Sam Ramsamy is a man with a Third World mission

Press, 4 December 1981, Page 13

Sam Ramsamy is a man with a Third World mission

By

ROBERT CHESSHYRE

“Sunday Times,” London

A blue plaque on the wall of a private hotel just north of Marble Arch records that Edward Lear, humorist, once lived there: in a basement beneath the hotel more serious history may well be in the making. In a cluttered room, where artifical light burns all day, a small Indian — Sam Ramsamy, sportsman and teacher — nurses the sort of dream cherished in a hundred similar London settings. In his case it is that within 25 years he will return to live in a “liberated” South Africa, and that he will have been one of the non-violent architects of that liberation. Ramsamy is chairman of S.A.N.R.O.C. (the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee), a gadfly with a sting in its tail, which has possibly done more to harass and inconvenience both South Africa and its western friends than any comparable group. We may still eat South African grapes and Granny Smiths, but we don’t — on the whole — watch its sportsmen any more. And as the close call over the M.C.C. tour of India showed, the ramifications of any sports involvement with South Africa will pursue individuals and the teams and countries they play for to the ends of the earth. Ramsamy believes South Africa’s cricket isolation will be completed within three years: rugby may be a harder nut to crack — Third World pressure is less direct — but there are not many holes left to be plugged.

Ramsamy, whose grandparents went from India to South Africa in the 1890 s, came to his mission in life while still in South Africa, where, after an active sports career as a footballer (good amateur level), sprinter (represented his province at black national games), and swimming (which included a spell as a lifeguard charged with the saving of black lives), he became a coach and administrator. From that viewpoint it struck him with immense force how unjust and fundamentally wicked it was to separate sportsmen by their colour, and he organised a boycott by black Natal school athletes of celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary of the South African Republic. At first he thought he had got away with it, but, when he was passed over for promotion, a white superior tipped him off that the security forces were on to his activities, and advised him to get out of the country. He arrived in Britain in 1972, and went almost immediately to East Germany to qualify as a swimming coach. While there he fell in love with a leading East German basketball player, but it took four years for her to get permission to marry him and leave the country. So Ramsamy is under no illusions about the nastier similarities between some of his necessary allies in his campaign against South Africa, and South Africa itself. He was for a time deputy headmaster of an East London primary school, but in

recent years has concentrated almost full-time on 5.A.N.R.0.C., supplementing his modest salary (never more than $lO,OOO in one year) from earnings as a “sports consultant,” which means that he gives advice on coaching, equipment and training, mainly to Third World governments. His wife works as a translator. Ramsamy describes himself as a man with a vision, sustained by support from within South Africa and by the achievements chalked up thus far — “from this little office here,” he said, inviting me to wonder that such a powerful international campaign could have such humble origins. “This campaign has caused the biggest dent in apartheid and will eventually lead to the crumbling of apartheid in sport. We have shown the wall is not granite; it is not indestructible, though changes in South African practice to date have been merely cosmetic.” Life, as anyone who knows anything about South African dirty tricks will readily appreciate, is not without its hazards. Rocks with spikes in them were recently slung through the windows of his home, and neighbours dashed out in time to see men piling into a car without lights. “I do not walk down dark alleys: I need my reflexes.” Abusive (and worse) letters go straight into the wastepaper basket.

Ramsamy has no selfdoubts about the morality of his actions: men like Geoff Boycott, the England test batsman, even if they do coach black players and abhor apartheid, are none the less sustaining it by accepting invitations from the authorised organisers of South African sport, and their presence is used as propaganda to bolster the idea that there have been fundamental improvements. The advantages of using sport to bring pressure on South Africa are threefold: it is one of the few areas in which Third World countries have leverage; it cannot (on the whole) be conducted in secret, since spectators are part of its raison d'etre; and much sport is controlled by international bodies, who will kick out backsliders. But Ramsamy is under no illusions as to where the real power for change lies. While we spoke he produced a map from the Rand “Daily Mail” showing all the known acts of terrorism and political violence in South Africa this year — and a surprisingly large number there were. It was that, I felt, that gave him hope that he would be back in his home country within 25 years. “Once the opposition against an evil force begins to snowball, it is difficult to stop it.” And he recalled how long lan Smith's “1000 years of majority rule” had lasted.