Post-Apartheid South Africa is an interesting place. Take, for example, the seemingly simple matter of sports team composition. In a vacuum, a team would be made up of players only accepted on the ruthless, yet honest, basis of merit. But life isn’t a vacuum, and no such team has ever existed. There are always the “intangibles,” which in South Africa are maybe more tangible than they are elsewhere.
Take the South African cricket team, Cricket South Africa (CSA). Last week I was reading Cape Town’s main newspaper, the Cape Times, and there was a steady stream of articles concerning the team.
Right before a tour to India, the Cape Cobras team needed to select its best players. CSA and the Cobras have admitted to maintaining a sort of affirmative action-like quota of, as the paper reported, “six players of colour in the 14-man squad.” So the team chose Charl Langeveldt over Andre Nel.
Langeveldt is a self-proclaimed “Cape Coloured,” the racial group dominant in the country. The term carries the implication that the individual’s ancestry is a “product” of African and European mixing. Nel is of strict European descent.
Nel is a better, or at least more experienced, player, but his presence would have messed up the team’s race quota. Saying so himself, Langeveldt publicly and tearfully quit the team’s tour to India.
“As players, we all have a good idea of when we are clearly in the running for selection and when we aren’t,” he began. “You just have to look at Andre’s Test record compared to mine and the fact that he has been part of all the Test match plans while I haven’t played a Test match in two years… I have always fought for a place in the team, but I don’t want to be put there because of my colour.”
South Africa may be attempting to atone for the indignities and violence of its racist past, but the quotas seem, even to beneficiaries like Langeveldt, not only like overcompensating and a perpetuation of racism, but also like a kind of theft of personal pride, a robbing of an essential part of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Langeveldt made a personal decision in all of this that was gut wrenching, even from the outside, for me, that is, an American descendant of a South African father and someone who sure as hell doesn’t follow cricket.
But life isn’t cricket and I wonder how these tensions are playing out there in the greater world off the playing ground.
Tags: andre nel, charl langeveldt, cricket, south africa
Debbie,
It’s too bad life isn’t more like cricket — well, at least the South African brand — where a well-intentioned policy, albeit equally as flawed as the Apartheid-system that preceeded it, is rebuked by a difficult decision made by an intelligent man.
There is no doubt that Mr Langeveldt knew that by accepting the spot, he would be just as guilty in propogating the racist (or anti-racist) policies that were used against his ancestors.
Bravo to Mr Langeveldt in his difficult and emotional decision. And Bravo to you for digging up a great story.
The whole SA selection policy is flawed. See If some one is good he should get into the side you pick the best side without even thinking about the color. Langeveldt did what any self respecting human being should do let alone a sportsman. think about this : how will you feel if you know you are not given this because of your ability but because of some kind of Quota system – at best it SUCKS!! I wonder what’s going through Nel’s Mind
Langeveldt. What a killer. I think his team will play that much harder for him. In the grand scheme, especially in the vague professional world beyond the cricket field, I say affirmative action is a good thing. It’s also good that its beneficiaries approach it as individuals, making their own decisions about its merits.
Hmmm . . . selection based on factors other than merit? Crazy! I says. Only in South Africa! Oh, wait a minute. . . And for cricket—a sport with an uncanny resemblance to baseball, but named after an annoying noisy insect? I wonder if the same would occur for soccer—a sport that enjoys more world-wide popularity, media coverage, and competition that brings-in big money? Who knows? What’s next? Forced racial intermarriage? An anti-anti-racist backlash? It’s funny how some ideas which would initially seem beneficial end up “bad,” however counter-intuitive that may seem . . . as in this case, or the case of an Amish polydactylous piano player. You would think that having extra digits might improve one’s ability to play the piano with all those keys, but in fact, they don’t. They just get in the way, like a fifth wheel on a car that’s supposed to have only four wheels . . . or a policy that ends-up hurting those individuals for whom it was established.