‘ALL LIVES DON’T MATTER UNTIL BLACK LIVES MATTER’
Former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis and many of his white team-mates have come out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and will take the knee in today’s Solidarity Cup in Centurion.
Former Proteas captain joined in show of solidarity by white teammates.
White Proteas cricketers, with former team captain Faf du Plessis in the lead, will “take the knee” today at the Solidarity Cup in Centurion as a expression of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortje will join in the powerful moment of solidarity with Lungi Ngidi and the other black players who have spoken out in support of BLM.
The BLM logo might not be printed on their playing shirts today in the three-team tournament, but leading white Proteas have now joined the movement and publicly expressed their support for the anti-racism drive.
Graeme Smith, director of cricket at Cricket SA, gave his support to the planned demonstration, tweeting: “I am proud to support this incredibly important movement.
“There is no room for neutrality on this topic. I stand with Lungi Ngidi and our brothers and sisters around the world.
Du Plessis has taken matters further by apologising for his comment that the team “don’t see colour” when Temba Bavuma was left out of the Newlands Test against England at the start of the year.
“I surrender my opinions and take the knee as an intercessor. I acknowledge that South Africa is still hugely divided by racism and it is my personal responsibility to do my best to empathise, hear the stories, learn and then be part of the solution with my thoughts, words and actions.
“I have gotten it wrong before. Good intentions were failed by a lack of perspective when I said on a platform that I don’t see colour.
“A race problem is a human race problem, if one part of the body hurts, we all stop, we empathise, we get perspective, we learn and then we tend to the hurting part of the body.
“So I am saying that all lives don’t matter UNTIL Black lives matter,” Du Plessis said in an Instagram post on Friday.
Van der Dussen and Pretorius, who both play for the Central Gauteng Lions and have had to wait a long time to kick-start their international careers, said they, too, support BLM.
Pretorius said on Facebook: “I will be proudly supporting the BLM movement and I will be taking a knee on Saturday. I honestly and wholeheartedly believe it’s the right thing to do.
“I also believe taking the knee is only the start.
“[BLM] is my brother from another mother asking me, please see me for WHO I am; don’t persecute me because of my skin colour,” said Pretorius.
Van der Dussen was asked on Twitter where he and several other Proteas stood on BLM, and the 31-year-old batsman tweeted in Afrikaans: “I support BLM, I’m against murder, I’m against all murders: physical, character and cultural murders.”
Yesterday, ex-Proteas bowler Makhaya Ntini, in an interview with SABC’s Morning Live programme, spoke of his loneliness when excluded as a black player from the team’s socialising.
“I was forever lonely. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of loneliness, is to not have someone knocking on your door and say, let’s go for dinner,” he said. –