JOHANNESBURG: Less than two weeks after arriving in South Africa in defiance of an international ban, a team of English cricketers has been thrown into a mounting cycle of violence that threatens to disrupt steps toward broader racial reforms.
So-called “rebel tours” by cricketers and rugby players despite bans by international sports bodies have long been encouraged ‘by the country’s white rulers. But this tour, by a team led by a former captain of England’s national team, Mike Gatting, has created such problems for the Government that senior officials are said to considering canceling it. If it is not ended, there are fears that the violence could worsen to the point that the matches could become impossible to play.
In the last decade, a number of such tours, including two by a team of Australian cricketers, have been completed with ‘out major violence, But the current tour comes as the Government of President F.W. de Klerk has promised major steps to ‘try defusing racial confrontation, and black Jed groups intent on maintaining pressure on the Government have fixed on the cricket tour as a vehicle for protest.
The first two matches played by the English team, in Kimberley last week and in Bloemfontein this week, were accompanied by street clashes, Demonstrations outside the cricket grounds were mostly peaceful, after the former South African cricket captain who is the tour’s main organizer, Ali Bacher, intervened with the authorities to obtain permits for the protests to be held. But away from the grounds, several demonstrations held without permits turned violent after police intervened to halt them.
‘“Battle-Scarred Towns’
Protest groups led by the National Sports ‘Congress, a newly formed group that is backed by. _~ organizations opposed to apartheid, have threatened to disrupt the tour when it reaches Durban later this week, and when it moves on to Johannesburg and Cape Town. The Government has pledged that the police will take whatever action is necessary to insure that the games are completed
For the English cricketers, cancellation would be a harsh blow. By coming here, the cricketers accepted an automatic five-year ban from approved international competition, Mike Gatting, who is33 years old, and the other members of the squad are said to have signed contracts providing for payments of as much as 500,000 ran equivalent to $196,850-for the current tour and another one scheduled for 1991. This is about three times what top English cricketers earn in a year, and has prompted the Sowetan, one of the country’s leading black newspapers, to call the visitors “a greedy band of mercenaries.”
Article extracted from this publication >> February 9, 1990
