“The rights and equality of all people are more important than any individual.”
So said Proteas wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock on Thursday, issuing an apology for his refusal to take the knee before the T20 World Cup match against the West Indies earlier in the week.
De Kock was responding to Cricket SA’s last-minute instruction for all team members to kneel before all the World Cup matches in Dubai.
Referring to Black Lives Matter (BLM), De Kock said it was never just an international movement and that black lives had mattered to him since he was born.
But even before De Kock had issued his apology, the All Lives Matter brigade were out in full force.
Think about this for a moment, though.
BLM is not about invalidating other lives. Instead, it highlights a reality which is that black lives are not as equal and their lives should matter as much as other lives.
Let us focus on just one incident as an example.
Two women were murdered, allegedly by their partners, just days apart in Nelson Mandela Bay.
Both had been reported missing before their bodies were found, concealed in graves.
The only difference here is that one of the victims was a young girl — Sinthia Williams, 15 — from a poorer community in Kariega, and the other — Vicki Terblanche, 42, of Gqeberha — was from a more privileged background.
Weekend Post’s sister publication The Herald reported extensively on Sinthia’s death as soon as the news broke, and then picked up on Terblanche’s death when that broke.
However, Sinthia’s gruesome death would only grab national attention a few days later when it was reported as a side note to Terblanche’s murder as there were similarities between the two cases.
Would Sinthia’s death have received the attention of those beyond the Bay’s borders had it not been for the fact that it was mentioned in the article about Terblanche’s murder? That is debatable.
So, if nothing else, we hope De Kock’s actions and the goings-on at CSA this week will make people think about what it means when people talk about the Black Lives Matter campaign. After all, sport is a mirror of our society.
And perhaps, one day, we will all arrive at a place where all lives are indeed equal.
But crucial to achieving that goal will be the realisation that, right now, we are not all equal.
HeraldLIVE