![]() “And just like that, game, set and match, my dream was over,” says Bobat, shaking his head.īobat returned to Durban with his passion for tennis killed. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Īfter newsletter promotion Just like that, game, set and match, my dream was over Hoosen Bobat For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. A player from the white union was, he was told. He said Bobat did not belong to an affiliated club, nor was he the official No 1 player in the country. It was then, Bobat recalls, that the ILTF general secretary told him the union leader objected to his entry. Bobat was surprised to see the head of the white SALTU union as he entered the office, and wondered: “What is he doing here all the way from South Africa?” One week before the tournament, however, a telegram from the ILTF arrived requesting an urgent meeting in London. As a top-ranked junior, he held national under-19 titles and was a member of a recognised International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) club. He had applied for entry to Junior Wimbledon, satisfying all the criteria at the time. He applied for leave from his university, but was later denied by the school’s senate, forcing him to reapply upon his return. “And I’m thinking to myself: ‘But this is our house, we built it’ – but it didn’t matter.”Īt 18, Bobat was part of a six-person team sent on a European tour organised by the non-racial Southern Africa Lawn Tennis Union (SALTU), separate from the country’s white tennis union. “That left a big mark on me at that time, seeing them speaking to my grandmother and my mother in that way – really being nasty,” Bobat recalls. The family was given three months to relocate 20km out of town. ![]() In 1967, at the height of apartheid, Bobat’s family was forcibly moved from their home of 50 years under the South African government’s Group Areas Act which created racially segregated areas. Others such as Indigenous Australian player Evonne Goolagong-Cawley competed in 1971 under the designation of an “honorary white” status – or what Bobat refers to as “window dressing”.Įvonne Goolagong on her way to victory in the 1971 Wimbledon women’s singles final – she was designated as ‘honorary white’ when playing in South Africa. While non-white players were restricted playing at home, some overseas athletes boycotted playing in the apartheid state amid calls for change in sporting policy. In 1970 South Africa was excluded from the Davis Cup and the International Olympic Committee banned the country’s representatives, alongside other sports boycotts at the time.Īthletes were told by the white government not to mix politics and sport, Bobat recalls: “But we used to say, hang on, from the moment you are born as a black in South Africa, you are spending the rest of your life trying to erase politics from sport.” In the 1970s, against the backdrop of the anti-apartheid movement and increasing pressure from the international sports community, the country maintained its racist policies. “To make our people back home proud that black people, no matter the lack of facilities, lack of sponsorship, can still play on the greatest stage in the world.” “All we wanted to do was play tennis,” he says.
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