Cheryl Roberts
SIGNIFICANTLY, two South African cricketers, Nico van Oordt and Clive Rice, have died at the same time. Both cricketers are being commemorated and acknowledged by sport in general and the cricket domain.
However, the two cricketers are being remembered by two different sports constituencies within one country.
White cricketer Clive Rice represented everything that was white in South African sport. Until his death, throughout his illness, Rice hung on to his blinkered views that white cricketers were the best and were selected on merit, and that black cricket players had to be developed until whenever.
The black cricketer, Nico van Oordt, was a non-racial, anti-apartheid sportsperson who never collaborated with, or supported apartheid, but chose to play sport for freedom.
Rice never said apartheid in society and sport was wrong; he defended white privilege and authority in South African sport whenever he got an opportunity.
He was the spokesperson of “white merit in South African cricket”.
Whenever “quotas” got mentioned, Rice was the media’s main man to call out quotas, talk about its negative implications in Rice’s lens and how black cricketers had to be developed.
But Rice, the white cricketer, never spoke out about sport’s inequalities created by apartheid. He criticised the apartheid era for sport’s isolation and his missing out on an international career.
But never did he cry out about atrocities committed by the apartheid system.
Rice got the corporate media coverage and support. He played in rebel cricket tours which broke the international sports boycott of apartheid South Africa.
Van Oordt was born into a disadvantaged, under-resourced community and he chose a sports life of struggle because freedom of the oppressed was more valuable to him as an oppressed black South African.
Van Oordt was a grass roots and community cricketer from the Tygerberg Cricket Club on the Cape Flats. The Ravensmead-based Tygerberg CC is a club that was founded in his mother’s lounge so the boys could play on the field and not aimlessly roam the street.
Until his death, Van Oordt, together with his legendary cricketer brother, George, was a committed club member.
Tygerberg is the club which has produced international bowler Vernon Philander and the only club in South Africa which, in one playing season, had both the women’s and men’s cricketers of the year. No other club in the country has achieved this feat. You would always see Van Oordt at club matches when Tygerberg played at home or the club hosted a function.
The white cricketer that was Rice never celebrated the non-racial, democratic South Africa and never was he quoted as having been grateful for liberation from apartheid’s white supremacy attitude and behaviour. He never complimented black officials in sport and in cricket.
It’s hard to believe that maybe he was just never asked for his opinions and views so that he could applaud the dawn of the democratic era. Instead, Rice used every media opportunity to criticise black cricketers and officials and to speak glowingly about the talent of white cricketers.
Forget about women in sport because Rice just wasn’t that kind of man to advocate for women in sport; he was, after all, a sportsman whose world was all about white men in sport and cricket.
Today and for a long time, the lives of two cricketers will be missed, remembered and accounted for in their cricket communities. Depending on where you played your sport during the apartheid era and how you embraced sport in the democratic era, is how you will remember either cricketer.
Cricketers such as Clive Rice never had my applause or praise; they certainly had my criticism about their white lens, racism and white privilege.
A cricket person such as Nico van Oordt is respected and applauded for his decades of involvement in sport as a volunteer, an unpaid official, community and club member, and his contribution to freedom. I’m sure Van Oordt will rest peacefully forever in his afterlife; after all, his work on Earth was abundant. I hope Rice will finally rest forever, although he doesn’t have the chance of advancing “white privilege and white skin as merit”. White privilege has lost a proponent and saviour in Rice. Grass roots and community cricket has lost an invaluable, unselfish, dedicated sports official with the passing of Van Oordt.
l Roberts is a Cape Town-based sports activist and was part of the South African Table Tennis team that competed at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona