Days of Grace (17 page)

I tried again for a visa in 1970, and was rebuffed again. Finally, in 1973 I was allowed in. I visited South Africa again in 1974, 1975, and 1977. On each occasion (except for 1977, when I was there on assignment for ABC Sports), I insisted that there be no segregated seating at my matches, and my request was honored. In 1973, my appearance there in the Open created a sensation, especially when I proceeded to do well on the court. I made my way to the men’s singles final before losing to Jimmy Connors, and I won the doubles title with Tom Okker. Tennis, however, was only one aspect of my visits. I was eager to learn as much as I could about the conditions of people there, especially the “nonwhite” peoples held in bondage by apartheid. And there was no shortage of people, white, black, Colored, or Indian, just as eager to share with me their lifelong experience of apartheid and their vision of the future of South Africa.

I looked apartheid directly in the face, saw the appalling
WHITES ONLY
and
NONWHITES ONLY
signs, the separate and drastically unequal facilities very much like those of my childhood in Virginia. I saw the sneer of superiority on the faces of many whites, and the look of obsequiousness, fatalism, cynicism, and despair on the faces of many blacks. I saw the rigid divisions between the black and Colored and Asian and Jewish and English and Dutch peoples, with the Dutch holding the highest ground of apartheid. I met educated, kindly, but dedicated apologists for apartheid. I met liberal whites troubled by the system that sustained their privilege, and I even stayed in the home of one of them, a Jewish businessman. I was also befriended by Indians, Coloreds, and blacks.

I will never forget one black boy, about fourteen years old, who in 1974 seemed to follow me around Johannesburg’s Ellis Park, the most hallowed site in South African rugby, the national sport, and the site also of the South African
Open. Every day, he was there when I arrived, and he seemed to be there when I left. He was watchful but shy as he shadowed me around the park. It was as if I exuded some precious, mysterious quality that he wanted to possess. Finally I confronted him, though gently.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Why are you following me around?”

“Because you are the first one I have ever seen,” he answered.

“The first what?”

“You are the first truly free black man I have ever seen.”

When I heard these words, I felt a distinct chill. Nothing anyone else said or wrote during my stay captured as poignantly for me the abyss of inhumanity that was South African apartheid. The major aim of the system was to prepare, to program, and to destine young blacks like this boy for a lifetime of servitude. He was obviously yearning for freedom, and I was touched to be a rallying point for him in his struggle.

Other young blacks were not so accepting. They saw my playing in the South African Open as an act of complicity with the white racist government, although the government itself obviously saw me as something of a threat, or at least a nuisance. In 1973, at Pfepfeni Park, outside Johannesburg, the site of a train station and sporting facilities, I actually felt myself in physical danger among young blacks who bristled with hostility to apartheid, and to me for seeming to condone it; their rage was almost palpable. My only solace was that I was sure the place was full of informers and undercover policemen, and that I would be defended if attacked. Nothing I said made any favorable impression on these desperate young blacks. I never felt so much an outsider, a meddling outsider, in that country.

The difficulty of my position, from their point of view, was underscored by an incident that occurred at Jan Smuts Airport as I was leaving Johannesburg once after a visit. On the plane, I received a message that had been smuggled aboard in a newspaper slipped surreptitiously to Carole
Dell, who had accompanied her husband to South Africa in our party. Inside the folded-up newspaper was a moving poem (“An Anguished Spirit: Ashe”), about me and my visit, by Don Mattera, a banned Colored writer, and a note from Winnie Mandela, who had sent the messenger, together with a photograph of her. Her note thanked me for coming to South Africa, but also warned me, and Americans like me, not to believe that we could think for black South Africans. “The best thing you can do,” Winnie wrote to me, “is ask the South Africans what you can do to help in their struggle.”

