South Africa has had its fair share of controversial white sportsmen. Ali Bacher (rebel tours), Hansie Cronje (match fixing) and Andre Markgraaf (the k-word), come to mind.
Bacher and Markgraaf have repented. Cronje has moved on to higher places. But in my book, Gary Player — “I am a South African of Verwoerd and apartheid” (Grand Slam Golf, 1966) tops the list. Publicly unrepentant, Player now blossoms in a democracy that he once did all he could to thwart — symbolised by his making the top 10 of the SABC’s discredited list of Great South Africans.
There has been an outcry but surprisingly, there was less when our government honoured him with the Order of Ikhamanga in 2003.
My letter to the Sunday Times then, reminding readers of Player’s pro-apartheid activities and condemning the decision to award him the Order, did not escape his attention. Three days after the publication of the letter I was playing golf at the Royal Port Alfred course when my phone rang and, lo and behold, it was the man himself. “Gary Player?” I asked aloud. My playing partners look at me in stunned silence, wondering how a lousy golfer like me knew Player!
“I can’t speak to you now because I’m playing golf,” I had to say. “Oh,” he replied, “and how are you playing?”
“Pretty badly,” and he offered some advice. “Remember to keep your head still and don’t forget the follow through.” It didn’t help.
He called promptly at 5.30pm, as arranged, and we chatted for one and a half hours.
I recounted his pro-apartheid work and his silence when Papwa Sewgolum received his prize in the rain when he won the Natal Open. I told him about how, as a fanatical cricketer in my youth, I had my political awakening not by reading Karl Marx, but by seeing top-class facilities white kids enjoyed while we had to play on torn matting wickets, outfields without grass, with dilapidated equipment and without a day’s coaching.
He told me about his youth growing up and playing with black boys on the mines, his sponsorship of Sewgolum and Vincent Tshabalala to play overseas, his success in persuading John Vorster to allow the black American golfer Lee Elder to play in South Africa, and all that he has done for golf development.
Still, I asked, hadn’t he defended apartheid during his many overseas tours; hadn’t he said blacks in South Africa are better off than elsewhere in Africa; and that the West should support [apartheid] South Africa because it was fighting communism?
Things were getting too complex for a telephone line so we agreed to meet at his Colesberg farm. The following weekend, my wife and I arrived at his magnificent stud farm and Player was waiting in a khaki outfit and Texan hat. He welcomed us warmly.
Bustling and energetic, he took us on a tour of the farm and arranged a parade of his young thoroughbreds. At all times with him and holding his hand was Thabo, an eight-year-old black boy whose education Player is paying for.
After breakfast we sat down on the patio for a “business” meeting — to continue the unfinished business of our earlier phone call.
He produced press clippings to demonstrate his opposition to apartheid. Most of these clippings related to his support for Denis Worrall who stood as an independent against the National Party’s Chris Heunis in the Helderberg constituency in 1985.
One clipping revealed that Player had said, on that campaign: “Our system is at fault. The only way we can have a future is this country is if we scrap apartheid — it’s just logic.”
I conceded that by the mid-1980s he had come to reject apartheid and I also acknowledged his generous contribution to development golf, post-1990. But I had greater difficulty getting him to admit that he had been an apologist for apartheid until then.
A bit exasperated, I said to him: “Gary, you strike me as a very decent and caring man. But like so many white South Africans, you were a victim of a system — a system that, from school to grave, conditioned you into believing that whites were superior, and apartheid offered security for whites against a violent black majority led by communists.
“So when you defended apartheid I don’t think you did it because you were an evil man or a racist. You did it because you honestly thought you were doing the right thing.”
There was a long pause, and then a nod of the head. “You know Govin, I think you are right.”
Until then, I had nursed a long-standing antagonism for the man. It started with the Sewgolum travesty, but got worse when I was a student in the United States in the Seventies and spoke at several conferences relating the horrors of apartheid to Americans. On more than one occasion an American in the audience would try to rebut my presentation by quoting Player’s oft-repeated claim that the majority of blacks in South Africa were happy and the problem was a handful of communist agitators.
So I went to Colesberg with some trepidation, about to meet the man I had loathed for the better part of my adult life. But it turned out to be an entirely pleasant encounter. Notwithstanding his international fame, Player reveals a remarkable humility, which probably has its roots in his growing up in relative poverty on the mines of the East Rand. He oozes passion and emotion, admitting that he comes close to tears every time he meets Nelson Mandela; he says he is fervently committed to the new South Africa.
Essentially, it would seem that it was the same misplaced passion that drove him to defend South Africa in the darkest days of apartheid.
Pity then that in recent radio interviews Player characteristically retreats to a defensive mode, uncompromisingly denying his past. Black South Africans have earned a reputation as the world’s foremost forgivers. All would be forgotten if only Player would take that final step and say to the South African public what he more or less admitted to me, “Yes, there was a time when I defended apartheid. I was naive. I was wrong.”
Until he does that, Player will inevitably be dogged by controversy every time his monumental golfing achievements are recognised with honours and awards.
Govin Reddy is visiting professor of media leadership at the universities of Rhodes and Stellenbosch