lance Klusener, I have been assured, carries a teddy bear in his personal kit bag. Whether he does so for reasons of luck, or out of long-term affection, it involves a notion that is quaint – either superstition about the efficacy of good luck charms, or the assumption that Teddy appreciates being dragged along to cricket matches.
But, although it might precipitate some horseplay in the locker room, the disclosure of a continued affection for Teddy would not, I suspect, be the subject of the sort of reaction which met Cronje’s fingering of Satan.
In fact I was personally so impressed by the idea of “tough guy” Klusener having a teddy bear – and expressed myself as such on so many occasions – that Ellen went out and bought me one, I suspect to shut me up. He sits there on a chair next to my bed with that sort of sprawled and glassy look which teddies routinely adopt – no doubt a defence mechanism in anticipation that their owners are about to approach them in search of understanding.
But, to return to Hansie & Co: if Klusener were to be accused of match-fixing (and I hurry to say this is entirely hypothetical, the man being the very image of probity) and he were to mount the tearful defence that “Teddy did it”, the derision would no doubt match that which greeted Cronje’s j’ accuse.
In both cases the laughter is born of scorn for the weakness of the defence. We snort and jeer from the public gallery: “That one won’t fly.” In fact so inappropriate a defence is it to blame the disgrace of our national cricket team on Satan that one cannot help but wonder how the confession – seemingly made by a congregant to his pastor – should have reached Judge Edwin “Sharkie” King’s commission of inquiry in the first place.
The episode points to the fact that there are varying levels of inquiry, just as there are varying levels of defence, in dealing with allegations of wrong- doing. In Hansie’s case one can perhaps postulate four.
The first is at the level of the bar of public opinion where judgement is immediate and impassioned (the Mail & Guardian’s famous “F*** you Hansie” poster, intellectually stimulating though it was, possibly fits into this category).
The second is such as Judge Sharkie’s inquiry, designed to oversee the good order of the game (the resort to a judge suggesting that the conduct of cricket is of such importance as to involve the national interest). The third level is the courts – designed to ensure public order, rather than order in the game of cricket – before which Cronje will presumably be hauled if his conduct is considered to have been criminal.
But while judgement by the self- contained hierarchy of the courts will offer a semblance of finality it will be no more certain than the umpire’s finger – the judge’s more wordy decision also being founded in the theatrical perspective that “the show must go on”.
The nature, location and staffing of the fourth and final level of judgement is something of a mystery, to me at least.
Cronje’s apparent belief, as to the duality of good and evil as personified by God and Satan, strikes me as a conceptual simplification such as a teacher would use in nursery school. “If you have two oranges and add another two oranges how many oranges are there in the basket?” invites an answer, but does nothing by way of giving an understanding as to the nature of the assembled oranges. Even if one cobbles together a Doctrine of the Sacred Singularity from the “Big Bang” theory it raises problems regarding the derivation of authority.
Maybe the old lady had it right.
The old lady in question was an Auschwitz survivor who ambushed me by way of television at the weekend, in a documentary on the death camps.
At one stage she described an incident in which she saw two children fall off the back of a travelling truck. A man got out of the cab, walked back to the children and, picking them up one by one by the legs, smashed their heads against the side of the truck before tossing them inside.
“It was then that I stopped talking to God,” she said.
It was a summary judgement of which, by then, I heartily approved both by way of immediate sentiment and recognition of the need, in the name of good order, to bring those personally involved to account. If God exists then of course he must be put to trial no matter what technicalities are raised with regard to the mustering of a jury of his peers.
But while I was still marvelling at her stand for justice, it was announced on the TV that the old lady had resumed her conversations with the almighty.
In the absence of any reasons for this decision, or anything further emerging from her confabulations I can only speculate she had been persuaded to view that at this level, too, the over-riding consideration is that the show must go on.