Searchlight the international anti-fascist Magazine

Author: Nick Lowles | Date: April 2001

Blood Money

Eleven years ago world cricket was besmirched by a group of English cricketers who defied their own sport’s instructions and toured apartheid South Africa. Ignoring protests from the black cricketing nations and British press, and the outrage of most cricketing fans, the 16 “rebels” took the apartheid cash and played. It can now be revealed that the tour was partly financed by a secret South African government fund established to promote apartheid and undermine its opponents.

Despite the tour organisers’ insistence at the time that “no direct government subsidy was involved in the tour at all,” Searchlight has uncovered evidence that the English cricketers personally benefited from the apartheid regime. Their entire tax bill, over £50,000, was paid off out of a South African Secret Service account that also funded pro-apartheid propaganda and covert operations, which according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “led directly and indirectly to gross human rights violations”.

While the cricketers claimed that politics had no place in sport, the apartheid regime used this highly political tour to prop up its political system.

The rebel tour was the culmination of 20 years’ lobbying by the apartheid regime after its exclusion from international cricket in 1970, following two high profile incidents which rocked English cricket. In 1968 a brilliant black English cricketer was dropped from a South African tour in a decision widely believed to have been motivated by the English cricket authorities’ desire not to upset their hosts. The fallout from this and Peter Hain’s “Stop the Seventy Tour” the following year forced the English cricketing establishment to ban South Africa. The Chairman of Selectors at the time was Alec Bedser, who later became a founding member of the right-wing Freedom Association, a group that later received funding from the South African government. The Chairman of the MCC was Arthur Gilligan, a former member of the British Union of Fascists.

For many years the South Africans actively enticed the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) and the MCC, the two governing bodies of the English game, into arranging a full tour of the country. Despite the eagerness of many in English cricket to renew sporting contacts, these attempts were repeatedly blocked by the black cricketing nations, particularly the West Indies and India, which threatened to ostracise England if any tour took place. In April 1989 the International Cricket Council agreed that no one should be selected for international matches who was in “sporting contact” with the apartheid state.

Many within English cricket reacted with fury to what they perceived to be “blackmail” from the black cricketing countries. David Firth, editor of the cricket monthly, Wisden, greeted the news with considerable bitterness. “Cricket, the sacrificial lamb, has had its throat cut at the alter of political expediency.”

The Freedom Association boss, Norris McWhirter, also joined the fray. “Foreign governments must be taught that whatever restrictions they place on their citizens, we still live in a free country.” McWhirter was keenly supported by John Carlisle, MP for Luton North and a strong supporter of South Africa, who once said: “the system of apartheid in South Africa has worked in terms of governments”. As long as one is white, he neglected to mention.

Mike Gatting, England’s former captain, must have rubbed his hands with glee at the ICC decision. “This will mean that there will be even more money knocking around to play in South Africa,” he was quoted as saying. Four months later, he and 15 other English cricketers, including nine who had played for their country, grabbed the thirty pieces of silver enthusiastically. While the national press virtually unanimously condemned the tour, the cricketing world was far more supportive. “They are in no way rebels,” remarked the BBC cricket commentator Brian Johnson.

Like many who wanted sporting links with South Africa, Gatting argued for a separation between politics and sport. “I know very little about apartheid,” he claimed. “I do believe there shouldn’t be any politics in sport.”

That, however, was not the view of most of the public and as a direct result of the general outcry over the proposed tour, two black cricketers who had originally intended to travel pulled out.

Yet fellow rebel Graham Gooch did see a political dimension in his desire to play in South Africa, although in his case this was his right to work where he wanted. “We had taken up the right of an Englishman to earn a living where and in whatever legal way he chooses, which is normally one very good reason for being English,” he said of an earlier tour.

The tour began in late January, but even before the rebels left England there were protests. As they gathered for their pre-tour photograph, anti-apartheid activists disrupted the shoot. There were more protesters waiting for them at Johannesburg airport on their arrival and, despite the police using dogs, whips and teargas to clear the demonstrators, Gatting remarked “as far as I’m concerned, there were a few people singing and dancing and that was it”. In their hotel on their first night, the black staff refused to serve them. It was a sign of things to come.

Police used dogs and bullets to clear thousands of demonstrators a few days later, to which another rebel commented: “The demonstration was a mile and half from the ground. That wasn’t much use to anyone, was it?”

Everywhere the English scabs went, the protests followed. Even when the organisers gave away thousands of free tickets in the townships, the grounds remained empty. Outside there was almost constant trouble. When a young black man showed Gatting his buckshot wounds, the cricketer replied: “It’s nothing to do with us”. He later told reporters, “He said he was shot on the way from a peaceful demonstration. That’s bollocks.”

The tour was a disaster. Despite switching venues to favourable areas, the team continued to be dogged by protests. In the middle of the tour, the government declared the “unbanning” of the ANC, PAC and the Communist Party. Humiliated, organiser Ali Bacher cut short the tour, to which The Mirror gloated: “Mike Gatting and his jackals of cricket are coming home early with their bats between their legs”.

Less well known to the outside world was the secret funding given to the players by the apartheid regime, which paid off their tax bill of over £50,000. According to the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “it was explained if the English players were to do this favour for the South African Cricket Union, they should be given the maximum financial reward to help them through the lean years that would follow, since the tour was bound to result in reprisals and losses for the English players”.

Worse still, this money came from a Secret Service account that between 1978 and 1994 distributed R2.75 billion (£275 million) to fund some of the worst atrocities carried out by the racist regime. According to the Act that established the fund in 1978, “the money in these accounts was to be utilised in connection with services of a confidential nature, with the functional minister being able to approve secret projects subject to conditions and directions as deemed necessary”.

Among the projects funded by the Secret Service account were:
Project Coast, “a programme involving chemical and biological warfare initiatives”;
Project Marion, which funded and supported Inkatha, which, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “is shown to have contributed directly to the perpetration of gross human rights violations”;
Operation Pacman, the secret funding of the International Freedom Foundation, which was designed to increase support for apartheid internationally and undermine the sanctions campaign;
Project Byronic, which funded and supported the UNITA guerrillas in Angola, who were widely condemned by the international community for being responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the deaths of over half a million people.

This secret fund, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported, “was used to promote a political climate that led directly and indirectly to gross Human Rights violations”.

“Most projects”, it continued, “appear to be related to the establishment of front organisations or actions aimed at countering the activities of the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, primarily in the sphere of information, communication, disinformation, propaganda and counter-propaganda. Other projects were aimed at circumventing sanctions.”

For the apartheid state, the English rebel tour was a huge propaganda coup, designed to split the international campaign of isolation and to satisfy the appetite of white South Africans for international sport, so retaining their full support for the regime. Secretly subsidising the trip for the scab tourists was a small price to pay for the wider political goals. That the tour ended so disastrously for the organisers was a compliment to the thousands of black people who joined the protests and stayed away from the matches. To many white South Africans it was yet further proof that the apartheid regime was no longer invincible.

To date, few of the rebel tourists have apologised for their part in the tour, while many in the English cricket establishment still cannot comprehend the anger most people felt towards the tour. They remain blinded by ignorance, prejudice and greed, all coupled with a closer affinity to the white-run South Africa than to the international community, which included the black cricketing countries. That the rebel cricketers personally benefited from a secret fund established by the apartheid regime specifically to prop up the racist state and undermine its opponents, up to and including mass murder, is testament to the whole sordid affair. The notion that politics plays no part in sport is exposed as a myth.