Bending the Rules. Rafique Gangat
the villages. I took this as a cue to move on to manufacturing – mealie meal in particular, as it was the staple diet of the locals. However, my dad wasn’t keen to venture beyond his comfort zone, so I decided to move out of the family business and chart my own course instead.
In Weenen, I interacted with the locals and learnt a great deal about Zulu culture and tribal customs. I became close to the various chiefs in the area and often went fishing in their territory on the banks of the Tugela River.
My relationship with the whites was somewhat complicated. White farmers found me arrogant – or so they told my father. It was because I questioned their beliefs.
For example, a farmer named Le Roux once said to me, “See, the cows don’t sleep with the sheep and the horses sleep separately, so we need to live separately, as we are different.”
To which I responded, “Don’t the brown horses sleep with the black ones? Don’t the black cows sleep with the brown ones? To me, it’s a case of ‘same difference’.”
He never raised the subject again. I knew the white farmers saw me as being very different from my cousins who had remained in Weenen. I even dressed differently, not conservatively, as they did.
Whites and Indians never socialised together, except for the Saturday-night Hollywood movie, which was screened at the local town hall. The local Indians were generously given about twenty seats in one corner, with a separate entrance/exit and different tickets, sold by my cousin Samad.
Everyone dressed up in his or her best for movie nights. However, the white boys, who were conservative farmers, did not in any way resemble the boys in the movie, who sported long hair and wore fashionable bellbottoms. I did, which meant I got lots of attention from the farmers’ daughters. We flirted, making eye contact and communicating sexual vibes across the divide, which – with no one watching – translated into the real thing when our paths crossed on their farms or on my regular fishing outings on their lands.
These liaisons demonstrated the futility of racial segregation on which apartheid laws were based. But, instead of being eased up they began to be more strictly imposed; indeed even expanded in a way that caused my family, and countless others across the country, intense pain and sorrow.
Initially, when the Group Areas Act was being implemented across the country, the Gangat family continued to live on the property we had always owned. Weenen was a small, forgotten village where there were only a few Indian families in addition to ours. However, our lives were irrevocably changed as a result of a spiteful act by a white farmer named Bekker.
Apparently he had gone to Pretoria and put in a request to government authorities that the Indians in Weenen should be moved out of town to a separate residential and business zone, and that our land should be declared a white area. His request was granted. What added a barb to Bekker’s action was that some time before, my grandfather had helped him by buying cattle for him and then letting him settle the debt by supplying milk to our family.
I had grown up with my uncles, aunts and cousins as neighbours; our homes were open to each other and we lived like one big, extended family. Suddenly, that idyllic way of life was shattered and the Gangat family was forced to disperse. The Group Areas Act had struck a cruel blow.
Petty apartheid, in the form of things such as separate amenities, made life difficult. But it really hurt to lose your family home and the memories that resided there. It was not just traumatic; it was profoundly painful. Similar, I imagine, to how Gandhi had felt when he was kicked out of that train in Pietermaritzburg.
MULTINATIONAL CRICKET
Bowling on grass
While I was in Weenen I played first-league cricket on the weekends – for an Indian team in Ladysmith, called Wanderers. I made steady progress and, after paying my dues in the Natal Under-19 and Natal B teams, became a member of the Indian provincial team in 1977. As racial segregation was also imposed on sport, this was the zenith of what I could achieve in cricket.
Representing South Africa was merely a pipe dream.
As a sporting boycott had effectively isolated white sports teams from the international arena, the 1978 apartheid regime decided that “multinational” sport was permissible. This meant that teams of different races could play against each other, but there were to be no mixed-race teams. While previously we had been able to compete only against Indian teams, we could now play in a league against white teams on their superior playing fields.
Considering this to be the first step towards normalising sport, I teamed up with Centrals, a Durban-based club that had been accepted to play in the intercity or first league in Natal, where the standard was high and the competition extremely tough. To bolster his line-up, the captain, Yacoob Omar, had recruited me, along with my former Ladysmith team-mate Mustafa Khan.
When we arrived at the picturesque Pinetown grounds one Saturday afternoon, we were mobbed by the media and cheered by a host of faithful supporters, who thronged the grassy embankments. There were also four sets of eyes intent on watching much more than the cricket match. The security policemen were wearing plain clothes, ostensibly to blend in with the crowd, but they stuck out like sore thumbs. They weren’t exactly dressed like sports fans and besides, their grey shoes gave them away – at least, that was the joke among us.
The occasion was the first inter-racial cricket match in Natal. We walked onto the pitch to face Zingari, an all-white team that fielded many provincial stars and at least three South African Test players. Our team, on the other hand, comprised a motley crew of potentials. The only two with some international experience were Yacoob, who had played in the Lancashire League in England, and Mustafa, who had recently returned from a stint in the UK.
Yacoob won the toss and we opted to field. As the fastest bowler on the side, I was designated opening bowler. The new ball was handed to me and I cupped its shining red weight in the palm of my hand. Once the field was set and the opening batsmen arrived, I walked to my run-up mark. On the signal of the umpire I ran in to deliver the first ball bowled to a white batsman by a non-white bowler on that playing field. As I let go of the ball, South African Test wicketkeeper-batsman Tich Smith gleefully accepted my long hop and easily dispatched it to the midwicket boundary for a four.
Immediately, Yacoob ran up to me and yelled, “What you bowling? That was too short!”
“Hey, I’ve never bowled on grass before, although I have smoked the stuff,” I said.
A moment’s hesitation turned into a wry smile when Yacoob understood what I’d meant. With his arm draped around my shoulder, he walked me back to my mark while sharing some sound advice, “This is grass and you have to pitch the ball up to the batsman.”
The truth was that we, as Indian cricketers, had inferior sporting facilities. The apartheid regime provided only matting wickets and sand fields, with barely a semblance of grass. This grassy pitch was a huge leap from where I had played before, where the ball I had just bowled would have flown over the batsman’s head.
Nonetheless, I adapted quickly and, in a space of three balls, I had Smith caught behind by a late outswinger, much to the delight of my team and our supporters.
The match progressed well for us and we held our own against one of the best teams in the province. At the end of the day’s play, we packed up and prepared to go back to our designated residential area.
However, Vincent van der Bijl, the captain of the Zingari team, invited us for a drink in the clubhouse. As we stepped in, the security policemen stepped up and, in thick Afrikaans accents, ordered us to “leave now”! The liquor laws, which forbade different races from mixing socially, were still on the statute books and by entering the clubhouse we were liable to be fined, prosecuted, or both.
Vince managed to turn the unpleasant situation on its head: he surprised us all by buying a whole lot of drinks and getting the Indian waiters who worked in the clubhouse to deliver them to the centre of the field, smack-bang on the wicket. Players from the two teams sat around on the grass to enjoy a well-earned rest, a drink and to talk about the game after a tough day’s play.