Sport mourns two men who fought for their beliefs until the end

Those who enjoy their sports alongside their politics are mourning the loss of two huge figures over Christmas. As sports editor of The Daily Worker in the United States, Lester Rodney was an early campaigner for the integration of baseball.

The US Communist died aged 98 on December 20. His life is celebrated in an article written for the Morning Star on March 26 2008.

Rodney lived 13 years longer than the South African anti-apartheid activist Dennis Brutus, who died in his sleep at home in Cape Town on Saturday morning.

Brutus was born in Harare, but moved to South Africa as a boy. Early political activity included journalism, organising with the Teachers' League and Congress Movement and leading the South African Sports Association as an alternative to white sports bodies.

South Africa's first official policy on sports was forced on the regime by a number of developments which indicated a growing unease with racism.

In 1956, the International Table Tennis Federation withdrew recognition of the white South African body and acknowledged its black counterpart, while FIFA became embroiled in the country's football structure.

A number of black organisations, including the South African Cricket Board of Control, pressed for international recognition.

The government reacted with an official sports policy that decreed that whites and blacks should organise their sports separately and prohibited mixed sport. In addition, no mixed teams could represent the country abroad and international sides competing in South Africa would have to be all-white.

The official sports policy afforded the government the right to determine not only which teams could play South Africa but also the racial composition of these sides. The government even laid down which sporting bodies should be affiliated to international associations.

The opposition targeted international sides and succeeded in getting both Brazil and the West Indies to cancel visits to South Africa.

They then targeted the Olympics demanding either non-racialism in South African sport or, failing that, the expulsion of South Africa from the Olympics and international sport.

The Suppression of Communism Act made Brutus a criminal in 1961. He fled to Mozambique but was captured and deported to Johannesburg. There, in 1963, he was shot in the back while attempting to escape police custody and forced to wait for an ambulance that would accept blacks.

Sentenced to 18 months, Brutus spent time on Robben Island in the cell next to Nelson Mandela. He was also banned from teaching, writing and publishing in South Africa and eventually settled in the US as a political refugee. From there, he continued his campaign against racist sport.

However, the white international sporting community showed little interest in South Africa's racial policies. When Brutus wrote to members of the Olympic movement in 1963 asking them to join the struggle against racist sport, New Zealand's IOC member Arthur Porritt dismissed him as a "well-known trouble-maker."

MCC secretary Billy Griffith took the line that South Africa was too important to be left out of world cricket and that anyway there was no colour bar in the constitution of their (white-only) cricket board.

Much was made of "traditional links" and "essential communications." Following the election of Sir Cyril Hawker as president of the MCC in 1970 Brutus asked whether his position as chairman of Standard Bank had anything to do with these links and communications.

Such exposure led administrator Wilfred Wooler to inform Brutus that "we have no sympathy with your cause in any shape or form and regard you as an utter nuisance."

Despite the obstinacy of certain establishment figureheads, Brutus proved instrumental in the apartheid regime's expulsion from the 1968 Mexican Olympics and then in 1970 from the Olympic movement. Gradually South Africa became excluded from most sports.

For his efforts, Brutus was nominated alongside Ali Bacher for induction in the South African Sport Hall of Fame in 2007.

His reaction to this nomination highlights his proud heritage of political struggle. He used the showpiece event to reject the nomination on the grounds that he couldn't "be party to an event where unapologetic racists are also honoured, or to join a hall of fame alongside those who flourished under racist sport."

"Moreover," Brutus argued, "this hall ignores the fact that some sportspersons and administrators defended, supported and legitimised apartheid."

Brutus maintained his fight for social justice into his last years. He remained committed to reparations for black South Africans from corporations that benefited from apartheid. He also advocated social protest against those responsible for climate change.

In an open letter about the recent Copenhagen climate change conference he warned against "brokering a deal that allows the corporations and the oil giants to continue to abuse the earth."

His family said Brutus lived his life in the service of justice, peace, freedom and protecting the planet. "He remained positive about the future, believing that popular movements will achieve their aims."

It is with this sense of optimism that he will be best remembered.

Jon Gemmell's 2008 article on Lester Rodney can be found at here .