Between the 60s and the 80s, Shakes’ was the
countries best black batsmen, on paper and in person. Perhaps he could have been as good as Barry
Richards, who’d been reared and nurtured on the best facilities available in
the country and was coached by some of the best players in the world.
Shake’s, however, was forced to leave Natal at
six, in 1954 by order to live in Volksrust in Transvaal, where he had 3 teachers
in his school. His father Ahmed had been
born in the Transvaal, and under the Immigration Act of 1905 which restricted
Indians from moving between provinces he had to go back. Ahmed had married Hanifa in Durban and had
wished to stay there with her sister and his brother and their new family, but
was forced to leave after a series of attempts to find a solution to their
woes. It was a cruel system, which wore
heavily on them and there was a deep sadness when they were forced to pack up.
“Mahomed?”
“Yes … what is it?”
“There’s someone at the door!”
“Why do they always have to come so early, at 3 ‘o
clock in the morning? Don’t they know we
have children? They don’t have any
feeling these people. They just want our
land, to chase us back to India so they can take everything we built.”
“Shush ma, it’s not the time now.”
“Tell them that!”
Shakes could hear shuffling, while his father got
out of bed, found his slippers and made his way to the door. He had a dugu
behind the door in his right hand but placed it next to the wall, but within
reach, after he’d looked out the window.
It was cold. In these parts of
Natal, in "cane country", the valleys held cold pockets which could freeze the
water dripping out of a tap, forming a long icicle to the floor by
morning. He knew who it was. They always came at this hour to make the
point that you should feel harassed.
These were the herders, they herded people out of their homes and onto
long journeys to faraway places, often away from family.
“Hey Sammy!”
“Open up man! We can’t stand here all morning
waiting for you. I saw you in the window there!”
He turned to his partner and muttered under his
breath,
“These focken coolies kry geen slaap met al daai
Kerrie. Hulle’s te besig om te kak!”
(“These coolies get no sleep with all that
curry. They’re too busy shitting
themselves”)
Mahomed opened the door and felt the freshness of
the morning air. It was crisp and clean,
marred only by the occasion of two policemen, dressed in suits, who looked like
they’d been up drinking all night. Their
ties were loosened, and their pants had creased in various junctions,
indicating long periods of sitting or lying down. The one policeman had a smudge of red to the
right of his collar along the side of his neck.
He looked quite happy with himself, and held a piece of paper in his
hand, which he waved in Mahomeds face,
“You see this?
You know what it means? It means
you must get out of Natal!”
“You,
and your brother!”
“It means you have to leave before the end of
this month. It’s official. I don’t know why I have to keep coming here
over and over again. This is the last
time! Next time we come here you will be under arrest … you hear me?”
He leaned forward now, peering at Mahomed through
glazed eyes. Mahomed reached out and
wordlessly accepted the paper. He took a
look at it briefly and scanned over the page.
“It says here, that I have to vacate the province
by 1955”
“Look here, don’t get funny with me eh? I’m tired, I’m not here to put up with your
shit. All you coolies have a story. What’s the story now?”
Mahomed passed the piece of paper back to
him. He looked at it, squinted for a
while and looked over at his partner, “Hennie, can’t you fucking type man? You put next year’s date on this thing!”
“What … oh shit, never mind, I’ll do it again!”
“Should I be expecting you tomorrow at this time
again?”
“What? Did
you say something coolie? I don’t
remember asking you to speak! We’ll be back whenever the hell we want and you
can be damn sure that you’re not going to be here in a month’s time!”
Mahomed asked them with a straight face, deadpan
and person-less in its gaze. He didn’t
want to antagonise them. It was best to
play a simpleton role and say as little as possible. He didn’t trust the whites anymore. In the old days things had been okay, but now
there was a new more sinister force at work.
They were feared and revered and expected it of everyone.
“Could you perhaps drop off the next notice at my
shop during the day? I’m sure it would
be easier for you too …”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry, it’s just that my wife is worried
about disturbing the children this way - They have to go to school!”
“Your wife?”
he looked at Mahomed mockingly. “Tell
that Mary to do as you say and not to try to get you into shit eh? Our job is not
under your command. I’m not a patient
man and you’ll find that out if we have to arrest you. We will see you again when we are ready with
your documents. You should start packing
soon – and your brother too!”
The policeman spoke as though he was the
law. In reality, this is exactly what
was achieved by the repeated and systematic use of the police to enforce
obscene political and economic agendas rather than to protect and serve
society. Many individuals became the
face of the law and were actually criminals within the law.
The Immigration Act had placed severe restraints
on an Indian community which generally thrives on interaction, economic, social
and cultural. It was a way of trying to
address ‘The Indian Question’, much like the hitherto ‘Native Question’. White settlers were equally afraid of brown
settlers as they were of natives. This
is why brown settlers are not the same, even though they are often viewed in
that light. While they may have no
customary rights, they do bring a custom of their own, which takes root and
finds a place amongst the already existing customs.
