It's Not Initially A Black Tragedy

As the cricket fanatic that I am, I tend to go through my old magazines and cricket articles. I’ve managed to stock up all my magazines I bought and interested me since 2008, when I started taking my cricket extremely seriously.

On my recent recapitulation on my magazines, I bumped into a Tom Eaton article that he wrote for the Business Day Sport back in July 2009 labelled Black Tragic. This article was indeed very moving as its name shows; yet the article I felt was very unjustified. Eaton truly angers me personally as an aspirating black cricketer by stating that he’s not satisfied to hear that black cricketers are complaining and saying that they are not better represented by Cricket South Africa (CSA) as they are very few black amateurs/professional coaches in South Africa.

Unfortunately this is definitely correct. Our black players are really not being properly represented by CSA and their respected white coaches. Here’s a good example. Geoffrey Toyana was recently employed head coach of the Highveld Lions squad and immediately signed young promising batsman, Grant Mokoena.

Not that the Highveld Lions didn’t have any quality black cricketers in their team, as they already had 22 year old batsman, Temba Bavuma, South African Wicket-keeper batsman, Thami Tsolekile and off-spinner, Aaron Phangiso. My only concern is that why did they have to wait for a black coach to be employed in order for true transformation to really take place. Tsolekile and Phangiso are black cricketers, yes I agree, but they not initially from the Gauteng Lions Union. They never represented Gauteng or North West in Nuffield Week/Khaya Majola Week back when they were still U/19 cricketers. But Mokoena did - He was truly a transformation black cricketer. 

“Five determined but mediocre batsmen. Don’t tell me those are racist coaches. This isn’t a racist conspiracy. This is a demographical crisis.” Writes Eaton about five black batsmen he mentions in his article. Khaya Zondo, Loots Bosman, Enoch Nkwe, Tumelo Bodibe and Mpho Sekhoto are the batsmen he mentions.

Last season in the domestic CSA 50-overs limited competition, young wicket-keeper batsman, Mangi Mosehle, featured in some of the games as a wicket-keeper batsman, or just as a batsman when Heino Kuhn, the other wicket-keeper batsman in the side also featured in the same starting 11. A wicket-keeper batsman batting down at number nine, is this fair? After all, it’s his batting abilities that have granted him a Titans contract. What’s even more ‘mediocre’ is that when Heino Kuhn seemed to be struggling with form with opening the batting, they kept shuffling him to batting positions of three, four and six, while Mosehle was pushed in the deep end of the pool and told to open the batting. Something he’s never done in his amateur/professional cricket career before. When he doesn’t perform at the top of the order he simply gets dropped with no questions asked.

So we go back to our argument, is CSA as well as the white coaches really representing our black players? Or are they just there simply to fill up the required ‘quota numbers’ a team should have on the field?

-Mandilulame Manjezi
@JizzyJakes

Keep The Faith For J9

Sundays are always one of those relaxed yet 'intellectual' days for me as I would patiently browse through all different types of newspapers. I read an article about Former Springbok Captain, Joost Van Der Westhuizen, and his fight with motor-neural disease.

This was not something new to me as the slow-poison disease that's been affecting Van Der Westhuizen has made circulation around Pretoria for some time now. Many of us knew that he had a certain number of months left to live as they would often mention in the media. "Geez! That must be a living nightmare, knowing the exact month you going to kick the bucket!" One would have most probably have said to himself or while gossiping about on the dinner table with the rest of their family members.

But in fact the story about Van Der Westhuizen had struck the hearts of many South Africans when the 1995 IRB World Cup Winning Springbok appeared on MNet's Carte Blanche. Unable to speak with the passion and desire he had to conduct himself with in interviews and the changing rooms towards his teammates, it was really painful watching Van Der Westhuizen battling like that on TV. One could never have imaged the Loftus Versveld hero in such a state of pain, although he seemed to be in such good spirits.

With the public having to see their 'J9' (as he's nicknamed by his fans) weakened and filled with sadness in his eyes, Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook went into frantic about supporting Van Der Westhuizen. Only after witnessing the trauma Joost had been going through on TV and people having their queries about his situation, it’s was only then in the following morning that the media had started to take responsibility about initiating some sort of help support structures for him.

My only problem is that the media was all over Joost when he was accused of allegedly cheating on his wife and having a sex tape. Yet when the news came out that he was suffering from motor-neural disease, many people were much concerned and worried, yes I agree, but I felt had took the news of the situation quite lightly. Up until the Carte Blanche episode had appeared on our screens on the evening of September 4, many of us, the South African public, kept labelling him as 'The rugby star that cheated on his wife'. We such bastards though. How dare we make such remarks?

I recently saw an advert in the Pretoria News were McCarthy Ford Mazda Pretoria East had a competition, sponsoring three vehicles to the Joost Van Der Westhuizen J9 Foundation. I truly believe that this was a good initiative as the Springbok legend still has a fighting chance. If you eager on supporting the Joost Van Der Westhuizen J9 Foundation, feel free to do so on www.joost.co.za to find more information about the course.

-Mandilulame Manjezi
@JizzyJakes