Under Boorish Johnson, Britain’s treatment of its former friends is just not cricket
One is surprised some people are surprised that the UK seems to be encouraging South Africans to stay away from its pristine shores. A nation led by Boris Johnson, an incoherent, bumbling, dishevelled and — let’s be blunt about it — racist buffoon could not have behaved any differently. A snake rots from the head down.
Britain’s decision to retain SA on its dreaded red list, while giving countries with more Covid infections, such as Turkey, a reprieve, doesn’t make sense. In fact it’s laughable. Which is why an attempt by the British high commission to explain the ban has been roundly derided.
One would have expected Britain to show some gratitude. SA is valiantly driving its more educated and inventive citizens to emigrate to Britain where they’re making a sterling contribution in all fields of endeavour. Thanks to a low birth rate, Britain will run short of skills for its economy. Again, more of our people, educated at great cost to SA, will only be too pleased to leave for Britain to keep its economy chugging along.
One would understand it if it was Australia doing this to us. But Britain, with all the economic, cultural and even family ties? It simply beggars belief. The restrictions have been tough not only on business but on ordinary people who have not been able to see loved ones. Ironically, Johnson has been making the same argument to the US administration — trade, tourism, families who haven’t been able to visit loved ones — which had Britain on its own red list. This week the Biden administration obliged by lifting restrictions on both SA and the UK — only days after the UK had kicked SA in the groin.
SA may have naively thought it would get a sympathetic ear from Britain as a result of historic ties between the two countries. Not so long ago every country under the sun wanted to bask in our reflected glory. Not anymore. We’ve since spoilt our copybook. But Britain recently seems too keen to dump on us. Last year, after South African scientists informed their British counterparts about the discovery of the Beta variant in SA, health secretary Matt Hancock expressed his gratitude by banning travellers from SA. Unfortunately Hancock has since had to resign after he was busted canoodling with a female assistant in his office in contravention of the lockdown regulations he was meant to enforce. Karma, you’d say.
But there’s no question Britain too has changed. Johnson’s election attests to that fact. A nation often takes on the characteristics of its leader. Donald Trump, for instance, has made lies a fashionable diet of US politics. We elected an imbecile who turned corruption into an acceptable way to earn a living.
In electing Johnson, voters knew what they were signing up for. As a columnist and author his racism illuminated his writing. One could even argue that — like Trump — such views are partly what made him electable. The queen, he once wrote, had come to love the Commonwealth partly because “it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies”.
He managed to produce a colourful sentence about Tony Blair’s visit to the Congo, dripping with prejudice from start to finish: “They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and their tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”
He complained that young people in Britain have “an almost Nigerian interest in money and gadgets”.
His description of Barack Obama as a “part-Kenyan with an ancestral dislike of the UK” seemed to be a rerun of the birtherism that helped to propel Trump to the White House. There were fears — unfounded as it turned out — that the comments could damage his relationship with Joe Biden, who was Obama’s deputy.
As one writer pointed out, Johnson has a knack for casual displays of prejudice. He’s referred to gay men as “tank-topped bumboys” and said he agreed with Robert Mugabe that the Labour Party was composed of “gay gangsters”. His sexism and deployment of sexual innuendo are legendary. Uppity and irresponsible women, he said, had “a natural desire to get pregnant”. When former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak proudly informed a London conference that 68% of graduates in his country were women, Johnson interjected that they only go to varsity to look for a husband.
Even with the burden of office, Johnson is not shy to impose his warped views on society. When the England Cricket Board (ECB) suspended prodigy Ollie Robinson for racist tweets he published a few years ago, Johnson protested the punishment was too harsh.
The lack of concern for outsiders seems to have rubbed off onto its cricketers. The ECB has cancelled a tour to Pakistan, a huge betrayal after Pakistan made all the sacrifices to tour England earlier this year at a time when the pandemic was at its most severe. SA got similar treatment from England when its cricketers came here late last year, then upped and left before the tour was over — leaving Cricket SA with a huge bill.
Britain seems to be suffering from a strange disease. Let’s call it Brexitis. A predisposition to turn its back on friends. Brexit was, after all, a triumph of the Little England mentality, which simply wants the world — especially those who look different — to keep away. Johnson is its totem.
For SA, bemoaning its misfortune would be fruitless. It needs to put its own house in order.