SA: The world champion of race carding

The sport of race carding has always been popular in South Africa. From the early days of Dutch settlement until now, the sport has thrived in our country. We have produced some of the world’s finest race carders. From great amateurs like Adam Kok and Totius to one of the world’s first professional race carders, Mahatma Gandhi. His eloquent use of the non-violent race card will always be remembered by the punters and historians alike as one of the true turning points of the sport.

South Africa is race-card country. Over the years much has been done to foster the perfect conditions for the game of race carding. Early developments like the Hut Tax and the Natives Land Act all helped to cement the unlevel playing field needed for a good game. While in the early 1900s experiments were even conducted into same-race race carding with the introduction of the scorched earth policy and some very nice concentration camps. But the game of white-on-white race cards never took off. Many felt that it was just too confusing, complaining that it was impossible to tell the difference between the players.

Ag, this is no good. I thought he are ’n soutpiel, but he are just a rockspider like me.

Many countries have looked on in envy as South Africa always managed to stay one step ahead. While most were abandoning their race laws, the South Africans were upping the ante. The Group Areas Act, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, the Immorality Act, the Pass Laws and the Bantu Education Act were just some of the many great innovations introduced to the sport by the visionaries like Verwoerd and Malan. The only two other nations to pose any real threat to South Africa’s ascendancy in the game were Australia with its white Australia policy and the USA with its Jim Crow laws.

Though the intensity of the competition was high during the heydays of apartheid, the game remained fairly traditional. It usually involved two players. One white and one black. In a time-honoured tradition, the white player would start the game with some sort of negative behaviour or statement. The black player would respond with the race card. Once called, the case was fairly cut and dry. The white player’s racism was usually straightforward and simplistic. A full-toss slur straight onto the bat of the black player. The work of an amateur.

But the nineties saw a paradigm shift in the sport. Players on both sides realised the game had lost its spark and called for massive changes. FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela revolutionised the game. Winning a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. Under the new rules players tried out new and exciting tactics. The game developed into a complex mix of ambiguity, double-speak and irony. Even the most well-aimed race card was no longer guaranteed of sticking. Classic white curve balls like: “Some of my best friends are black” or “I was just joking” or “Madiba is like a father figure to me” were introduced to stymie the black player. But this did not mean the game was lost. Anything but. The experienced black player knew to counter this with a well-timed: “You’re probably going to tell me you have a lot of black friends.” This early veto removed all further references of black friends from the white player’s arsenal. But it did not bar the white player from invoking the black girlfriend clause. Though controversial, for most followers of the sport, love across the colour bar has always been regarded as an effective “get-out-of-jail-free” card.

One of the most dynamic changes is that the player no longer has to be black to pull the first race card. To keep the game fresh and exciting, players of all colours now have equal access to the opening card. Where this used to just be the pursuit of white and black folks, we’ve now got people of every hue of the entire human skin spectrum playing. All pushing the boundaries and testing the rules in ways we have never seen before.

While South Africa adjusted to the new rules, Australia powered ahead on the global stage, taking the lead in 2007 with a real game changer. The Andrew Symonds vs Harbhajan Singh incident. Symonds is an Aussie cricketer of West Indian descent. Singh is from India. During a vicious five-day Test in Sydney, the Indian called Symonds a “monkey”. Game on! A massive hate-ball tonked straight up into the air and into the waiting hands of Symonds. The race card was immediately called and Singh walked for a three-match ban. The world got super excited. The Indian-on-black race-card was a rare form of the game. And both sides went into hyperdrive. The Aussies called the Indians racist. While the Indians replied with a classy reverse call — deflecting the race card onto white South African match referee Mike Procter. Saying that he was just a white man taking the word of another white man against that of the brown man. The word of a black man (Symonds) by their standards didn’t seem to count in an argument between brown and white people. A wonderfully subtle double diss by the Indians. But the game wasn’t over. Pakistani cricketer Rashid Latif jumped in saying Singh was a good guy. The Aussies blocked him with a beautifully played race ace. Apparently Latif called Adam Gilchrist a white c__t during the 2003 World Cup so he was not to be trusted. Wasim Akram came out of left field and went totally playschool on the whole thing calling the Aussies a bunch of cry babies. While Dipak Patel, the Kenyan Indian Kiwi told journalists he’d been called way worse than a monkey by the Aussies. By the end of the series, there had been so many race cards, reverse race cards, cultural googlies and ethnic fast-balls that no one knew who was right or wrong. The only man to really land up with the short end of the stick was Jamaican umpire Steve Bucknor. The poor dude was dropped as umpire for rest of the series for apparently making some bad calls against the Indians. But he didn’t leave quietly, claiming that he had been ousted by Indian financial might and that in cricket some people were more equal than others. The final card in what some have called the finest game of race cards the world has ever seen.

Locally we have been scrambling to reclaim our position. And we have been doing a great job, coming into our own with a classic race card grand slam between Julius Malema and Helen Zille. Malema opened play with an oldie but a goodie, calling Zille an apartheid agent. Zille signalled instantly for a charge of hate speech. Malema countered with references to garden boys while Zille attempted to trump him with a joker card calling him an inkwenkwe. Her novel use of a black language insult served as a two-pronged attack. It was designed to belittle the ANCYL leader while showing off her insider knowledge of black culture (or at least her speechwriter’s knowledge).

Me? Racist? I just threw down in Xhosa, bitch!

But Zille and Malema were knocked for a six by a newcomer to the game. The new number-one seed of the sport has to be Brandon Huntley. Not satisfied to call the race card on just an individual, Huntley has pulled the race card on the entire black population of South Africa. Accusing them of all being a bunch of dirty racists who would kill him if they had the chance. Fortunately for him, this theory will probably remain unproven because he now lives in Canada. Recently Leonard Chuene made a serious challenge on Huntley’s poll position by pulling the race card on the entire world. Claiming they were all racist for suspecting Caster of being a man. Turns out he had also suspected it too, so under the hypocrisy clause, his race card was nullified. Leaving Huntley the undisputed heavyweight race card champion of the world.