Where do we draw the line between opinion and racism when it comes to reporting?
Peter Robinson
Sooner or later, I suppose, it had to happen. Minister of Sport and Recreation Ngconde Balfour turned his mind away this week from trying to pick the South African cricket and rugby teams to denounce three South African sportswriters as “racist”.
Two of the three write about cricket, the third, Pieter Kruger of Business Day, is a rugby writer. Kruger’s sin, it seems, was to suggest that Conrad Jantjes wasn’t ready for international rugby. Balfour quotes Kruger as writing: “Conrad Jantjes is not ready yet, you can’t throw him in the deep end, he is not ready yet.”
As it happened, Kruger has been proved wrong, but I suppose I’d better stick up my hand as well. I, too, thought that Jantjes wasn’t ready. Worse, a couple of years ago I thought Breyton Paulse wasn’t big enough for international rugby. I’ve changed my mind since even before Paulse starting tossing Nathan Grey all over the place but I also think that Braam van Straaten is too slow at inside centre to get the backline moving quickly. I’d also like to see Butch James play with Craig Davidson on his inside and Trevor Halsted outside him.
Which means, I know, that I’m preju-diced. I’d have far more Sharks players in the Springbok side than is presently the case. It also means, though, that I probably hold different opinions from both Balfour and Harry Viljoen.
And this is the point. Sport breeds a variety of opinions and the best and worst of them are not necessarily the preserve of the minister of sport nor of people who write about sport. I have no particular wish to defend either Colin Bryden or Mark Smit, the two cricket writers named by Balfour, but at the same time it has to be accepted by all concerned that if a sport such as cricket believes it necessary to have an element of race underpinning some of its policies, then it should be willing to accept debate and discussion and disagreement with these policies.
In essence we’re talking about team selection here, both on a national and a provincial level. At national level, even though the United Cricket Board (UCB) is often slightly hazy about this, the policy is to pick the best team available, provided it is not all white. This has neither caused the national side to spiral into failure nor has it proved particularly difficult to implement.
On the downside, Adam Bacher lost his place in the Test team against the West Indies in order to make space for Herschelle Gibbs, but on the upside there are now half-a-dozen or so “players of colour” on the fringes. And when Mfuneko Ngam made his Test debut last season, the only question was what pace he could achieve.
At provincial level, unions will be required to field three “players of colour” this season.
For some provinces, particularly on or around the Cape coast, this should be a doddle, for others it will be more difficult. Already it has prompted a couple of moves Shafiek Abrahams from EP to Northerns Titans (watch this one as the best value-for-money buy of the season) and Mark Bruyns from KwaZulu-Natal to Border.
And yet this one-size-fits-all policy needs to be revisited, if only to ensure that a team like Western Province isn’t handicapped by having six or seven players called up by the South African Test or A teams and then having to still abide by the quota.
If a province regularly fields a team which comfortably exceeds the quota requirements, then surely it has proved its credentials.
At the same time, though, this year’s UCB presidential election cast a different shadow over things at administrative level. After Dr Mtutulezi Nyoka had waged a sadly misjudged campaign to oust Percy Sonn, he said, in effect, that South African cricket would have to wait for its first African president. The emphasis on African was Nyoka’s.
And it raises the question of whether and how much colour should be a consideration. Surely the point should be to elect the person best capable of serving South African cricket; and with that, the best bowlers and batsmen and fielders to represent the country; and again, the selectors best equipped to choose the national and provincial teams.
We may all have different opinions on who these people should be, but then again, that’s our prerogative. And we ought to be able to hold these opinions without the minister of sport jumping up and down and shouting “racist”.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa