SJN Hearings: Selection a sticky issue as implicated get chance to respond

Cricket South Africa’s Social Justice and Nation-Building Hearings are set to resume on Monday and now those implicated in the first three-and-a-half weeks of testimony will get the chance to sell their side of the story to the ombudsman, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza.

So far the SJN hearings have been anything but boring as nearly 50 respondents have come before Ntsebeza and his fellow advocates and testified about how they have been hurt or discriminated against by the game of cricket in this country.

Unfortunately, numerous critics and commentators have been a bit slow to realise that we have only heard one side of the story thus far. None of this evidence has been tested or cross-examined, but that hasn’t stopped sensational headlines and vicious social media attacks being made.

While many of the stories of hurt were eloquently and movingly presented, sadly some people abused the process to continue the campaign against CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith and Proteas coach Mark Boucher, making them the focus of their presentations.

As if Smith and Boucher are personally responsible for all the awful things that happened in the 1990s and 2000s. And, judging by some of the hysterical reaction, they would already be locked away in a cell before being allowed to give evidence according to certain people’s idea of how justice works.

Discrimination based on race is what the SJN is looking for, but several of the complaints around selection ignore the fact that Linda Zondi was national convenor of selectors at the time, or Russell Domingo was the Proteas head coach. So is it black people being discriminatory or are we going to deny both these great cricket servants their agency and say they were merely stooges for the few white people involved in the running of cricket at the time?

Omphile Ramela, the former president of the players’ association, has been one of the most vocal voices claiming rampant discrimination in cricket. His personal complaints centred around him no longer being contracted by the Highveld Lions as a batsman and for CSA turning down his application to succeed Zondi as the convenor of selectors.

Enoch Nkwe was the Lions coach who decided not to renew his contract and Victor Mpitsang was rightfully given the job of selection convenor, given his broad knowledge of the players in the system through both his coaching and commentary work.

There are many witnesses who have every right, however, to be angry about how they were treated, especially in the earlier days of unity. Selection frustrations are always a part of cricket though and a player not being selected cannot automatically be ascribed to racism.

While Khaya Zondo was no doubt embittered by what happened to him in India in 2015, it is probably true that the only South African cricketer who was definitely dropped from the Proteas XI due to the colour of his skin was Kyle Abbott in the World Cup debacle earlier that year.

Watching our gloriously transformed and brilliant Springboks in action and listening to the painful SJN Hearings around the same time, I cannot help but feel it is the strict quotas in cricket that have caused much of the anger, strife and bitterness.

Rugby has never had quotas as strictly enforced and their transformation has been more organic. And to try and paint them as “targets” in cricket is totally disingenuous – if they were just targets then why was Ashwell Prince, according to his own testimony, hauled before a CSA disciplinary committee after failing to meet the requirements on one occasion as Cape Cobras coach?

White players, who lose their places in the team due to quotas, are naturally upset and wonder if the player replacing them is there on merit. This unhappiness has now extended to coloured and Indian cricketers and is not good for changeroom morale.

The other side of the coin is that black players also wonder if they are in the team on merit (as the majority are), and that type of self-doubt is lethal in a sport like cricket which relies so much on confidence and self-belief.