DEDICATION
2.7 Biographies of South African sporting heroes
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32 resources required to excel in golf were made available to him and he made use of this opportunity.
Equipped with a unique grip that set Papwa Sewgolum apart from others, he won the Dutch Open in 1959, 1960 and 1964. He also won the Natal Open twice and on one occasion he dramatically beat Gary Player. Although politics and the injustices during the apartheid era of South African history were not a preoccupation with Papwa, these were the very factors that led to his downfall. Papwa’s passion was his love for golf, and according to Nicholson (2005, p. 18) “being illiterate and with no access to information, political developments meant little” and “his preoccupations were with the golf bags he carried”.
Wulff (Papwa’s benefactor, who sponsored his international tournaments) felt that
“Papwa was really cheated out of a livelihood by politics. He could have been a world champion if it wasn’t for apartheid.” In Gary Player’s29 opinion, Papwa was one of the greatest golfers in the world within 100 metres of the hole at chipping, putting and bunker shots (Nicholson, 2005). This demonstrates that Papwa, although having all the opportunities and skills necessary to become a world champion, was in the end deprived of his achievement because of the laws of the country in which he lived. He was banned from playing in tournaments with whites. Forcibly moved from his home under the Group Areas Act30 and unable to sustain his career, he died a penniless alcoholic (Nicholson, 2005).
The biography of Papwa Sewgolum brings sharply into focus the chance opportunity he was afforded which he made use of by just being a caddie boy at an elite golf course close to his home, which was described as shanties and shacks. He was also fortunate to have a benefactor who sponsored him for the overseas tournaments which saw him become Dutch Open Champion three times. The role of a significant other in Papwa’s
29 Gary Jim Player, born November 1, 1935 is a South African professional golfer generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the game's history. Player is one of the most successful golfers in the history of the sport, ranking first in total professional wins, with at least a hundred and sixty-six, and tied fourth in major championship victories with nine. (Player, 2008)
30 Until 1991, the Group Areas Act ensured that most of the land in South Africa belonged to the whites. This apartheid law took away the rights of Africans, coloureds, and Indians to own or rent their own land.
33 life thus was an enormous factor in ensuring the opportunities to participate internationally. Although opportunities were presented, it was not enough to allow him to reach his optimum goal of becoming world champion. It was ultimately the laws of the land that prevented him from any further glory, and he became the unsung hero of non-white sport and a wasted one at that. In Papwa’s scenario the Group Areas Act forcibly moved him from his home, preventing him from having access to the golf course on which he played.
Thus poverty, political and social oppression, discrimination and social prejudice as well as the Group Areas Act, weighed heavily on Papwa’s progress but he seized the opportunities, not letting political injustices become a preoccupation and his passion for golf allowed him to achieve world class ranking in golf.
Jonty Rhodes
In contrast to the above story, the biography of Jonty Rhodes,31 a white sportsperson playing cricket in the apartheid era, was selected to bring into focus the distinct separateness in all spheres of the sportspersons’ lives. Jonty Rhodes was one of South Africa’s greatest cricket fielders during the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to Griffiths (1998), he was the eager, positive and brave face of South African cricket through the 1990s. Being an epileptic child, Jonty did not let this deter him on his road to fame. In fact, it helped him to be focused and even more determined to excel. For the final analysis, Griffiths (1998, p. 173) states that Jonty’s career cannot be measured by catches, runs and run-outs alone but “it must be measured in smiles, in sportsmanship and in a sheer zest for being decent, positive and honest”.
Jonty’s childhood afforded him the best opportunities to play sport. When building their own house in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, his father took care to construct a long corridor which stretched from one end to the other. This 20 metre corridor would become the multi-purpose cradle of the boy’s sporting career. It served variously as a soccer field, a
31 Jonty Rhodes born in 1969 has been hailed as the finest fielders in the world. Most important of all, he has proved you don’t have to be nasty to win. In a ruthless and rand-drenched age when professional sport has drifted far from its original ideals of decency, fair play and even temper, the consensus has emerged that ”nice guys come last”, that the only way to succeed is to be selfish, single-minded, to be tough and ruthless. Jonty Rhodes has emphatically proved otherwise. His story provides an example to all and offers hope that sport can continue to reflect the very best of human nature, rather than the worst (Griffiths, 1998).
