By Adam Wakefield
ARNSA was founded in November 2015, with CSA approached by both the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Ahmed Kathrada Foundation to be a part of the network. It now boasts a coalition of 80 civil society organisations.
“It was an easy answer for us. We believe racism is a key issue that our society needs to deal with. It’s something we believe which needs to be rooted out. People need to understand and behave in a fashion that is conducive to any or every race, class, gender, whatever the diversity is, you must understand an embrace it,” Lorgat told Media Update in his office in Johannesburg.
“We’re fortunate in that we have a very diverse platform from which to operate, whether its gender or colour. The profile of our teams, spectators, fans and supporters is starting to show a great level of diversity, so it encouraged us to use our platforms to raise the message.”
Both the women and men’s Proteas teams wore armbands during their respective T20 series’ against the West Indies and Australia this month, and Lorgat says CSA are looking at getting ARNSA’ anti-racism message through the entire cricket system.
“Our development programmes, our teams. It’s almost like a multiplier effect. If you and I begin to believe in it, we pass it onto the next and we are blessed with thousands of cricketers in the system. Indeed, if you go beyond the cricketers themselves, millions of fans,” Lorgat said.
“We want to engage with any platform we can. There’s the pretty obvious ones at the high profile end like the national teams but there is also other platforms where we want to make sure the message of embracing different diverse groups and not engaging in racist behaviour and tendencies is something that we can highlight.”
The last few months in South Africa have been marred by racial clashes, noticeably on tertiary education campuses, where debates on representation, racial bias and other matters continue in earnest.
Amidst this evolving landscape, Lorgat is certain when it comes to race, South Africa is moving in the right direction.
“If you look at where we are today, and where we were a decade ago, it is in the right direction. Sometimes perhaps we don’t credit ourselves with the progress we’ve made. We don’t recognise the strides we’ve made,” he explains. “I can even think of the time when I was the chairman of selectors, it was far more difficult at that time. That’s not even 10 years ago where a player coming into the national environment, and I’m talking about a black player, had difficulty establishing himself or herself in that environment.”
Today, that same environment is a lot more welcoming from both a public and team point of view. Looking broadly at the cricket environment, Lorgat says there is still room for improvement and further progress, but overall, meaningful change was taking place within cricket in South Africa.
Asked how in his personal view racism could be rooted out from South African society, Lorgat bases his answer around the theme of empathy.
“I think it’s some basic things like gaining an understanding, and being tolerant of diversity or differences among people. There’s no right, there’s no wrong in diversity,” he says.
In Lorgat’s view, racism, to name a few, is a lack of education, not understanding how others are different to you, not understanding how others operate, behave, what triggers them, or not understanding what excites others.
“It’s just gaining that understanding and being tolerant about it and embracing it all. We all use the common clichés of diversity is strength, but do we live it? We’ve seen it in our framework where actually different people bring different strengths to a team and when you harness that, you get that power of the diversity.”