The death of Hansie

BUSINESS DAY, 5 JUNE 2002

THE DEATH OF Hansie Cronjé matters. Watching the television tributes – all slow-mo replays and sad strings and freeze frames – I felt my throat tighten and heart sigh. I felt myself remembering my own favourite moments of Hansie.

I remembered the time he took five wickets in a one-day match against India, when I had drawn his name as my player in our regular drinking game over at Chunko’s house. I had to drink every time Hansie’s name was mentioned by the commentators. Hansie had never really bowled in a one-day match before, so I fancied myself safe. I had to work the next morning. You would be surprised how many times a player gets mentioned by the commentators when he is a non-regular bowler taking a five-for in a one-day international.

I remembered being at Centurion when he struck the second fastest test 50 ever, to win a match against Sri Lanka that Muttiah Muralitheran seemed to be claiming. I remembered sitting and watching on television as he slogged Shane Warne into cow corner, and turning and saying to Chunko: “Thank god Hansie is South African.”

I watched the television tributes and I felt profoundly sad. Hansie was one of those public figures who truly are public figures, because he meant something to each of us. He symbolised values and fears and beliefs and points of pride and points of shame. The sadness I felt was in the waste of his legacy. For nearly 10 years he had made me proud to be South African, he had given me faith and hope and belief in something, and he carried a burden of expectation that no human being could ever truly bear. Which is why I was never – and will never be – able to forgive him for falling. The anger and sorrow he caused me was as disproportionate as the pride and joy he had brought.

As someone who mattered to us, what he did mattered more than what you or I do. It is not fair, but it is what happens to public figures. If they live in our dreams, and our dreams of ourselves, their lives become more than the lives of real people. They become the stuff of drama and tragedy and symbolism, like figures in Greek legend who fly too close to the sun. Hansie fell from his pedestal, and then this week he fell – far too literally – from the sky. Hansie Cronjé was more than a real person, but he was also a real person, and the real person’s life is over. We must mourn that, but we should not forget the full story of Hansie Cronjé. In his failings as well as his successes, he meant something. In death as well as life, he matters.