In Volksrust, they settled next to each other
again, brother and brother, sister and sister, and started up a new business. They would live here until 1962, whereupon a
change in legislation allowed them to move back to Natal. They did so immediately. It was more than just a will to go back to a
place full of family; it was also to right the grievous wrong that was done
against them as a family. Shake’s had no
formal instruction in cricket as a result until, at 14, he returned to Durban.
Here, he attended high school in the city, at
Orient High. The Orient High school
playground lies behind Curries fountain, with only a wall raised high up at the
back of the playground as an obstacle, overlooked by the back of a large
stadium score board. The classroom
windows look out onto Greyville race-course and Sydenham road, at the foothills
of which Orient High School found itself.
At first, he found Natal Indians a bit
strange. Their accents were different
and they spoke faster. He learnt quickly
about the school and was chosen for the first team while he was still
sixteen. There was no coach for the team
like in most Indian schools, even over
the next thirty years. Shakes would
spend hours reading and searching for cricketing books and advice. He knew that knowledge was essential for
success. He’d learnt that from his
father.
Later, he played for local cricket teams which
were multi-racial. He would always
refuse to play for a team which only accepted one colour or race of player and
not another, even if they were an Indians only team. This mould had been cast by his fore-runner,
Ali Parker. Parker was already a legend,
having played for a whole variety of brown teams; Indian, coloured and
Malay. He probably only never played for
a black team because he didn’t look black enough, but he’d set the precedent
for Shakes when it came to integrated sport.
Sporting symbols were powerful symbols for the public under apartheid
and Shake’s walked in his steps, even taking over the coveted captaincy of
Natal Province when Ali would retire.
Shakes was the provincial captain of Natal Schools and Orient high from
1966 to 1969, when Natal won the inter-provincial cup for the first time in its
history. There were the makings of a
legend in him, but it was to be of a different kind. The world would complicate his plans, his
desires to play cricket would have to play second fiddle to his desire to be an
equal.
“Equality first!” would be his essential
consistent message throughout his career.
I guess he also
had a certain bloody-mindedness about him which hung loosely upon his frame …
which Fatima loved about him. He was a man after her own heart. He
knew where to stand his ground and where to give way.
He was elevated to great heights in the local
Indian newspapers and community and was widely known among non-whites in
three provinces. However, the white press
never even heard of him until 1972, until he attended a coaching session at
Natal University, along with a few other players. It was controversial to accept white help at
this stage in the seventies, when the struggle had intensified and black
consciousness and student uprisings had grown to an explosive state. The Natal Mercury reported it as if they’d
found diamonds in the ghetto. It hid the
fact that there were so many other players and so many ordinary cricket loving
fans who’d thrown their support into the survival of the sport for their
children and others. He felt
disappointed at how they’d represented it, even though they’d mentioned him
favourably. They were pulling the old
trick; they wanted to isolate and elevate a few token black players as a
‘shining example of their own nobility’ towards these underclass races which so
desperately required their charity.
“Fucking goras,”
he thought, “always the fucking same!
They steal everything we fucking own and then we have to beg for scraps from them. They’re thieves, nothing better, nothing
less! I’m not their fucking coolie – they can get someone else to go play in
their ‘tea-garden’ games with the natives for entertainment. I’m a professional, I want to compete!”
His mind turned to an earlier meeting he’d had
with some senior SACBOC members who’d told him with regret and urgency that
there was ‘no future’ for him in South Africa.
The white fullahs didn’t want to budge.
For all the modernisation and nobility they claimed it was just another
rue of theirs; something they could hold up as an example of a happy country to
the world outside, which was still largely inactive in its response to
Apartheid. White South Africa was doing
well and didn’t need Shakes – he would have to play abroad if he wanted to get
anywhere.
In 1972 white South Africans were living
large. The economy was strong (at over 2
pounds to the rand) and they could afford anything and go anywhere in the
world. The by then forcibly removed
minions had been forced out into the townships, Bantustans and homelands,
limbless coloured and Indian suburbs and a Nazi styled ‘lebensraum’ had been accomplished
with great gusto. They were happy. They were comfortable. They had wars and fears, but they were rich
enough to continue them with impunity.
Nothing could shake them from their arrogance. Southern Africa was to be of their
design.
Ironically, they benefited out of the cold war by
pretending to be a considerable anti-communist power. In actual fact, the international community
had armed a Nazi state on the tip of Africa and charged it with ‘bringing
stability’ to the region. Even if it was
a Nazi outpost, to the west, white Nazi’s were still better than black
communists. The Nazis went ahead and
created large social infrastructures and state organs to administrate them –
actually a white socialism.
Armed with
deterministic vision they recreated the landscapes, skyscapes and peoplescapes
of the country by the pen and the gun, while the western world turned its head
away, preferring white capitalist Nazis over black skinned communists, even
though those black-skinned communists represented the majority of their peoples
at the time. Much like Vietnam, their
cold war ‘help’ was un-invited and resulted in a repressive State which
presided over 1.5 million deaths and 4 million homeless in the Southern African
region. Apartheid was declared a ‘crime
against humanity’ by the UN in 1973. Everybody knew about it; it’s just that
nobody could be bothered to make the effort to do anything substantial about it
because,
“Hell, if we need Nazis to fight off the
communists, then so be it!”
