Empire Cricket Booklet

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RICHARD PARRY

Philip and an earlier generation of reformers and missionaries. The empire was, by the 1830s, permeated, if not always dominated, by the view that progress was univers al and key to the human condition. While it was clear that different races might have different capacities, with suitable encouragement and exhortation, the moral economy could be entrenched through individual responsibility, the work ethic and the imperative of improvement. 10 This ideology underpinned the development of a social policy which was to shape the development of both society and cricket in the Cape. The colour-blind franchise recognised the possibility of universal improvement but it was never assumed that the mass of the population were the target of such 'liberal' strategies. Liberalism focused on the reprogramming of traditional elites, co-opting where possible and coercing where necessary. The 'liberal' belief in individual 'civilisation and progress' encouraged efforts to secure the future through the moulding of the next generation. The climactic event which ultimately tipped the power balance on the frontier inexorably in favour of the British was the great cattle killing of 1856, a last ditch effort by many Xhosas to rid themselves both of the British and the lung disease which was already decimating their herds.11 The resulting human tragedy, in which tens of thousands died and whole areas were depopulated, effectively ended the independence of Xhosa chiefs. But this was a complex process. As Andre Odendaal has brilliantly chronicled, through the personal histories of Chief Mhala of the Ndlambe and his son, the ending of Xhosa independence and the taking root of cricket in the consciousness of influential Africans were part of a single process, remarkable for its speed and impact on the social and political development of the Colony in the next 30 years. 12 Following the cattle killing, a number of the previously independent chiefs were court marshalled on trumped-up treason charges and exiled to Robben Island, also in use as a leper colony, in the swirling mists of Table Bay. In the following year, Sir George Grey implemented his assimilationist strategy by

setting up Zonnebloem College on the edge of District Six on the slopes of Table Mountain. This was one of dozens of similar initiatives to turn 'unreclaimable foes into friends who may have common interests with ourselves'. 13 Grey took the initiative himself, personally travelling to the Eastern Cape and persuading some chiefs to allow their sons to be given a British education at Zonnebloem. In February 1858, Grey sailed to Cape Town with 35 sons of prominent chiefs. At Zonnebloem, the sons, including Nathaniel Cyril Umhalla, son of Mhala (who on clear days could see Robben Island where his father was imprisoned), were schooled in English, mathematics, the classics, history and geography, art and music, as well as religious education. Butthe experience was not aimed simply at creating ruling-class black Englishmen. The students were also required to spend half their day working on industrial training and skills such as carpentry. 14 And above all, the students swapped Xhosa cultural activities for cricket. By 1861, cricket was an established part of the curriculum and quickly became the favourite recreation of the student body. By 1864, Zonnebloem had two teams and was involved in fixtures against the cream of the Cape cricketing schools, including Diocesan College (Bishops) and Wynberg Boys High. Nathaniel Umhalla was exceptionally gifted both intellectually and on the sports field, and a major influence in planting the game in the African community. 15 His love for the game was shared by thousands of African mission-school graduates as cricket and Christianity rapidly became the badges of identification of 'civilised' status and the cricketing ritual played out the shared assumptions of the Victorian ascendancy. It was not difficult to understand why some Africans should have believed in the message of cricket and civilisation. Not only did it promise a way out of poverty and hard manual labour on the docks, farms or railways, their colonial masters believed in it themselves - at least in part. Cricket and ideology did not simply turn African tribesmen into black Victorians, clones of their colonial masters. It enabled Africans to exploit the