Gesture is divisive – South African is no racist for refusing

For decades it has proved impossible to keep politics out of cricket. It was why for more than a quarter of a century South Africa were international pariahs. However, if one thought the end of the iniquitous apartheid regime would bring an end to such problems, one was wrong.

Things that ought to be a matter of conscience, such as how one expresses one’s disapproval of racial prejudice, are now not treated as such by some cricket boards. And so the South African board has felt it right to make it mandatory for its players to take the knee before matches in a forced display of virtue-signalling about race: and Quinton de Kock, in exercising his absolute right not to have his conscience dictated to, preferred not to play in yesterday’s T20 match against the West Indies rather than engage in an action he felt uncomfortable with.

I do not for a moment imagine that the South Africa wicketkeeper is a racist. I imagine that, like tens of millions of others, he finds such public gestures absurd and irrelevant to his own belief in equality and equal treatment. But it is precisely because of the apartheid past that South Africa’s board is so insistent on the gesture.

A statement it put out after De Kock’s refusal to abide by its wishes included justifying the forced gesture by referring to the country’s “history”. De Kock has not explained himself, and if one believes in the idea of a free society (which South Africa, despite its greater problems, technically still is) there is no reason why he should. The West Indian Carlos Brathwaite, who says he is on good terms with De Kock and has never felt him give the slightest indication of racial prejudice, has urged him to explain himself.

If De Kock wishes to give reasons – and he should not be required to do so – some are fairly obvious. The taking-the-knee gesture is a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement, for whom removing the unquestioned disadvantages that people of colour experience in some parts of the world is only a minor part of their programme.

The movement harbours a number of committed Marxists who make no secret of their desire to overthrow capitalism. That was not least the reason why some Premier League football clubs stopped making the gesture: there were more practical and less tainted ways of showing solidarity with minorities, such as advancing members of them on merit, and taking firm action against those who engage in overtly racist acts.

But De Kock may also be sensitive to the way in which people are infantilised by being

forced to act in a communal fashion when they may well wish to behave differently. It is not a way to treat serious adults. And he may well be sophisticated enough to realise that such a gesture, especially when forced and thus made insincerely, assists in no way in the elimination of racism from cricket, sport in general or the wider world.

Until and unless De Kock comes out and admits he regards people of colour as inferior – which one must sincerely doubt he ever would – then his freedom of conscience and right to act as an individual in matters of conscience must be respected. He was less than two years old when South Africa was last under white rule. To talk of the apartheid years and manufacture some association between him and that era is preposterous.

And South Africa’s board, which appears to have imposed this diktat on its players without proper consultation or planning, seems entirely to reflect the chaos in which its benighted country finds itself nearly three decades after majority rule. It should treat its players as adults, not as foolish children who need to be taught some manners: and recognise that with the advent of maturity, a person is entitled to exercise their conscience.

De Kock, who has never acted against the interests of black people, should be credited with a conscience and not just with being bloody-minded. If his career comes unstuck because of his wish to exercise his personal freedom rather than being dictated to, it would be an act to be added to cricket’s regrettably lengthening roll of shame.