When Quinton de Kock pulled out of South Africa’s side for their T20 World Cup match against the West Indies, because he did not want to join his teammates in taking the knee, it was another chapter in a never-ending story: the fraught, intertwined relationship between sport and politics in South Africa.

During apartheid, the South African government desperately sought the legitimacy the sporting arena could provide. It was desperate to continue playing normal international sport - and then, when teams were banned from official international cricket and later rugby, it organised rebel tours to entice foreign teams.

When Nelson Mandela wore a Springboks shirt at the Rugby World Cup final in 1995, it was a moment that seemed to symbolise the power of sport to help bring unity to South African society. The notion has been severely tested in recent years. While there have been moments when sport has seemed to galvanise South Africa - above all, Siya Kolisi lifting the Rugby World Cup two years ago - more often it has offered a mirror to a deeply troubled, fractured society.

In cricket, these divisions have never been more apparent than in the past 18 months. The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in May 2020 gave new impetus to the global Black Lives Matter movement. When South Africa’s cricketers returned to the pitch, they were immediately confronted with how to address the movement’s protests.

“It’s something that we need to take seriously, like the rest of the world is doing,” fast bowler Lungi Ngidi said in July last year. He thought it was an uncontroversial response to a question about BLM.

Instead, it sparked a bitter rift within the South African game, as four prominent former players, all white, accused Ngidi of ignoring the plight of white South African farmers being attacked.

In July, Cricket South Africa launched its Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings, which aimed to uncover exactly what South African cricket has been like since readmission in 1992. The findings from the hearings, which continue, have been shocking.

One young player had his face painted white by a coach because he had dirty boots. Ashwell Prince, South Africa’s first person of colour to captain the country in a Test match, was called a “quota player” by teammates. Paul Adams, who played 45 Test matches from 1995-2004, was nicknamed “brown s--t”; the phrase was sung in a team song. Mark Boucher, who is now South Africa’s head coach, has admitted to singing along.