34 tennis court, a hockey pitch, a long jump and triple jump pit and, most frequently of all, as an almost regulation size cricket net which offered pace and turn. “We played sport all the time, every sport, every day,” Rhodes recalls. “I can’t remember doing much else, and it was always team sports. My father was adamant that team sport represented a higher code than individual sport, and we were brought up along those lines”
(Griffiths, 1998, pp. 2-3). By the age of 14 Jonty was heading for Maritzburg College, a famous school in KZN with a fine reputation for sport.
Although Jonty had lived the first years of his life in a country bitterly divided by one of the most oppressive regimes of the 20th century, he understood little of politics or apartheid. Pietermaritzburg was sometimes known as ‘sleepy hollow’, and he had been utterly sheltered and reared in a sealed white cocoon. Achieving in sport was an easy road for Jonty as the laws of the country sheltered him from politics and he was given the best opportunities at home and school. This scenario demonstrates the ease with which white sportspersons during apartheid achieved fame in sports.
Playing sport as a white boy during the apartheid era in South Africa provided Jonty with every opportunity to succeed at sport. He attended the most prestigious school in KwaZulu-Natal and he was introduced to sports from childhood where his home was the cradle for sport. He was utterly shielded from politics and apartheid and his only obstacle which he admirable overcame was his epilepsy.
2.7.2 Herschelle Gibbs
Post-apartheid, the new laws of the country made it possible for talented players of colour who were lucky enough to be spotted to excel in sport. One of South Africa’s legendary sportspersons post-apartheid is Herschelle Gibbs, South Africa’s opening batsman during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Herschelle’s biography begins with the impact of apartheid on this family. The Gibbs family experienced the harshness of apartheid when forcibly moved due to the Group Areas Act. However, Herschelle is remarkably sanguine about apartheid and says race has never been a big issue for him. It was different in his parents’ days. His father, Herman Gibbs who was a promising
35 athlete, had his athletic career32 thwarted by apartheid, and he was prevented from achieving. These factors drove Herschelle’s father into ensuring that his children grew up in a good area, and sent Herschelle to Bishops, a private school in Cape Town.
Bryden (2003) in his book Herschelle: A Biography, relates the extraordinary steps that Herman Gibbs took to ensure that his son had a better start in life than him. In Herschelle’s case his father played a huge role as the significant other in ensuring that his son soundly set up for achieving success. The emphasis placed on finding the best areas and schools endorses the impact of social spaces in creating opportunities for talented players of colour in a divided society.
Although apartheid affected the Gibbs family in that they experienced the harshness of the Group Areas Act and Herschelle’s father was not able to realise his sporting dreams, post-apartheid brought renewed hope for talented non-white sportspersons. Herschelle was one on them and his father provided him with every opportunity to excel at sport by ensuring that he attended one of the most prestigious schools where his sporting talents were notices and perfected.
Selecting the biographies of these three legends provides an understanding of how differing contexts and backgrounds impacted on the lives of sportspersons in South Africa at various times, thereby enabling or preventing them from succeeding in sport.
The changes in South African society, brought their own uniqueness as to how all sportspersons, despite their race, could negotiate their social spaces from a racially divided country to a racially unified one, albeit if only in law. The next section interrogates transformation from apartheid to democracy, and how it unfolded and altered the course of sport in South African society.
32 Apartheid prevented whites and non-whites from competing on the same sports fields. Herman Gibbs’ athletics career, while he was a student teacher at Hewat College of Education, was under the auspices of the South African Council on Sport (SACOS), a ‘non-racial’ organisation vehemently opposed to any form of collaboration with apartheid structures. When a ‘multi-national’ meeting was announced for the Green Point Stadium in 1972, to be run on a new synthetic track, he was keen to participate but he was asked by SACOS, “How can you even think of this?”
In that year, he had clocked 10,6 on the cinder surface of the Green Point Track, across the road from the stadium. In a SACOS meeting on the ‘tartan’ track at the stadium he was given an official time of 10,6 again, but he is convinced he made better use of the faster surface. “Two of the three stopwatches had me at 10,2 but the third said 10,6.
Normally, if two times out of the three are the same they took those two times but the referee didn’t believe it so they gave me 10,6” The faster time was the qualifying standard for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Even though South Africa was excluded from the Games because of apartheid, the achievement would have given him great satisfaction (Bryden, 2003, p. 10).
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