Empire Cricket Booklet

RICHARD PARRY

by J. T. Jabavu, met the prime minister, Sir Gordon Sprigg, in 1887 and asked for government assistance to restrict liquor sales in'African areas'. Sprigg, who was mindful of the need for support from Afrikaner wine and brandy producers, resisted on the grounds that legislation of this kind would be 'class' (that is'race') legislation, and set a bad precedent in the 'non-racial' Cape. The deputation claimed to be surprised by this argument and pointed out that the temperance movement in England had not had this particular argument used against them. 37 The energy and enterprise of the African elite in Kimberley was personified by Isiah Bud-Mbelle. An Mfengu, born in 1869 and educated at Healdtown, Bud-Mbelle was the first African to pass the Cape civil service exam and served as interpreter to the Supreme Court in Kimberley. He spoke six languages and was the highest paid African in the civil service on a monthly salary of £25.38 Bud-Mbelle was the moving force behind the South African Improvement Society, presided over by Jonathan Jabavu (brother of J. T.) , and other office bearers included Sol Plaatje, the interpreters for the Beaconsfield and Kimberley Magistrates Courts, S. M. Mokwena and Joseph Moss, and the Rev Tyamzashe. The individuals involved generally exercised a broad leadership across political, social and cultural activities. Joseph Moss, for example, the Beaconsfield interpreter, who spoke to the Society on the question of the 'efficacy of insurance', had also looked to take a direct political role. He led an unsuccessful Kimberley campaign in 1883 to set up an 'Africander League' aimed at electing an African MP to Cape Town. 39 He was also prominent in cricket administration and was nominated as president of the Griqualand West Coloured Cricket Union in 1895. Cricket had a high profile in Kimberley because of the success of the town in the late 1880s and early 1890s. This had much to do with the support of De Beers, which by now had an almost total monopoly over the mining industry in the town, and saw Kimberley's sporting success as an important advertisement for the town and the mining industry in the face of competition from the Witwatersrand where gold had been discovered in 1886. By the

late 1880s, Kimberley had developed the best team in the sub-continent, boasting among others A. B. Tancred, Charles Finlason, Irvine Grimmer, and Fred Smith (before the lure of gold drew Tancred, Smith and other key players to Johannesburg in the early 1890s). Kimberley won the Champion's Bat competition in Grahamstown in 1888, defeated Major Warton's tourists by ten wickets (admittedly with an eighteen-man side) in 1889 and was presented with the Currie Cup for the best performance by a colonial team against the tourists. They lost the trophy the following year, but went on to regain it in 1891, when Kimberley beat Transvaal in Johannesburg in a match that was possibly the greatest-ever Currie Cup game. 40

Isaiah Bud-Mbelle

Meanwhile coloured cricket played a key role in the reinforcement of the Muslim community and provided a bridge which enabled considerable interrelation between cricketers of all colours. It was no accident the high point of coloured cricket in nineteenth-century Kimberley should have coincided with white Kimberley's finest cricket hour as the two communities regularly met on the pitch. Whites generally described cricket played by other than the white clubs as 'Malay', but while