‘The race for supremacy’: the politics of ‘white’ sport in South Africa, 1870–1910

Abstract

In line with policies of imperialism, Britons of the late Victorian era believed themselves to be superior culturally, economically and politically when compared with other groups of people. This led to a promotion of things British, including sport, in the new regions of the Empire. In South Africa, however, this imposition of culture alienated an Afrikaans population, who, despite their European origins, were now as much a part of South Africa as the other groups that inhabited this area. Based on research conducted in South African archives over the past decade, this article examines the early development of ‘white’ sport in South Africa and its link to the politics of the late nineteenth century. Although a significant amount of work has concentrated on ‘race’ relations between black, coloured and white participants in the history of South African sport, this investigation reveals how the progress of sports such as cricket, rugby and soccer was tied to an antagonistic relationship between the two dominant white factions – the Afrikaners and the British. As such, this article marks an original contribution to the field.

Notes

¹ See Tozer, ‘Cricket, School and Empire’, 157.

² Fundamentally, Harold Perkin refers to the Empire within ‘Britain's century of 1815–1914’, a time in which Britain should be seen ‘less as a narrow Imperial power and more as an international super power, its political, economic and cultural tentacles reaching out to most corners of the earth.’ Perkin, ‘Teaching the Nations How to Play’, 214.

³ See Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 303–5.

⁴ See Cain & Hopkins, British Imperialism, 303–5

⁵ Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 153.

⁶ Birley, The Willow Wand, 85–6.

⁷ Odendaal, ‘South Africa's Black Victorians’, 193.

⁸ Reader's Digest, Illustrated History of South Africa, 245. By the late nineteenth century, distinct cultural groups had emerged within South Africa and sport reflected this racial division. Apart from the two white groups (British and Afrikaners), there existed the Coloured population (often called Cape Malays) predominantly found in the Cape; migrant workers brought to Natal from the Indian subcontinent, as well as the indigenous African peoples present throughout the country. For general historiography, see De Kiewiet, A History of South Africa, Thompson, A History of South Africa, and Davenport, South Africa.

⁹ Reader's Digest, South Africa's Yesterdays, 233.

¹⁰ Black and Nauright, Rugby and the South African Nation, 22.

¹¹ Streak, The Afrikaner as Viewed by the English 1795–1854.

¹² Traditions that were based on the theology of John Calvin. For a detailed account of the Calvinist origins of the Afrikaner civil religion, see Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom.

¹³ The Jameson Raid occurred over New Year 1896 and was the failed attempt by Dr Leander Starr Jameson and a small group of imperialist followers to invade the Transvaal and invoke an uprising amongst the Uitlanders (foreign workers) against the Afrikaans Government of President Paul Kruger. Backed by Cecil Rhodes, the failure of the raid brought embarrassment to the British authorities in South Africa. See Johnson Barker, A Concise Dictionary of the Boer War, 69–71.

¹⁴ Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa, 24.

¹⁵ Walker, The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 632.

¹⁶ Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket, 7.

¹⁷ Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket, 13.

¹⁸ Ponton and Gill, Introduction to Politics, 5–6.

¹⁹ Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket, 10.

²⁰ Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket, 10

²¹ Greyling, ‘From Hyper-Imperialist to Super-Afrikaner’.

²² Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 285.

²³ Booth, The Race Game, 28.

²⁴ Booth, The Race Game, 29.

²⁵ See also Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 212–15.

²⁶ See also Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 212–15

²⁷ In 1872, the Cape Colony was granted its own responsible government by the British. John Molteno became the first premier, with four other ministers, and the powers of the Governor were greatly restricted. The Cape had at last become a self-governing colony after years of agitation. See Standard Encyclopedia of Southern Africa , 51 and Walker, A History of Southern Africa, 340–43. Twenty years earlier, in 1852, the Colony had been granted representative government by the British Parliament. A Legislative Assembly (lower house) consisted of 46 members, elected for five years by all adult male British subjects. A Legislative Council (upper house) had 15 members, 7 from the Eastern and 8 from the Western Cape, elected for 10 years. The Executive Council consisted of the Governor and the chief officials. This was the first step towards responsible government.

²⁸ Cited in Laurence, The Life of John X. Merriman, 13.

²⁹ Port Elizabeth Telegraph, December 1891, cited in Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond, 120.

³⁰ As English-speaking liberals advocated the absorption of an educated African elite into ‘civilized’ society, many Britons and Afrikaners remained fearful of mass-based native participation in the white arena. The liberals saw the involvement of the black electorate merely as a safety valve rather than an open invitation to the masses. See Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 289. According to Davenport, the ‘Afrikaner Bond made no serious attempt to win African supporters until the Assembly elections of 1898, and even then its achievements were not impressive.’ Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond, 120.

³¹ The Parliamentary Voters Registration Bill or ‘Black Franchise Bill’ was introduced by Gordon Sprigg's government in 1887. Backed by the Afrikaner Bond, the Bill, based on stringent property qualifications for electors, effectively reduced the number of eligible black voters. See Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond, 118–23 and Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 285–90.

³² Quoted in Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 286.

