Former Proteas and Highveld Lions player Lonwabo Tsotsobe.
Lonwabo Tsotsobe, 33, played five Tests, 61 one-day internationals and 23 T20 internationals for South Africa in a career that began with much promise in January 2009 and he last played for the national team in 2014. This week, he was charged “with several breaches” of Cricket South Africa’s Anti-Corruption Code.
The charges relate to the 2015-2016 Ram Slam T20 competition, and have also affected five other players: Gulam Bodi (38), Thami Tsolekile (36), Pumelela Matshikwe (32), Jean Symes (30) and Ethy Mbhalati (35).
Tsotsobe has been described as lazy and greedy. How else do you explain a professional cricketer, who is already well paid, grabbing for a few cents more? But then professional sport has long ceased to be about the love of the game. It is a highly profitable enterprise. Professional sport, you could argue, depends on human greed just as it does on physical ability.
It this same greed that has professional athletes grabbing everything that comes their way, but it also shows a unique insecurity.
Academic research has shown the critical importance of a variety of support networks in the development of elite sportspeople. These are especially important in the transitional challenges faced at different stages of sporting careers — and players staring the end of their careers in the face need particular support, especially when they juggle the juggernaut of “black tax”.
The shortage of adequate support networks compounds this problem for black players not in the national team.
This match-fixing scandal has not only ended the cricketing careers of these players, it has also raised questions about how prepared they were for the end of their careers, away from the bright lights of professional cricket.
In an interview with the Saturday Star recently, Bodi, who is said to have been the fixer-in-chief, said: “I don’t have a degree, any businesses or anything else to fall back on. At the moment I am just doing bits and pieces to make ends meet.”
When Hansie Cronje died in a plane crash, he was gainfully employed. When his career ended he was able to fall back on a community that was able to ensure his livelihood. For black and brown players, there is no such safety net when you’ve committed the crime of match-fixing — there isn’t even a devil to blame.
It is the briefness of a professional sporting career that makes it impossible for many black families to accept sport as an alternative to formal education. The risks are too high.
Just last year Daryll Cullinan made the egregious claim that “cricket is not inherently a black man’s game in South Africa”. One part of that statement is true — it has been developed as a sport for white men.
True transformation must mean more than just the number of black and brown names in the wickets column.