More than 40 years ago, as merciless state-sanctioned hunters were intimidating, detaining and torturing young activists in a desperate bid to stop a boycott that had brought many high schools in the Cape Peninsula to a standstill, there was one name people came to know and fear.

That was Johannes “Spyker” van Wyk, a name that activists – seniors and the very young, men and women – associated with a prime abuser of human rights and the murder of Imam Abdullah Haron, the Muslim cleric who died in detention in 1969. Van Wyk’s name came up in the Western Cape High Court last week during the inquest into the death of the imam in solitary confinement.

Mention of the security policeman probably brought back bitter, painful memories of cruelty inflicted, like an animal branded, on activists who confronted the apartheid state. Bennett Bailey, head of the South African Football Association (Safa) in Western Cape and recently elected a vice-president of football’s national controlling body, is one.

In an interview, Bailey, the son of working-class parents who raised him in the Cape Flats township of Heideveld and who classifies himself as a pensioner after his recent retirement from the Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, recalled his arrest in a country known as apartheid South Africa.

At that time, he was chairperson of the students’ representative council (SRC) at Arcadia High, a school in the township of Bonteheuwel, which was known for radically opposing apartheid and for learners and teachers being in class every year on 31 May – the old South Africa’s Republic Day.

“I was on the run in 1980. I first met ‘Spyker’ van Wyk when he came to arrest me at my sister’s house in Mitchells Plain. I was held incommunicado. That was my first spell in detention. I was not beaten but tortured psychologically,” said Bailey.

As tears slowly wet his cheeks, he said, “I was a child. One had to be mentally strong to survive solitary confinement because the only people one saw were the interrogators.”

For him, inner strength in detention came from singing freedom songs and recalling the fierce determination of the Committee of 81, organisers and coordinators of the high school boycott of 1980, which resolved “that this would be the last generation to go through this’’.

South African Football Association’s Bennett Bailey. (Photo: Vincent Cruywagen)

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The next time he set eyes on Van Wyk was five years later, during a tumultuous year when he was SRC president at Peninsula Technikon. A state of emergency was about to be proclaimed in Western Cape and activists were taking precautions against being detained.

“We received a tip-off that some of us would be detained. We didn’t go on the run. The people who told us about the imminent detentions also didn’t go into hiding,” Bailey recounted.

He was at home when “Spyker” came for him. “The phone rang. It was someone from fellow activist Kevin Patel’s home calling to warn me that Kevin had just been detained and I should make a run for it. ‘Spyker’ then took the phone from me and said in Afrikaans, ‘Ons het hom’ (We’ve got him).”

He was held without being charged at Paarl’s Victor Verster Prison, where liberation struggle icons such as the late Dullah Omar and Trevor Manuel were also being detained without trial at the time.

Although we spoke about his days as a student activist for a change, Bailey also had other things on his mind, such as the fact that Bafana Bafana would not be in Qatar at the Fifa World Cup 2022.

“We are not happy that South Africa isn’t in Qatar. We must go to the next World Cup in 2026. We believe that national coach Hugo Broos is rebuilding our national team and we’re confident of the road ahead,” said Bailey.

While Bafana has been limping along, the national women’s team, Banyana Banyana, under coach Desiree Ellis, has been blazing a trail of glory. The team has qualified for next year’s Fifa Women’s World Cup and earlier this year lifted the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon).

“We’re proud of them. Banyana have captured the nation’s heart. We want Bafana to do it as well,” said Bailey.

“The reason why we could win Wafcon was because they were in a training camp for four weeks, two in South Africa and two abroad, before the tournament started. We could arrange this because women’s football is under our control. Bafana will do better if all the players cooperate.”

Bailey said he was concerned about the number of foreigners being fielded by Premier Soccer League (PSL) teams. “We have to reassess the matter. When one looks at the top goalkeepers in the PSL, we see that they’re all foreigners. We have to look at this, as well as the number of foreigners fielded in a match by one team,” Bailey said.

On allegations of corruption often made against Safa, Bailey said: “I’m an accountant. I challenge those who say we’re corrupt to bring me the evidence. The financial side of Safa is well managed.”

Safa, said Bailey, could make a contribution to social cohesion in South Africa. “We might not bring in all the trophies, as rugby does, but we bring in the numbers in terms of participation. The more people we put into sport, the fewer social problems we have. When [Kaizer] Chiefs and [Orlando] Pirates play each other, everybody is watching soccer and the crime rate is down.”

With 86,000 registered players, Safa Western Cape is the biggest football association in South Africa, yet it does not have an office. It has its eyes on Athlone Stadium, a venue in the heart of Athlone with a history of football, anti-apartheid political rallies and major athletics meetings held under the aegis of the South African Council on Sport during the racial segregation era.

“We say Athlone Stadium is the home of football. Athlone Stadium is being run at a loss of millions, just because they don’t want football there. We are operating from a garage. There are no tenants at Athlone Stadium,” Bailey said.

A Safa Western Cape delegation has been to see the Mayor of Cape Town about the matter, because he said before his election that he would sort it out.

“There’s a purpose in our fight for Athlone Stadium: we’re fighting for our history. We want to house a sports museum at the ground.”

As a former activist, a leader at high school, technikon and in sports administration, Bailey knows how important memory and its preservation is, hence his determination to have a sports museum that will reflect and tell South Africa’s sports history before the end of apartheid.

“We must never forget where we come from and the price we paid to get here,” he said quietly. DM168

Dennis Cruywagen is the author of Brothers in War and Peace and The Spiritual Mandela. He is a former deputy editor of Pretoria News and was the recipient of two Harvard fellowships – a Nieman and a Mason.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.