PATRICK BULGER: Using sport to stoke division is just not cricket
For politicians, and especially the EFF, the spectre of racial enmity is the fuel that powers this red-clad hate machine
When SA’s first apartheid prime minister, DF Malan, was preparing to watch SA’s cricket team in battle against England in the 1948-49 Test series, he asked a colleague what the score was before he left for Newlands cricket ground. Told the score, he is reported to have said: “Is dit hulle Engelse of onse Engelse?” (“Is that our English or their English?”) The point he was making was that the South African team, though nominally South African, was still largely English-speaking and, therefore, not quite the real thing, not Afrikaner enough to qualify as genuinely South African.
A colleague’s retelling of this tart little anecdote came to mind when reading some of the reactions to the Springboks’ stunning victory last weekend. (That is hulle Engelse, Dr Malan!)..
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