Ten years on, would you forgive Hansie?

I was surfing the internet and found an interesting article by Telford Vice on cricinfo.com about this year being the tenth anniversary of one of the sorriest affairs to have ever gripped South African sport, let alone cricket.

On April 11, 2000, a country that had once been labelled alongside England and Australia as incorruptible and impervious to the dark will of bookmakers was dragged into the sunlight and left to squirm at its own inadequacies as the world’s media, shocked but smelling blood, pounced.

That was the day that South Africa woke up to the news that Hansie Cronje, who four days before had unequivocally declared his innocence, called Dr Ali Bacher at 3am in the morning to tell him, “Ali, I haven’t been completely honest with you”.

As a confessed cricket nut, being only 14 at the time, it still ranks as one of the greatest (from a notoriety point of view) and worst days of my life as a Proteas fan. Headingly 1999 scarred me for life, but this shit-storm was on a whole other level.

When rumours first surfaced that Cronje, a religious man and also a man that the SA cricket community were behind 100%, wasn’t as clean as we all thought, I remember my ma saying, “Not our Hansie! Never! Impossible!”

I totally agreed, since he was ours, our captain and leader. But then, the truth came out. I remember standing transfixed as Bacher and his cohorts told South Africa via television what had just happened, implying that it was the tip of the iceberg. At a time where apartheid was still very fresh (and still is) in the memory of those who had felt its scorn or its guilt, the Cronje saga was the last thing South Africa needed. It was embarrassing, gut-wrenching and the worst of all, the greatest of betrayals.

As our captain, Cronje was the man who was meant to represent us all on the international stage. He was meant to set an example that all of us, as budding cricket players in our youth or as professional players who existed within the first-class system, looked up to. Now, in one foul swoop, the rug of respectability that Cronje had earned over many years vanished quicker than a Julius Malema-inspired kick-back.

The ridiculous Joost van der Westhuizen saga, gutter journalism at its worst with the public disconcertingly feeding off its banality like pigs at a trough, was a necessary reminder of the dark world of sports stardom. However, Cronje was the first to violate our cherry of sporting naivety. Before him South Africa had never experienced such a monumental betrayal of the ideals he was supposed to protect. Cronje sold out his country in the name of the quick buck. Simple as that. The “devil made me do it” argument and everything that followed was just the symptoms after the diagnosis.

Many at the time, and since, have claimed that we should forgive Cronje for what he did. Those calls intensified after his tragic death in the George mountains on June 1, 2002, even more so at the tearful memorial service held for him at Grey College. Let me say that while he did something terrible, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. Being a human being is being flawed, and yes, he did fuck up to put it bluntly, but he didn’t deserve to lose his life.

With that being said, if Hansie were alive today, would you forgive him? It’s an interesting question, and the answer isn’t a quick one. Modern South Africa is built on the principle of forgiveness and reconciliation, as much as we fail to admit it, so being forgiving or more pointedly being taught to be forgiving is within our blood or at least should be.

Vice himself doesn’t quite answer that question, only saying that “will the hard of heart ever forgive him? Don’t bet on it”. He’s right, as he is when referring to what Hansie didn’t tell us. How far had the rot actually set in? How had the Proteas come to the point where three meetings were required to turn down a bribe of $250 000 in 1996? Who did Hansie take the fall for apart from those we already knew about (being Pieter Strydom, Henry Williams and Herschelle Gibbs, the greatest survivor of them all)?

That is the most disturbing question, but as Vice says, we will never know. So, 10 years on from being the upset and crushed 14-year-old Proteas die-hard, would I forgive Hansie, especially now at a time of national celebration with the Soccer World Cup being on our shores?

No, I wouldn’t. He taught us that while sports stars are made out to be role models, they are flawed, weak and bleed like the rest of us. Was it the “End of Innocence” as Vice alludes to?

I would bet my house on it.