Among my friends and advisers in the United States, my visits were also controversial. Some felt that I should not appear to give comfort to the government by visiting South Africa; others counseled that I needed to go and see for myself and then spread the anti-apartheid word in the United States. Opposition at home to my going to South Africa surfaced most unpleasantly during a speech I delivered at predominantly black Howard University in Washington, D.C., after one trip. As I spoke, I noticed two black students, their hands in their pockets, pacing back and forth in the back of the hall, obviously more than a little agitated. I knew that my words were stirring them in some way, and I naturally assumed that they liked what I was saying. Suddenly, they were yelling from the back of the hall, trying to drown me out.

“Uncle Tom! Uncle Tom! Arthur Ashe is an Uncle Tom and a traitor!”

I was stunned. From their accents, I recognized that they were Africans.

“You betrayed us in South Africa! You betrayed your black brothers!” they insisted. “Shame on you, Arthur Ashe! Sit down and shut up!”

I stopped speaking, and they delivered a few remarks bitterly attacking my visits to South Africa. Once I recovered from the shock of being shouted down, which had never happened to me before, I became incensed. Without thinking, I broke one of my cardinal rules as a public speaker.
I take pains to try never to embarrass a questioner, no matter how poorly phrased, inappropriate, or even impertinent the question. This time I decided not to hold back.

“Will you answer two questions for me?” I asked into the microphone. “Just two questions?”

They didn’t answer me, but I went on all the same.

“Why don’t you tell everybody in this hall tonight why, if you are so brave and militant, you are hiding away in school in the United States and not confronting apartheid in South Africa, which is your homeland?”

The crowd murmured. No sound came from the two protesters, except perhaps for a grinding of teeth.

“And also tell us how you as radicals expect to win international support for your cause when you give vent to your anger and rage as you have done here tonight in disrupting my speech. What do you expect to achieve when you give in to passion and invective and surrender the high moral ground that alone can bring you victory?”

They made no attempt to answer my questions, but they also made no further attempt to disrupt my address.

Despite such opposition, from the early 1970s I consciously made South Africa the focus of my political energies inside and outside the United States. Although I had visited South Africa and had also opposed the decision of India to forfeit its Davis Cup final against South Africa in 1974 (questioning why India should allow South Africa to win the Cup without playing), I was in favor of international sanctions against the country. Not only did I play a major role in having South Africa banned from Davis Cup play, I also worked hard to convince individuals not to play there. Ironically, my first important challenge in this respect came at the start of my Davis Cup captaincy, before we played our first match. It also carried the risk that I might alienate our top player, John McEnroe.

On December 6, 1980, McEnroe was supposed to play Bjorn Borg in Bophuthatswana in South Africa, in an exhibition organized by a hotel-casino organization there. Bophuthatswana is one of the phony “independent” states
set up by South Africa; unrecognized by almost all nations, these states were designed to accommodate the major African tribes of the country but in reality are rigidly controlled by the white government. I did not want McEnroe to appear to collude with apartheid by playing in this patently fraudulent state. The United Nations had imposed a cultural ban on South Africa.

The proposed match had stirred much interest. At Wimbledon in June, Borg and McEnroe had played a stupendous match, in which the fourth-set tie breaker had lifted their tennis to dizzying heights of drama and athletic prowess before John won it, 18–16, only to have Borg win the match in the fifth set. Then, in the finals of the U.S. Open in New York, Borg lost to McEnroe in another five-setter. The match in South Africa, I suppose, was to decide on the tennis court who was the best player in the world in 1980. The purses for the match were also stupendous: each player was guaranteed $600,000, with the winner to receive an additional $150,000—far more than the top prize at any of the Grand Slam events. According to reports, this money would come mainly from NBC-TV in the United States, which had agreed to televise the match, and the hotel-casino group located in Bophuthatswana.

Determined to stop the match, I approached John McEnroe, Sr., who is a lawyer and his son’s principal adviser. I did not want to make a public fuss about the matter. However, I let the McEnroes know that a public fuss was bound to ensue if the match were played. Recently, heavyweight boxers Mike Weaver of the U.S. and Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa had fought in Bophuthatswana, and Weaver had been criticized for fighting there. The outcry against Weaver was nothing compared to what would probably be visited on McEnroe. Weaver might claim that he needed the money; but most people would think that John either had already made a fortune in prize money and endorsements or would do so soon. The huge sum of money might make playing there excusable, but it also seemed to put a price on McEnroe’s integrity.

