CHRISTIAAN BESTER: David Teeger fiasco harks back to apartheid SA

David Teeger completed his schooling at King Edward VII School in 2023. He is an exceptionally talented cricketer and was appointed to captain the Proteas at the ICC Men’s U19 Cricket World Cup. He is also a Jew and practises orthodox Judaism. His Jewish identity is central to his person.

At the Jewish Achiever Awards ceremony on October 22, to which he had been invited as an awards nominee, Teeger was announced as the winner of the “Rising Star Award”. He did not expect to win, and hadn’t prepared a speech, but made a few impromptu remarks that included the phrase, “And I’d like to dedicate it to the state of Israel and to every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora.”

Teeger did not expect his remarks to be quoted outside the awards ceremony, but he was quoted in the SA Jewish Report. His remarks were met with strong criticism from various quarters. Cricket SA (CSA) and Central Gauteng Lions received complaints that his comments may have been in breach of the CSA and Lions code of conduct, which included complaints from the Palestinian Solidarity Alliance and the Lenasia Cricket Club.

CSA appointed Wim Trengove SC, one of SA’s foremost legal minds, as an independent adjudicator to determine whether Teeger’s statements were in breach of the CSA and Lions codes of conduct.

On December 5 Trengove found that Teeger did not contravene any of the codes. He held that Teeger did not condone or promote genocide or any other international crime, but was speaking as a young Jewish man to members of his own community who understood his very personal tribute.

Freedom of expression

Trengove found that while his comments were offensive to some as they may disagree with Teeger, his right to freedom of expression requires those who disagree with him to respect Teeger’s opinions however offensive they might regard them.

Yet on January 12 CSA announced that Teeger would no longer captain the team at the tournament.  He had been asked to step down a few days earlier but refused. That after sports minister Zizi Kodwa addressed the team and, according to the Rapport newspaper, included remarks that spoke directly to Teeger without mentioning him by name.

There is little doubt that relieving Teeger of the captaincy of the Proteas U19 team is politically motivated. If there is indeed a security threat the logical approach would be to take steps to improve security, lest CSA allows itself to be intimidated by opportunists and thugs who have no place in our democracy, which places a considerable premium on tolerance for divergent views.

The irony is that Teeger is still in the side — will that threat now dissipate simply because he is no longer captain? That is hard to believe. It brings me back to a painful part of our history, as the Teeger story has striking parallels to one from a different era. You may know the story, but it needs to be told. Again.

Harking back to apartheid

There was a man of coloured and Portuguese ancestry by the name of Basil D’Oliveira. He was born in Cape Town in 1931 at the foot of Signal Hill into a poor Catholic family. He showed remarkable cricketing talent from childhood, but apartheid meant he couldn’t play first class cricket in SA. 

Apartheid meant the Newlands faithful never saw him bat on a hot New Year’s Day as Peter Pollock ran in from the Kelvin Grove end. Apartheid meant he could never grace the world stage with the likes of Barry Richards, Mike Procter or Ali Bacher.

Distraught by his lack of opportunities in SA, D’Oliveira headed to England and played in the English Lancashire leagues from 1960, and soon the English county Worcestershire offered him a contract. He made a century on debut for Worcestershire and by 1964 had qualified for England, making his debut in June of 1966 against the West Indies at Lords in a team that included Geoffrey Boycott, Tom Graveney and Colin Cowdrey; names that would define Test cricket for a generation or more.

It did not take D’Oliveira long to find his niche as a middle-order batsman, and by the end of the summer he had made impressive scores of 76 and 88 against the touring West Indies at Trent Bridge and Old Trafford. Less than a year later, on June 8 1967, he scored his first century against India at Lord’s, a team he would ironically never have been allowed to play against had he remained in SA, even had he been white.

By 1968, the question was whether D’Oliveira would be selected for England’s tour of SA, as his form in the lead-up had been poor, particularly during a series in the West Indies. But he silenced his critics with a blistering 158 against Australia at The Oval days before the squad would be announced.

Political pressure

While bizarrely omitted from the touring team due to political pressure from SA, his century against Australia notwithstanding, he was a late call up to the squad after Tom Cartwright withdrew due to injury. Upon learning of his inclusion in the team in September 1968 the government of B.J. Vorster announced that the tour would be cancelled were D’Oliveira to play. 

The tour did not go ahead, and the international condemnation of SA’s position was widespread. The rest, as they say, is history — the Vorster government’s position on D’Oliveira contributed to SA’s sporting isolation, which would endure until late 1991 when Clive Rice led his team onto the field at Eden Gardens, Calcutta. D’Oliveira continued to play for England for another four years, scoring prolifically against Australia and Pakistan.

We know that sport and politics cannot be separated, and it would be naive to assume that a distinction can be maintained, but after the Trengove hearing cleared Teeger of any wrongdoing following a thorough investigation, the matter should have been considered resolved. Instead, a form of punishment has been dished out because CSA did not agree with the outcome.

We are left with the distinct impression that the men in suits and their political masters consider it wholly unpalatable that a Jew should be allowed to captain a SA cricket team on the world stage given the government’s position on the Palestinian question (which entails regarding Hamas not to be a terrorist organisation).

Our current leaders may not see it immediately, but they have more in common with the Vorster government and the people all those years ago that played their part in denying D’Oliveira a chance to tour the country of his birth than would make them comfortable. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same, with history serving as a constant barometer of how far we have progressed — or stagnated in this instance.

• Bester is an advocate at the Johannesburg bar.