In bending the knee he has made himself available for inclusion in the South African national cricket side, to which his contribution over the years has been huge.
Earlier in the T20 World Cup, on the field against Australia, de Kock and two white colleagues refused to take the knee, opting to stand. Just prior to the next game against the West Indies, the sport’s national governing body, ordered all players to take the knee.
Seeking to justify its decision Cricket South Africa’s chair proclaimed:
The board making the intervention that it did effectively mocks its claim that voluntarism would have been the ideal outcome. Lip service was being paid to voluntarism when the only permissible outcome from acting voluntarily was to take the knee. Voluntarily dissent from the gesture led to censure, with the Guardian reporting that:
Echoes from the Foucauldian world of discipline and punish.
Earlier in the T20 World Cup, on the field against Australia, de Kock and two white colleagues refused to take the knee, opting to stand. Just prior to the next game against the West Indies, the sport’s national governing body, ordered all players to take the knee.
Seeking to justify its decision Cricket South Africa’s chair proclaimed:
Voluntarism would have been the ideal situation. That’s why we allowed the players the time and the space to try and come to that conclusion themselves. They were unable to do so, and therefore it was necessary for the board to make this intervention.
The board making the intervention that it did effectively mocks its claim that voluntarism would have been the ideal outcome. Lip service was being paid to voluntarism when the only permissible outcome from acting voluntarily was to take the knee. Voluntarily dissent from the gesture led to censure, with the Guardian reporting that:
An ultimatum was issued: bend the knee or sit on the bench. The captain, Temba Bavuma, later revealed that none of the players were consulted. With little time to think they were forced into a snap decision. De Kock was the only one who refused to budge.
Earlier today, writing on TPQ, Peter Anderson objected to the obligatory wearing of the poppy, describing it in the terminology of many of its critics as "poppy fascism". There seems no compelling reason other than compulsion itself, for players being dragooned into kneeling than they should be into poppy wearing.
It is not that there is universal agreement from black people in the sporting world about its effectiveness, some seeing in it only posturing. Wilfrid Saha, the Crystal Palace player described taking the knee as a degrading and empty gesture which was more about ticking boxes than seriously combatting racism. John Barnes, the former Liverpool star and onetime Celtic manager, was scarcely more embracive of the knee gesture:
We should be talking about what is being done for racial injustice and inequality in the inner cities, knife crime. And we have to see something being done because we are not seeing anything. All we are seeing is the conversation as to whether we should be taking the knee or not.
These are essentially calls to stand up to racism rather than kneel down and are consistent with historical experience, where nothing much was ever gained by kneeling.
