A groundsman at Bloemfontein College, where Hansie Cronje once studied, was the first to witness what has been described as a ‘near miraculous” event. This is the first of several similar events that witnesses say are certain proof that the late Cronje is desperately trying to ‘make contact from the other side”.
After the hopeless display by the South African at the Cricket World Cup tournament earlier this year, the witnesses believe that Cronje has something urgent to convey to the national side.
Some say the former South African cricket captain has actually made a transition from spiritual to temporary earthly life but is only revealing himself to those whom he can trust.
The first glimpse of a transitioning Cronje came late last Wednesday. The Bloemfontein College cricket field groundsman, Thys Bester, was working late in his personal hothouse on the edge of the number one field — now renamed the Cronje Memorial Pitch. Bester said he heard strange ‘echoing” noises outside his hothouse. Emerging, he located what he described as ‘ethereal sounds” coming from somewhere in the middle of the darkened field.
Bester said he felt nervous as he found himself walking towards the centre. ‘I felt something was mentally pushing me towards the pitch.”
Bester was stopped in his tracks when a strange ‘shimmering sort of blue light seemed to sort of rise up out of the wicket”. Bester said he stood, paralysed with fear, but also with a feeling of growing wonder.
‘Then it came,” said Bester. ‘In the blue light I could see the faint shapes of cricket players, crouching down. And there were stumps and a facing batsman and all. Even an umpire. Then it happened.”
As he described what he had seen, Bester’s face filled with a childlike wonder. ‘A bowler came sort of floating as he ran and with a noise of wind, like it sometimes rushes in the trees just before a storm. And when the shape of a bowler got close he sort of raised up in slow motion and bowled a ball and there was a sort of ghostly clapping and cheering from all around me.”
Tears had moistened Bester’s cheeks. ‘It was Hansie,” he breathed. ‘I am completely sure. I can recognise that slow ball of his anywhere.”
Bester’s description was dismissed as ‘probably an hallucination” by Maisonette Nortje, one of the assistant sports psychologists at the pre-World Cup Drakensberg motivational camp held for the Proteas team.
She said that such ’emotion-based” visions were quite common as part of an extended working out of grief impulses in those who had known and admired a departed hero.
The principal of Bloemfontein College, Dr James Viviers-Badenhorst, also dismissed Bester’s visions as being ‘probably a result of too much late night work in the hothouse”. He recalled that on a previous occasion Bester had reported that a strange luminous green yeast had started to grow on the memorial plaque to Cronje, which Bester believed was Cronje trying to communicate ‘from the other side”.
‘When we investigated it turned out the green yeast on the plaque was nothing supernatural,” said Viviers-Badenhorst. ‘It wasn’t at all suspicious but came from certain Bloemfontein-based Protea team members rubbing their green uniforms on the plaque for luck before big matches.”
The incident at the college cricket ground could be dismissed as a hallucination but for disturbingly similar recent incidents at other places the late Cronje had been known to frequent and visit. Most extraordinary of these was the slopes of the Outeniqua mountains where the aircraft crashed and the ex-Proteas captain lost his life.
A couple of George Technikon students out for a night under the stars also spoke of a strange blue light moving slowly down the hill about 100m from where they were lying on their sleeping bags admiring the Western Cape universe. They described the blue light as quite bright and also spoke of a ‘rushing wind noise” but had no feeling of wind around them. Asked whether they had seen any ghostly cricketers they shook their heads.
A police spokesperson, Superintendent Amandelle Bothma, dismissed the story as ‘something dreamed up” by the students. She said that a police car had run out of petrol while pursuing a bakkie containing suspected dagga smugglers and had been free-wheeling down the hill with its blue light flashing. The road passed quite near where the students were camping out.
Strangest of all was something that occurred at a private annual supper attended by 11 of Cronje’s former teammates and coaches. This group of the most dedicated reborn Christians, or ‘Hansie’s Happies” as they have become known, gathers once a year to celebrate the memory of their fallen cricketing prophet. Devotionally guided by ex-cricketing stars Allan Donald and Jonty Rhodes, the group believes that at the King commission hearings Cronje underwent a passion almost identical to that of Jesus Christ. ‘Hansie also wept,” said Donald.
Each year the 11 gather in a local Spur steakhouse where they pose themselves on either side of a giant cardboard cut-out of Cronje hitting a six. The cut-out was one of those used across the country in service stations in a Castle Lager advertising campaign. From behind the cut-out of Cronje a recorded voice, believed to be very similar to that of the late cricketer, asks each former teammate in turn who betrayed him to the Sunday Times. Each of the former teammates is then given a chance to again deny having done so. A the end of the devotional supper the ex-teammates pray together, sing hymns and pledge themselves to keeping the Cronje legend alive.
It is believed that at this year’s supper the cardboard cut-out of Cronje glowed with a strange blue light as the recorded voice asked its questions. A witnessing waitron, Merle Dutton, said that she heard a rushing wind noise at the same time, which she said ‘made her feel strange and cold”.
Rumours say that the same blue light accompanied by loud wind noises was seen in the Wanderers cricket ground dressing room during the lunch interval at a recent friendly match between the Proteas and the touring German team.
Reports, unconfirmed at the time of going to press, say that the Cronje memorial plaque at the college has split in two. The groundsman could not be contacted for comment as he is on sick leave. His hothouse has been demolished on the instructions of the school board.