Prof puts ball in his court with release of book on tennis during apartheid
Former Rhodes University vicechancellor Prof Saleem Badat planned to write a newspaper article in 2021 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1971 tennis tour of Europe.
He had wanted to highlight the tour’s importance and the issues of racism, exclusion and social justice connected with it.
But the envisaged article grew into a book which is being launched in Gqeberha this week.
The launch of Tennis, Apartheid and Social Justice is to be held on Thursday at the St Thomas Secondary School auditorium at 6pm.
The book launch forms part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the former SA Council of Sport (Sacos), the sports wing of the liberation movement which was established in 1973 and disbanded in 2005.
Badat, a research professor at the University of the Free State, said the book described the first, historic, nonracial tennis tour of Europe by six talented young black players from Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town, sponsored by the nonracial Southern African Lawn Tennis Union.
It describes the tournaments they played, their performances, challenges and their lives when they returned home.
“Books come about in many ways,” Badat said.
“This book happened because my good friend, Hoosen Bobat, frequently spoke about the 1971 tour.
“His exclusion from Wimbledon was an understandably traumatic experience.
“It recounts how Bobat was prevented from becoming the first black South African to play in the Wimbledon junior championships because the white tennis body objected to him playing.
“The international body upheld the objection, and the organisers of Wimbledon shamefully went along with the decision,” he said.
Bobat was 18 years old at the time.
Traumatised by his exclusion from Wimbledon, and unable to take up a tennis scholarship at a US university, he stopped playing competitive tennis in his mid-20s, which Badat described as a great loss to the tennis fraternity.
“But the book is also about ordinary, committed black tennis players and officials who refused to be cowed by apartheid and bravely pursued nonracialism in tennis.
“It is about how, like everything under apartheid, the playing of tennis was segregated along racial lines because of racist apartheid laws.”
Badat himself played tennis under the nonracial tennis union, which was affiliated to Sacos.
“I was the Natal junior provincial champion in 1972 and 1973, representing Natal schools in the interprovincial schools championship.
“Sacos stated that there could be no normal sport in an abnormal society and fought for the ideal of nonracial sports in a democratic society.
“Like many young sportspersons, my early political education was through Sacos.”
Badat said tennis was still out of reach for the majority of South Africans because the apartheid legacy continued to affect the sport.
“As in other areas of society, there is lip service to transformation but little meaningful transformation in tennis.
“Tennis is probably played less today in black schools and communities than before 1994.
“Since 1994, there has been no fitting recognition of nonracial tennis players who kept alive the ideal of nonracial sport.
“There should have been a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on apartheid sports crimes.”
Badat said he began his research for the book in 2020.
He spent many days digging through newspaper archives, interviewed all the 1971 tour players, and read widely on sports under apartheid.
“The message I want readers to take from the book is that the knowledge about the brutality of apartheid is very important and we must never forget what happened in tennis, sport, education and the like.
“Drawing attention to past crimes and seeking justice is discouraged, because of socalled reconciliation and rainbowism.
“Instead of dealing with our terrible past, we are letting it fester.
“We fail to see that we cannot have genuine reconciliation if we ignore past injustices and the pain that continues.
“In tennis, it means not only focusing on a few elite players, but on the grassroots transformation of tennis and opportunities, especially for black schoolchildren, youth and communities.”
He said he was excited to return to Gqeberha for the book launch and hear Prof Nomalanga Mkhize and Dr Basil Brown’s responses to the book.
“Critique helps improve knowledge and understanding.
“I am grateful to Sacos stalwarts and Nelson Mandela University for hosting the launch.
“The book was deliberately published in 2023, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the founding of Sacos.
“It will also be launched in Lenasia, Johannesburg, Cape Town and London.”
Mervin Blaauw, chair of the Gqeberha branch of the Non-Racial Sport History Project, said he was excited about the book launch and happy that Sacos’s history was being written.
The project was started by lecturers at Wits University and sportsmen and women in Johannesburg to prepare for the 50th-anniversary celebrations.
“In the 50th year of Sacos’s existence, there has been an astonishing and pleasing number of books written about the sports struggle.
“Most, if not all the books, clearly show that we had structures and sporting activities which were comparable and even better than anything the establishment could and does not offer.
“The history of nonracial sport — not multiracial sport
— epitomises what sport should have been today — no elitist made-for-television sport, but community sport, sport wherein the community has a voice, participates and bottom-up development occurs, led by the community itself,” Blaauw said.