Dougie Oakes, Senior Writer
A CRICKET tour to India in November 1991 by the newly formed United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA) must have come like a kick in the gut to Hassan Howa and other sports officials who had fought so hard to keep South Africa isolated until every semblance of racial discrimination in sport and society had been eradicated.
But with events racing along at breakneck speed after the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990, it did not take long for the ANC icon to earmark sport as the vehicle to unite black and white South Africans.
Thanks to the prompting of Ali Bacher, the SA Cricket Union administrator who almost wrecked world cricket by arranging a series of “rebel” tours, and the blessing of Mandela, South Africa was invited to send its national team on an isolation-busting tour to India.
It came as a sickening blow to Howa and those Sacos officials who had not defected to the ANC-aligned National Sports Congress, and who had believed so passionately in the mantra that had fired up people throughout the world who opposed apartheid: “No normal sport in an abnormal society". What irked the Sacos- supporting groups even more was the smug assertion by white administrators that the team would be “all white” because the “all white” selection panel had not had a chance to watch any black cricket.
A furious Howa said he wanted nothing to do with the rushed unity process – and he described the quickly arranged tour as “dishonest”.
To Howa and his supporters it was bad enough that white administrators were openly boasting about “readmission” and a “return to international cricket”, but what made matters worse for them was that the ANC was using the same type of language. This, they said, “legitimised” apartheid cricket, while kicking those who had struggled so long and so hard for so little reward in the teeth.
What was particularly galling too was that in the early stages of negotiations, non-racial negotiators had called on white administrators to agree to a “statement of intent”, of which a key element was a sports moratorium on tours to and from South Africa.
The reason for this was to drive home to their white counterparts the need to take seriously a pledge to redress imbalances in South African society. But this pledge was ignored at the first possibility of overseas contact.
Adversity was not a new thing to Howa. It had never been far away from him throughout his career as a cricket administrator. But he had always fought back and, more often than not, had triumphed, even when the odds had seemed impossibly stacked against him.
This time though the tour to India really signalled the end of the Howa era. But his warnings that South Africa’s hasty “return to the international arena” would come back to haunt the new legions of black administrators would prove to be prophetic in the years to come.
Howa was, in many ways, an administrator way ahead of his time, a special type of freedom fighter.
It is little wonder that Mogamad Allie chose to begin a chapter in his book More than a Game – the History of the Western Province Cricket 1959-1991 with these words: “Howa, Howa… in the fascinating fight for the soul of black cricket, through turbulent 1976, into viciously repressive 1977, the influence of one man – Hassan Howa – grew ever more significant.”
Some described him as arrogant, argumentative, dictatorial, hotheaded and unreasonable. And they were right most times. But he was also honest, sometimes uncomfortably so, to those with whom he came into contact.
But, according to Allie: “Howa muscled the message of non-racialism to the top of the sports agenda, while other aspirant standard-bearers of the ideal were being swept aside on the wave of euphoria that greeted the arrival of 'normal' cricket.
“And although he made mistakes – ‘hellish mistakes’ – as he himself admitted, Howa had the remarkable ability to change tack in mid-course, and still come out of it with his reputation intact.
“Thus, from the man who suggested that black cricketers would be happy to change in motor cars or behind bushes when mixed-race cricket was first mooted, he became one of the strongest proponents of 'no normal sport in an abnormal society' when 'mixed' cricket was indeed introduced.”
Howa faced a myriad challenges when “normal” sport became a reality, of which the most difficult was persuading many of the most talented cricketers in his South African Cricket Board not to “sell out” to white promises.
But he wasn’t always successful. Many black cricketers did opt for grass – which they thought would be greener on the other side – and bumped their heads terribly.
One of them, Sa-at Galant, joined the formerly white Claremont Cricket Club, and then had the temerity to think that this also gave him the right to take his son to a whites-only beach.
He was wrong. A policeman ordered the two trespassers to leave.
“But I play for Claremont Cricket Club,” Galant told the policeman. “Changes to the law with regard to cricket do not apply to beaches,” the policeman replied.
It was then that Galant decided to return.
These incidents did not come as a surprise to Howa. He had dealt with a number of white administrators, who were as duplicitous as the new sports rules that people like Piet Koornhof tried to sell to black South Africans.
Howa died on February 12, 1992. In October 2004, the South African government bestowed Hassan Howa with the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver (posthumously) at the National Orders awards.