It is arguable that the Commonwealth and sports were the two major arenas of the struggle for racial equality in 20th Century Africa.

In the Commonwealth Games of 1986 in Edinburgh, the two arenas seemed to merge into one. The politics of sports and race relations in the Commonwealth became a single stadium of international confrontation.

Why were sports and the Commonwealth such important arenas of racial struggle in 20th Century Africa?

Why did sports assume such a combative function? Why has the Commonwealth been cast in such a political role?

Sport is one of the first areas where Blacks in the West have been permitted not only to compete on an equal basis, but also to outperform Whites.

When slavery was abolished in North America, the White boxing champions of the day usually refused to fight Black challengers. It was not until 1908 that a White heavy weight champion of the US, Tommy Burns, agreed to fight Jack Johnson, a Black stevedore. Johnson won and kept the crown for several years.

Yet, discrimination in the sporting world in the United States continued for years. Even Jackie Robinson’s debut in professional baseball in 1947 was an event in the American social history almost comparable in importance to President Harry Truman’s racial integration directive to the armed forces in 1948.

By 1970 the proportion of Blacks in major league baseball and football was three times their percentage of the population. More than half of the players in the National Basketball Association were Blacks. The exploits of Black athletes have made them heroes in the ghetto and focal points for racial pride. Mohammed Ali, the former boxing heavyweight champion stands on top of this pile of racial identity bearers.

Black excellence in sports began in the United States and is still spreading. The painful predicament of Black Americans caught between national affluence and racial discrimination has sharpened their skills in a narrow range of options. Sport is one of those. The formula of combining Black prowess with Western training has manifested itself in other affluent countries such as Canada, Britain and elsewhere. There, too, Black athletes are disproportionately visible.

Africa may still be viewed as a continent of hunger, disease and bloodshed but in sports, its children have become global symbols of physical fitness and athleticism. But the struggle for racial equality continues to be a double strategy: the strategy of playing for the vindication of Black people and the strategy of refusing to play in pursuit of a world without racism.

Fair play on the playing field has to expand into fair play in the human race. Crying ‘foul’ in the sporting arena has to be accompanied by a readiness to cry ‘foul’ in human relations generally.

Black athletes have helped the cause of racial equality by their will to play well. With regard to apartheid, they helped racial equality by refusing to play at all. Black boycotts of international games were the other side of the coin of Black vindication on the playing field.

There was a time when Whites refused to compete with Blacks for reasons of racial contempt. Ultimately, Blacks came to refuse to compete in White-organised games for reasons of racial struggle. The African boycott of the Olympic games in Montreal in 1976 over New Zealand’s participation was one dramatic illustration.

The boycott by non-white members of the Commonwealth games in Edinburgh ten years later over sanctions against South Africa was another example of ‘not playing’ as a strategy of racial struggle. In the process, globalisation in sports was getting de-racialised.

There was ‘logic’ to the apparent ‘madness.’ If sports are a form of training in fair play, on the playing field, they should also be a method of training for fair play in the wider society. Black people have sometimes taken sports one stage further: training for fair play within the human race. Racism in South Africa was seen as a negation to basic fair play.

In Edinburgh in 1986, there was an additional consideration. Most commentators assumed that boycotting the games was an attempt to save the Commonwealth. There are times when the bad is a protection against the worst, when cowpox is protection against smallpox. For some angry African governments, boycotting within the Commonwealth was a lesser evil than pulling out of the Commonwealth altogether.

Commonwealth priorities continued to be distorted until racism and White privilege in South Africa ended, in principle. When the Commonwealth became multiracial in composition, South Africa cast its shadow on this community of nations. Apartheid distorted the agenda. But the Commonwealth became an arena for a less racialised globalisation. In Zimbabwe more recently, the Commonwealth defended White farmers against President Robert Mugabe’s arbitrary excesses.

But how did race come to be such an obsession in Commonwealth relations? How did this community of nations become a global alliance against racism, sometimes in spite of the wishes of Britain?

The most important tie among Commonwealth countries is one that is not mentioned: it is implicit but un-proclaimed. It must remain unobtrusive and unacknowledged. Yet, in the ultimate analysis, what could a New Zealander have in common with a Jamaican or a Zambian, if not the bonds of a shared Britishness?

But if the British connection continues to be the irreducible factor in the Commonwealth’s cohesion, race relations remain the fundamental issue in its ethical agenda.

That is, indeed, the dilemma of the Commonwealth. The most important member of the Club, Britain, has sometimes been disinclined to crusade for the most important agenda item. Yet, when Whites are victimised by racism, Britain becomes a warrior against racial prejudice.

If the Commonwealth has an Anglo-African vanguard, the ‘Anglo’ part is the basis of cohesion and the African part helps define the purpose. But there has been tension between the Anglo-identity of the Commonwealth and the African sense of purpose concerning racial dignity.