TEST SPAT SHOWS WE’RE STILL A DIVIDED NATION

PROBABLY one of the most damning messages I got during the Proteas dismal fourth-Test defeat against England involved the departure of captain Faf du Plessis and the introduction of new batsman Temba Bavuma.

Faf had just got out and I was asked if I was happy. I had criticised his lack of form in the England series, minimal runs return and argued that his time as Test captain had run its course.

Du Plessis had got unconditional support as a batsman and a captain. He was not going to be dropped, regardless of his scores. He knew that.

I had previously argued why there was not similar faith shown in Bavuma, who had also been shy of runs and had struggled with form in Test cricket.

The responses a week ago on several social media platforms were vitriolic. They included indignation and accusation that Bavuma was not deserving of a stay of execution because he was black. Faf deserved all the protection, however, because he was the captain and experienced and tough as nails. He would lead from the front.

Those nailing Bavuma and hailing Du Plessis did not see the contradictions in their statements. The interaction quickly deteriorated into one of race and one of superiority and one in which whites were again being damned and blacks were being favoured.

When will it all stop, asked one. It’s been 25 years since South Africa’s first democratic elections, why are we still talking quotas and previously disadvantaged? When were the blacks going to move on from the past? This kind of arrogance, ignorance and stupidity can’t be scripted.

What of the Panda people in South Africa, asked another. The what? “Previously advantaged, now disadvantaged”? Again, you can’t script this!

We are in bloody 2020, yet so little progress has been made. The race and political abuse dominated the timelines but when it came to the actual cricket, I was asked if I was now happy that Faf had flopped.

No, I wasn’t happy he had failed for the eighth time in eight innings. I wanted a fairy-tale ending for him in what is surely his last home Test.

Happiness was not what I was feeling when he was bowled out.

Then came the damning comments that reinforced all that was wrong with apartheid South Africa and reminded me just how much is still so wrong in South Africa. “Let’s see how your black guy goes!” My black guy? My guy?

Isn’t Bavuma, or any Proteas player for that matter, our guy? Wasn’t Faf our captain? Are we still a “them and us” when describing our national players?

The bigots came out to play big time on social media in the past fortnight when it came to Du Plessis and Bavuma’s batting failures.

A part of me has always wanted to believe we’ve come further than we have in the past 20 years. When I was in the Springboks’ management in the early 2000s, Gcobani Bobo made his Test debut.

The late Joost van der Westhuizen had played 75-plus Tests and at breakfast Bobo complimented him, saying Joost inspired him.

Joost didn’t blink in responding. “Now go out and do the same thing for your people and inspire your people,” he said. Bobo was taken aback at the reference to “his people”. Who were “his people”?

The conversation came to an abrupt end but clearly, more than 20 years later, it remains a case of “your people and my people”, when all that we should be is South Africa’s people.

Bavuma, like Du Plessis, also failed in the final Test against England.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t have to ask the bigots if they were happy because they were quick to tell me how happy they were that “my black guy” had shown he simply wasn’t good enough.