How time flies.
Exactly 30 years ago on this day, February 3 in the year 1983, I was sitting watching an international cricket match. But this was no ordinary match. It was a 50-overs contest between a South African team and a West Indian XI. However, apart from the regional players on the field and their management, I was the only Caribbean person in the packed stands at Kingsmead in Durban on that day that the Natal team beat the West Indian team. It was no ordinary match because it was being played at an extraordinary time in the history of a country with an extraordinary political system. This was Apartheid South Africa and Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island with no idea of if or when he would ever be freed.
This was Apartheid South Africa where the majority Blacks slaved at the bottom of a social totem pole crushed under the heels of Coloureds (mixed race), Indians and, at the very top, the master Whites.
Yet, despite global trade, sporting and other embargos against that racially segregated country, these Caribbean cricketers dubbed “rebels” were there competing against national and other teams whose compositions included no black players.
Obviously, the presence of a West Indian squad in South Africa at a time when segregation was legal and even resulted in one member being put off a train when he tried to ride in a “Whites Only” section, offended the world. Nevertheless, it was a massive coup for white South Africa when on January 15 at the Newland grounds in Cape Town, thousands of them greeted the West Indian team being led out by captain Lawrence Rowe for the first match of the four-week tour against Western Province.
The tour was promoted as an unofficial international series and along with Rowe attracted a star cast of West Indian players, the likes of Richard Austin, Herbert Chang, Sylvester Clarke, Colin Croft, Alvin Greenidge, Bernard Julien, Alvin Kallicharran, Collis King, Everton Mattis, Ezra Moseley, David Murray, Derick Parry, Franklyn Stephenson, Emmerson Trotman, Ray Wynter and Albert Padmore.
I was not a sports journalist but I was there under that guise in order to investigate and report on the impact and effect of a system which no other Caribbean journalist had been able to experience first hand.
I accompanied the team for matches in places like East London, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, and even Pretoria – the heart of apartheid – and was able also to observe how they were impacted on a daily basis. Condemnation of their actions filtered in from every corner of the globe, including their native Caribbean where, on their return, they would all end up being banned for life from playing representative cricket in the region.
Like them, I got my fair share of licks for going to South Africa where you were branded “Honorary White” if you were in a position to escape the maltreatment meted out to Blacks as well as for some favourable opinion I expressed concerning the team’s presence in that country.
But that was 30 years ago exactly.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email [email protected]
