Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

POLITICS Jacob Zuma made his bed, it is time he lies in it: State capture inquiry

 Mawande AmaShabalala

15 February 2021 - 11:41
Deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo, presiding over the state capture inquiry, says former president Jacob Zuma has no grounds not to appear. File image
Deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo, presiding over the state capture inquiry, says former president Jacob Zuma has no grounds not to appear. File image
Image: Antonio Muchave

Former president Jacob Zuma’s grounds for his continued defiance of the state capture inquiry have no merit whatsoever.

This is according to commission chairperson deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo.

Zuma again failed to appear at the inquiry on Monday, citing his application to the high court to review the decision by Zondo not to recuse himself.

Zondo said Zuma’s excuses, including his previous ones, were lacking in legal logic. 

Even worse, said Zondo, it was Zuma who set up the commission and urged everyone to “fully co-operate” with the inquiry.

“One would have thought he would be the first one to fully co-operate,” said Zondo.

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The judge said it was disturbing that Zuma, in his letter to the commission on Monday morning, claimed to not be in defiance - contrary to his open letter issued on February 1 in which he stated he would defy the commission. 

Furthermore, it was Zuma who elected to not oppose the commission’s application to the Constitutional Court seeking to force him to appear, which was granted.

“When the commission launched its application to the Constitutional Court, Mr Zuma was served with the full set of court papers,” said Zondo.

“In that application, the point is made quite clearly that the commission was aware Mr Zuma intended to launch a review application of my decision not to recuse myself, and it was contended by the commission that will be no ground for him not to appear before the commission.

“The question is, can he complain about the order made by the Constitutional Court in circumstances when he was given full opportunity to contest the application and he elected not to?”

The head of the inquiry’s legal team, advocate Paul Pretorius, said Zuma was duty-bound to assist the inquiry as a former head of state, notwithstanding that he was personally implicated by witnesses in earlier testimony.

“Mr Zuma has been implicated by at least 40 witnesses. What happened during the presidency of Mr Zuma, his knowledge of some events, is important to the work of this commission,” Pretorius said. 

“Mr Zuma, more than anyone else, should assist the commission to understand what happened in the period under review.  The public have a right to know what their president did or did not do.”

Despite Zuma's no-show, the commission's team on Monday went all-out in preparation of his appearance.

The inquiry venue, contrary to normal days, was ring-fenced with security screening at two search points heading to the building.

There was also a heavy police presence, with no less than 100 police and Johannesburg metro police department officers on duty.

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