The race chase: the colour of cricket transformation in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT South African cricket (re)entered international cricket in 1991, a few years before the country's first democratic elections. A tour of India was a prelude to playing in the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. From the outset of ‘unity’, cricket was lauded for its transformation programme and for making a decisive break with the past. This break was epitomized by the team being called the Proteas rather than the Springboks. Despite this and on-going efforts to transform the team into a more representative one, issues of racism and racial representation have continued to haunt the game. Questions are persistently raised about racial targets and interference in selection from on high. At local level, Cricket South Africa (CSA) has now made it mandatory that franchises and semi-professional teams be obliged to include six players of colour, of whom three must be Black Africans, raising concerns about deliberate racial engineering. These apprehensions have been exacerbated by increasing calls for national teams to reflect the racial demographics of the country. This article looks at issues of race and representivity in South African cricket post-unity, seeking to probe allegations of racism, as well as how CSA has approached issues of racial representation in the form of quotas and the possible effects of this on the game.