A sorry saga

Graeme Smith returns to South Africa a victorious captain in both the Test series and the one-day internationals. Not since 1977 has a team toured the Caribbean and remained unbeaten. Smith scored four centuries in successive matches spanning the two series and led, as always, from the front.

He also embedded his personality under the skins of his opposition and was more than a little confrontational. He was, of course, also banned for four matches for failing to control his team's tardy over rate. Anything else? Oh yes. He was accused of racial abuse by Dwayne Bravo.

When no evidence to support this slanderous accusation was presented to match referee Jeff Crowe, Smith was cleared and the charge was dropped. But Smith took a stand and demanded a public apology, an action for which he was derided by his hosts.

Racism provides a cheap but convenient and very painful stick with which to beat white South African sportsmen and women. And those who use the stick publicly know all too well that racist mud sticks.

For the last half-a-century it's been pretty much impossible for white South Africans to defend themselves against the charge - a bit like innocent Germans living in Berlin in the mid-1930s when the country was being swept away by Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Not everyone agreed with it, but the dissenters stayed quiet. So they were all Nazis to the rest of the world. Just like Apartheid made all white South Africans racists.

But Graeme Smith was 12 years old when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and has attended school and played sport in a multicultural environment for most of his life. Of course he is highly privileged but his childhood memories are of sharing the school dining-room with black kids, not watching them being segregated.

Some of the most bigoted and racist people on earth still live in South Africa - which is precisely why it's so important to put your hand up and speak out when you are not one of them. At least, that is what Graeme Smith believes.

I know of no better journalist and broadcaster than Tony Cozier, and I was moved to read his account of Dwayne Bravo's passion - of how he belonged to a generation of young men who had grown up with their small islands standing proudly in the forefront of the fight against apartheid.

Oddly, for a man who has travelled South Africa well, Cozier makes no mention of the passion that drives Smith and of the constant awareness that is required by his bosses, and that he demands of himself, to be fair and unbiased in all dealings with all players all of the time.

Michael Holding was without peer as a cricketer and remains so as a broadcaster. He is also one of the most sincere and ego-free men I've had the pleasure to meet. It was understandable when he described Smith's demand for a public apology as "absolute rubbish", because Holding hates to see the game harmed, as this episode undoubtedly did. He implied that the matter should be dealt with behind closed doors.

But who made it public? Did Bravo attempt, privately, to clarify what he thought he heard Smith say? Or did the team's manager simply lodge the complaint with the match referee, thereby making it public, and to hell with the consequences?

The consequences for Smith were all negative. He knows how sensitive the subject of race is within the South African game, and he knows how important it is to remain light-years away from controversy. He has never shown the slightest evidence of racist thoughts or actions, but in South Africa what shows on the outside is just as important as what happens on the inside. As Cozier said, if he had been found guilty he would have lost both the captaincy and his place in the team - not to mention the vast majority of his livelihood.

And what were the consequences for Bravo of his passionate but ill-considered and very serious accusations? He was feted as a fighter for human rights.

The West Indies camp made it very clear, through a terse managerial statement, that there would be no apology from Bravo and that the matter was closed. Clearly the match referee's decision had not placated them. If it had, then why on earth would Bravo have refused to apologise?

The hearing, incidentally, was not just a question of Smith pitting his word against Bravo. The umpires were interviewed and match tapes, with stump-microphone recordings, were listened to. There was nothing. If Smith had done it, he would have been caught. (The popular opinion in South Africa, incidentally, is that he may have used the Afrikaans word "kak", which could have sounded like "black").

Smith responded with a verbal uppercut of his own when he called off his threat to "take the matter further" by describing Bravo as "young and inexperienced. With time he will learn and mature into a better person." Ouch.

Hopefully this episode will not fester, but one thing is for certain: If Bravo can lay a charge as serious as this one, without foundation, and get away with it, then Smith was absolutely right to hit back and defend himself as aggressively as he did. Cozier wrote that West Indians believed Smith "protesteth too much". Given the charge, I would suggest that is a non sequitur.

It wasn't just Smith's right to demand an apology, it was his duty.