Without the red-fear that gripped the capitalist
world Apartheid would probably not have existed. It probably wouldn’t have got very far
without a considerably well-armed state that was propped up and armed
by countries that are foreign to the continent (like Israel is today).
In 1976 all hell would break loose when black
school children would be shot and slaughtered indiscriminately across the
country, starting with the Soweto uprisings.
The apartheid government would mow down the children in Soweto like
skittles, and it seemed like a game to them; firing indiscriminately into
crowds and groups of people where-ever they saw fit. They would drag whole school loads of
children off to jail and regularly shot and killed children with live
ammunition, claiming (very much like Israeli soldiers do) that ‘stones and rocks’
were being thrown at them. A generation
of criminalised children developed a deep hatred, along with their parents and
the communities, for the police and the army.
The hate already ran so deep that communities often preferred their own
internal forms of vigilante policing to the police itself. This was also responsible for the rise of
many gangs and protection rackets in the communities accompanied by the spread
of weapons, gambling, black-market goods and alcohol and drugs, as various
groups, whether gangs, families or rings of businessmen took up the challenge
of control and supply.
Apartheid was not just enforced by the Afrikaner;
it was endorsed by the west in its double language of duplicitous
diplomacy. Everybody wanted South
African gold, diamonds, fruit, wine, maize, stock, minerals, etc. Why sully their relationships over another
‘African’ problem? In a sense it was
true. The Afrikaners were settlers with
no traceable origin and place to return to and were thus Africans – they had
nowhere to go! It was thus just another African dictatorship which they had to
deal with! They happened to be white and capitalist enough – that made it
easier. The Afrikaner, originally a
farmer, a boer; a person who farmed the earth and lived by knowing its ways,
would now be exposed to the onslaught of the American capitalist dream, without
even a real democracy.
“Yelll;
this was nice!”
But it would ruin them too, creating generations
of racist ignorant newly elevated white working class yobs who would grow
further and further from their origins, creating myths and legends of their
origins already having initially stolen the patois language of slaves and
calling it their own to start with. The
first written Afrikaans is written in Arabic script, by Malay craftsmen,
artisans or slaves. The Afrikaners had
hijacked a language in the quest for a valid sense of nationalism and used it
to define themselves. The fact that
millions of coloured people also spoke Afrikaans didn’t cross their minds in
any significant way. They were ‘mixed’,
but if you were light enough and had straight hair then you could qualify as
white - it was a programme of genetic correction. This would tear coloured families apart,
leaving some parts stranded in ghettoes and prisons and some parts or
individuals elevated to ‘white’ status.
White families too would hide and disguise their mixed looking children,
developing deep psychologies of denial, entrenching further the social lie in
their minds further; that being white was a culture and not just a colour.
In 1972, Shakes would leave South Africa to
England. His overseas fair was funded by
a game played in support of his talent by team-mates and adversaries
alike. Even though he played for Natal,
the Transvaal Cricket Board organised the fund-raising event in his
honour. Non-white players were easily
united into a cause. Their everyday
lives gave them a deep empathy for players trapped within this everyday system
of robbery. They were desperate to prove
to the world that they shouldn’t be ignored, that they weren’t worthless, that
only the South African government hid them from view and that ultimately it hid
all of us from view. It was easy to
unite when the enemy was so clear. It
was not without penalty though, and Shakes would learn that these attitudes
weren’t only confined to South Africa.
In England, although employed as a club professional he would live
through the unfamiliar cold and rain in a leaky caravan until the manager took
pity on him and took him into his home.
The conditions were unfamiliar but he still played well, averaging 30
and making 720 runs that season. He was
hard to hold down, even under difficult conditions.
His contract wasn’t renewed though, and after
facing bowling from the groundsmen (an intentional slight) at Lancashire tryouts he could see that
there was little hope for him. He had
lived in Natal and understood the English manner of humiliating you without
direct comment. He felt humiliated, and
he left, as they wished. With him went
the dreams and hopes of a child, a man and a community of well-wishers who’d
come to adore and believe in him.
When Fatima had told him she was pregnant there
was a moment of joy in him. He knew that
now there were only two people who needed him for his real person, his wife and
the baby in her womb.
“I can’t feed them with cricket,” he thought,
sitting on the plane home from England.
Even in the plane cabin he felt the
claustrophobic atmosphere that a mixed group of South Africans always had. They were all more or less silent, nobody
wanted to hear what each other really had to say. Banal conversations, alluding to anything
other than politics filled up the plane in a low background murmur. Only a loud Zulu voice could be heard
laughing away somewhere. Looks of
disdain passed from the white female passengers to each other. They curled their noses up as if they
expected to smell him in his voice.
***First posted on 31 July 2016. Thereafter lightly edited.
