Oh dear. After the problems South Africa struck early in their tour, Sri Lanka recently complained of racist abuse at Australian grounds. Now the ICC are investigating (whoop dee do) and the South Africans are threatening to boycott future tours.
I can’t really see the latter happening, because the future tours programme gives South Africa as much leeway to refuse to tour Australia as New Zealand had to refuse to tour Zimbabwe last year. But this is a kick up the backside for the Australians.
I think I have mentioned this before, but one of the stand-out features for me on my trip to Melbourne in October was the overt racism I noticed at the cricket ground. The sight of Brian Lara racing to reach a beach ball and return it to the crowd before a policeman confiscated it caused the girl in front of us to stand, laugh, yell and point because a “black man is being chased by a copper”. She thought this was a hilarious piece of wit. Her boyfriend meanwhile simply resorted to pointing at the “Aussie Pride” slogan on his t-shirt every time someone from the World XI got out.
New Zealand is not a multi-cultural paradise of acceptance, but I can’t imagine the same thing happening here without at least one person in the crowd yelling “sit down and shut up you dick”.
Tuesday, 31 January 2006
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3 comments:
with the S Africans making their offical complaints during the tests at the WACA and SCG it was interesting to note that at the WACA at least the ones in the crowd making the racists abuse were in fact ex-pat South Africans.
Yeah, I've been wondering about this myself. Your average Australian, hell even your average yobbo Australian cricket fan who wants to get under the skin of the Saffers, doesn't have much use for the term "kaffir". So, given that, and the fact that we all know a lot of racist white South Africans migrated to Australasia after '94, it seems reasonable to wonder whether this "racist abuse" directed at the South African cricket team wasn't in fact coming from their own countrymen, or at least former countrymen. Not to lose the plot entirely, though, it is important to remember that Aussies are filthy racists who would certainly not be above this sort of behavior.
Yeah. New Zealand received its share of that particular type of South African too. I remember getting a job application once from a guy who was one a very highly ranked official in a notorious "counter-insurgency" wing of the Apartheid era police force. I found it hard to believe (and depressing) that he managed to get through our immigration services.
He didn't get an interview.
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