Why am I not surprised that there’s a connection between Gary Player, the great South African golfer (and there’s no debate about his sporting prowess), and the Burmese dictatorship?
George Monboit, on the Guardian’s website, fills us in.
This kind of behavior on Player’s part is not new.
Player has a habit, despite his current “friendship” with Nelson Mandela and identifying as a South African ‘liberal,’ (more on that designation another time) of siding with repressive regimes.
His relationship to the then apartheid government was detailed in that country’s mainstream media after apartheid ended. This include him famously defending apartheid in 1968, to a New Yorker writer, suggesting:
‘[We are] maligned, misunderstood, pilloried by people who can tell us how to order our affairs from a range of 6 000 miles without ever coming down to South Africa and seeing for themselves and trying to understand.’
And separately writing that:
‘… I must say now, and clearly, that I am of the South Africa of Verwoerd and apartheid.’
Player also actively participated in advertising campaigns for the official tourism bureau, SATOUR. University of Stellenbosch historian Albert Grundlingh has written about SATOUR’s wider political impact:
The publicity material of Satour during the 1960s consisted partly of brochures and posters depicting the ubiquitous imagery of sun, sea and wildlife. These portrayals were supplemented by material focusing on sport: brochures depicted the world-renowned golfer, Gary Player, teeing off for an American audience and a scene from a rugby match aimed at an Australasian market.
Looking at these brochures from the vantage point of 2006, it is the silences that speak the loudest; black people did not make a guest appearance, nor did they even appear as a kind of animated geographical background. Clearly, to the prospective tourist, South Africa had to appear as an invitingly outdoor, exclusively white country with a consuming interest in sporting matters.
But perhaps the best example of Player’s dubious politics, is an incident recounted by the poet Jeremy Cronin when after his British Open win, Player suggested to an interviewer that South Africa’s sporting achievements are impressive indeed considering ‘… we have only three million people.’
It wasn’t golf then. And it isn’t now.
(An important footnote [added on Oct 4, 2007]: (Monbiot also alludes to this: One wonders what will Mandela’s advisers do?]
Sean thanks so much for pointing out Player’s comments on his relationship with apartheid.
Player has escaped the needed scrutiny of his role as an ambassador for apartheid.
There is some irony in the revelations that come to pass now … and sadness too.
I am franky ashamed of Mandela’s association with Player and the racist nonsense that he peddles in the ‘post’ era.
I am watching to see what Mandela and the ANC do now.
Thanks for writing and making me think.
Peace and struggle,
Ridwan Laher
Hi Ridwan,
Thanks for the post.
Sean