No one could accuse McEnroe of being mercenary. For one thing, his commitment to Davis Cup play meant a financial sacrifice no matter what sum the U.S. committee awarded him. John lost a great deal of money every time he played Cup matches by forgoing exhibition matches elsewhere at the same time. Now I was asking him to sacrifice more money by canceling the match against Borg. The family didn’t hesitate, and the event was canceled. “John and I,” his father announced soon after, “felt it was neither the right time nor the right place for that match.” I was pleased, too, that this episode had no adverse effect on my relationship with John when Cup play started.

IN OPPOSING APARTHEID
, I made a careful distinction between the government of South Africa and individual white South Africans. I always opposed the idea of banning individual South Africans from tournaments in the United States. Ironically, as a player I had found the men from South Africa—Cliff Drysdale, Ray Moore, Frew McMillan, and others—by far the most intelligent and the best educated of all the national groups. I was fondest of the Australians, but the South Africans were much more cultivated, and they were friendly, too. Almost certainly, few tennis professionals have ever set a higher standard of courtesy and exemplary behavior on the court than Drysdale. I don’t know if he was consciously trying to compensate for his country’s tarnished image, but Drysdale was a model competitor.

In 1985, while I was still captain of the Davis Cup team, I insisted, in the face of some opposition, on the right of South African-born players who had become U.S. citizens, notably Kevin Curren and Johan Kriek, to play for the United States. I did so even though Curren, for one, made little effort to hide the fact that his U.S. citizenship was mainly a convenience. When he played (and lost) in his 1985 Wimbledon final against Boris Becker, most people regarded the match as South Africa facing West Germany; Curren was no more American in spirit than Nastase, for example. However, he was legally a U.S. citizen and, there
fore, as far as I was concerned, entitled to all its rights and privileges. I would certainly have selected one of these players to represent the U.S. if the situation called for it.

However, I did not approve of
all
white South African athletes. I disliked the extreme caution of the golfer Gary Player (much as I admired his game) in facing the question of apartheid. I wanted him to say where he stood on this burning issue, even if he ended up defending apartheid. I would have accepted his defense more readily than I accepted his fence-sitting on an issue so charged with moral implications. In my book
Off the Court
I called Player a hypocrite. No doubt he is a fine fellow; certainly he sent me a generous note after my AIDS announcement, and informed me about certain educational programs he was pursuing in South Africa of which he thought I might approve. That was the problem: because it was so lucrative for whites and so demoralizing for blacks, apartheid made even fine fellows, white or black, look sometimes like villains.

In my adamant opposition to apartheid I felt, at first, in the early 1970s, as one among only a handful of people in the black American community. But other people were starting to fight this potent vestige of white supremacy in Africa. Almost from its inception, I was involved in TransAfrica, the organization set up by the Black Congressional Caucus as a sort of think tank and lobby for African and Caribbean affairs—the first and still the only think tank controlled by black Americans and with a focus on foreign affairs. Its first executive director was Randall Robinson, a childhood friend of mine from Richmond.

For several summers as boys, Randall and I had played baseball together. His father had been the leading coach and sports administrator in the black community, and a fixture at Brook Field, where I lived. Randall went on to graduate from Virginia Union in Richmond and then from Harvard Law School. As adults, we worked closely on developing TransAfrica Forum, which raises tax-exempt money for TransAfrica. I have served for many years as co-chair of the Forum. In addition, I became a founding member of
Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid, which I co-chaired with Harry Belafonte. One of our main goals, as we stepped up our pressure on South Africa, was to persuade athletes and entertainers not to perform there. I had gone to South Africa to play tennis after United Nations sanctions against the nation had been voted; now we worked to enforce those sanctions.