Sports

Headline quote: "When I went to South Africa, I insisted that I would not play in front of a segregated audience, and that I would not go if granted 'honorary white' status. Those conditions were met." 

Arthur Ashe is undoubtedly the most talented and celebrated Black American tennis player of our time and several weeks ago became the first Black to win the men's singles cup at England's Wimbleton championship. In recent years, however, Ashe's unprecedented travels to South Africa, where the policy of strict racial segregation known as apartheid prevails, have generated as much publicity, if not more, as his exploits on the tennis court. In the following interview with Africa magazine, Arthur Ashe candidly explains the reasons behind his two controversial trips to South Africa, saying that he sees himself as "a crusader."

AFRICA: In the field of sport, where you have achieved considerable fame, you have been a controversial figure because of your views on race relations. In September, 1964, you were quoted by Newsweek as saying that you were "no crusader for racial integration in sport." And a year ago you went to South Africa amidst protest from many of your fans and you have visited that country again recently. How do you see yourself and your actions in the context of racial discrimination in sport?

ASHE: With regard to the statement of my not being a crusader ten years ago, that is exactly as it was when I was a junior at the University of California in Los Angeles. But I have changed; now I am a crusader.

What makes it difficult for me is that when I became involved in the situation in South Africa in 1968, it was something that affected me in a very personal sense. And ever since then, South Africa and its racial problems of apartheid have been an obsession with me. I started studying and reading its history and about its people; and, in fact, before I went there I knew about as much about South Africa as one could know never having been there.

I had also always learnt from my parents that nothing can really be solved until the two sides in an argument sit down at a table and start discussion. However, one cannot be so naive as to assume that you can just sit down at a table and a solution automatically comes out. Obviously world politics does not work that way.

AFRICA: Given the knowledge you acquired about conditions in South Africa what philosophy, if any, have you evolved regarding a solution to the problem there?

ASHE: I had to think about it this way: What is my special area of influence? What am I trying to do?

I think sports and music, and possibly entertainment, are the two areas where no matter what your preconceived notions are of your neighbor, be he Chinese, Jewish or White or whatever, you really don't care whether you sit next to someone who is not like you.

You may care who sits next to you in church; who goes to school with your daughter; whom your son or daughter marries. But if you are going to watch a football match., or you are going to watch some great entertainer perform, you really don't care who you are sitting next to because you are there to enjoy yourself.

So, I think sports is a great medium by which people can learn how to get along. So really that basically summarizes my philosophy about it.

AFRICA: The South African government has divided people even in the world of entertainment and sport. What influence do you think your visit to South Africa has had on discrimination on sport there? Are such visits not an endorsement of apartheid?

ASHE: Last year when I went, as I did this year too, I insisted on three conditions being met: firstly, I would not play in front of a segregated audience. Secondly, I would not go if South Africa had to grant me an honorary white status. They had to either take me as a black American human being or I would not go at all. And the third condition was that I would be allowed to come and go as I pleased and to say anything I want. Those conditions were met.

Now there was one distinction which I must make here. Apartheid is the law of the land, so when I said I would not play in front of a segregated audience, I had no illusions about me having to force South Africa to change its law; but, in fact, it changed its practice.

While I was there at Ellis Park, the Tennis Stadium in Johannesburg, for the first time the people whom they call Coloureds, Asians and Africans occupied seats they had never sat n before because I insisted it had to be an integrated audience.

Now the law had not been changed, it was illegal to have some of these seats sold to Coloureds, Asians and Africans since 1948, when apartheid started. So, there was de facto integration although the letter of the law was still the same.

AFRICA: In other words, you achieved a kind of break in the practice of apartheid while you were there?

ASHE: At least apartheid had to pause for 12 days because I had said I wouldn't come if it were not so, and that is what happened.

The second benefit was that for the first time, again since 1948, Africans, Coloureds and Asians were allowed to play on what is called the Sugar Circuit, which is a series of professional tournaments sponsored by the South African Sugar Association. Although it is a minor circuit on the world professional scene, it is South Africa's showpiece professional tennis tournament.

Further, it is now legally substantiated that any South African, no matter who he is, can, on merit, qualify for any of South Africa's international teams. Thus any good Black, Coloured or Asian South African could play in the Davis Cup for South Africa. This comes from the Minister of Sport himself with whom I had two interviews.

AFRICA: Am I right in assuming that your approach to apartheid is not to boycott South Africa, but to use whatever influence you have to break down the walls of apartheid as much as you can? This is contrary to what many famous black sportsmen believe.

ASHE: Yes, it started in 1968, when black athletes around the world got together and decided South Africa and Rhodesia should not enter the Olympics because of their racial policies; and a campaign for a sports boycott was started. I think in the past three years in particular, and, in general, since 1968 this policy of isolation was the correct approach. South Africans, especially the white ones, are crazy about sport; if you deny them sport, then they would do almost anything to get it back.

What I am suggesting now is that South Africa is beginning to change and the way to get the door open more is not to impose further boycotts, but to give South Africa every opportunity to open the door wider. When South Africa is making these changes in their apartheid structure, you have to, even though we don't like it emotionally, give them a face-saving way out. If you put South Africa's back to the wall and say "Dammit, I'm going to have nothing to do with you" they are going to say "to hell with you!" And they may turn the screws tighter on our black brothers down there.

So in fact, I disagree completely now with sports boycotts for two specific reasons. First, there is only one sort of boycott that will work: an economic boycott. You know as well as I that if you give the average person in the Street even the black South African, a choice between money and morality, he will take money every time. Morality takes the back seat to money. 

ÁFRICA: Do you believe that economic boycott would product effective change in South Africa?

ASHE: My approach now is to foster more contact and communication between African and black American political activists. I think I understand emotionally, believe me, why somebody like Gowon or Nyerere, Kaunda or Kenyatta cannot all of a sudden call up Vorster and say let's have a chat, because it is emotionally painful.

However, I think Martin Luther King showed us blacks in the U.S. that you don't get progress in great big pieces; you have to fight for every inch of it, so when you are able to get an inch, you take it. You consolidate that position and then you get another inch, and then you consolidate again, and before you know it, you are getting three and four inches at a time and when you look back at it over say a period of time, you notice that those inches have added up to a foot, and soon you have a yard.

We should use the language that we have, forget about being so emotionally wrapped up in the problem, and start contacting and communicating with the people of South Africa who feel as we do.

AFRICA: What signs did you see in South Africa to encourage you to feel that your approach is the right one?

ASHE: One of the biggest surprises of my trip to South Africa last year was hearing so many white South Africans saying to me "You know Arthur, your way is going to bring progress faster than the isolationists' way."

If you are trying to push some big force out of the way, and you are not strong enough, you only have two options. You can grow stronger than the force opposing you and push it out of the way or get that other force not to push so hard. I think the second alternative is the best way.

Instead of trying to hustle South Africa into giving up apartheid, I think we should create an atmosphere in which South Africa doesn't resist change so violently.

The problem with that is, as you and I know, with you being an African and me being an Afro-American, is that emotionally we don't like it. It doesn't make me feel good in my guts, but as long as this feeling stays with us, it only prolongs the solution.