³³ ‘If there had been none but English in the House the native question would have been settled long ago’ declared an assured Cecil Rhodes shortly after the franchise Bill was passed. Ibid.

³⁴ For British imperialists there were problems in applying Herbert Spencer's theories of racial hierarchy to the system of white supremacy in South Africa. As Giliomee points out, some English-speakers ‘tended to see the struggle for survival in South Africa not only as one between the white and black races, but also as one in which the British or Anglo-Saxon race had demonstrated its superiority to the Afrikaners as an indolent, inert and unenlightened people for the most part’. The Afrikaners, 287. For an examination of the race theories of Spencer and others during this time, see Graves Jr, The Emperor's New Clothes, Parts 2–3.

³⁵ Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 286.

³⁶ Blacks naturally saw the franchise Bill as an attempt to squash their political voice. The founding of the Afrikaner Bond in 1880 had spurred the founding of the Imbumba Yama Nyama in Port Elizabeth, a black political organization that claimed to be ‘the true Afrikaner Bond’. Hofmeyr's organization, it said, was only a ‘Boeren Bond’ catering merely for the white Afrikaner. Despite hostility from white politicians, the new organization achieved considerable success in black voter registration. Around this time, John Tengu Jabavu also established the first independent Xhosa-language newspaper, Imvo Zabantsundu. This publication campaigned for black representation in both the political and sporting arenas. An advocate of cricket and British rule, Jabavu wrote that the black vote had been used in the best interests of the country, and added that it had been steadily and consistently ‘employed to strengthen the English, or the party of justice and right in the country’. Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond, 121.

³⁷ See Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness.

³⁸ See Booth, The Race Game.

³⁹ Stoddart, ‘Sport, Cultural Imperialism’.

⁴⁰ Warner, Cricket in Many Climes, 176.

⁴¹ Odendaal, ‘South Africa's Black Victorians’, 197–8.

⁴² Odendaal, ‘South Africa's Black Victorians’, 197–8

⁴³ For a discussion on this, see Archer & Bouillon, The South African Game, 22–4.

⁴⁴ See Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, ix.

⁴⁵ The struggle for Africa occurred largely in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, but intense public interest in the ‘penetration’ and ‘opening up’ of the supposedly Dark Continent began, according to Brantlinger, ‘seven or eight decades earlier with the abolitionist movement and culminating in Thomas Fowell Buxton's ill-fated Niger Expedition of 1841. Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the sources of the White Nile in 1856–58 and the publication of David Livingstone's bestselling “Missionary Travels” in 1857 initiated the final era of African exploration, which led to the carving up of the entire continent into European-ruled colonies and protectorates.’ Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, 28.

⁴⁶ Quoted in Churchill, ‘A History of the English-Speaking Peoples’, 121.

⁴⁷ Cited in Holt, Sport and the British, 6.

⁴⁸ See Archer and Bouillon, The South African Game.

⁴⁹ McDevitt, May the Best Man Win, 111.

⁵⁰ McDevitt, May the Best Man Win, 111

⁵¹ Quoted in Allen, Cricket's Silver Lining, 241.

⁵² Grace, Cricketing Reminiscences, 349.

⁵³ Grace, Cricketing Reminiscences, 344.

⁵⁴ See Allen, ‘Logan's Golden Age’.

⁵⁵ See Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket, 47.

⁵⁶ See Allen, ‘Logan's Golden Age’.

⁵⁷ For further analysis of this, see Allen, ‘Logan's Golden Age’, and Allen, ‘Cricket's Laird’.

⁵⁸ For useful contemporary accounts of the emergence of rugby in South Africa, see Parker, South African Sports and Platnauer, ‘Rugby Football’.

⁵⁹ Quoted in South Africa, 20 June 1891, 557.

⁶⁰ See Allen, ‘Tours of Reconciliation’.

⁶¹ South African Rugby Board, Minutes, 6 May 1903, 193.

⁶² The Sportsman, 16 June 1903, 6.

⁶³ It was at the start of the 1906 tour that the British press conferred the nickname ‘Springboks’ upon the touring South African team. See Platnauer, The Springbokken Tour in Great Britain. Ironically, it was in British prisoner of war camps that many Afrikaners were exposed to rugby for the first time and having taken to the game, began to excel at it in the years following the conflict. See Van der Merwe, ‘Sport and Games’ and Allen, ‘Beating Them at Their Own Game’.

⁶⁴ Quoted in Piggott, The Springboks, 96.

⁶⁵ Quoted in Piggott, The Springboks, 106.

⁶⁶ See Alegi, Laduma!

⁶⁷ Vincent, Historical Research, 282.

⁶⁸ Vincent, Historical Research, 282

⁶⁹ All internationals in South Africa's pre-1990s history were against white sides. See Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket.

⁷⁰ Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, 39.

⁷¹ According to Brantlinger, ‘after the mid-Victorian years the British found it increasingly difficult to think of themselves as inevitably progressive; they began worrying instead about the degeneration of their institutions, their culture, their racial “stock”’. Ibid., 230. The promotion of British forms of sport during this period was an attempt to ally this trend.