The amazing tale of SA’s first black all-rounder – cricketer, rugby player and poet

Robert Grendon? Does that name ring a bell? It almost certainly doesn’t, because he was totally erased from South African history.

LIVE BLOG | All Blacks v Springboks – Saturday, 15 July 2023

But many things might surprise you about this man.

For one, he was perhaps South Africa’s best cricketing all-rounder of his day.

From the reports we have uncovered in the newspapers of the 1890s he was something of an Adrian Kuiper or Lance Klusener. Only he fielded at point, where he was praised for his athleticism.

He was also the first president of the South African Coloured Rugby Football Board.

EXCLUSIVE | Who will sing SA national anthem before All Blacks game?

Grendon was born in modern-day Namibia, the son of an Irish-trader and an Herero mother. In fact his mom was the daughter of Maherero, the leader of the Herero people.

As a child, Grendon was sent by his Irish dad to the non-racial Zonnebloem College in Cape Town. There he excelled both in the classroom and on the sports field.

As the late sociologist and historian Tim Cozens wrote ‘Robert Grendon turned out to be one of the best cricketers and rugby-players the Cape produced in the decade before the Anglo-Boer War.’

MUST SEE | The South African Poem of the Day

In the 1890s Grendon went up to Kimberley to work as a teacher.

In 1892 he was playing rugby for the Universal Rugby Football Club, which is still going strong today. He is also recorded in the white newspapers as scoring a mountain of runs against the ‘European’ teams.

The first time a black team played against a ‘European’ invitation team in 1891, Grendon scored 92.

The papers described the innings as ‘a brilliant exposition of well-timed hitting, his cutting being particularly clean and hard.’ In a similar match against a white Kimberley team, Grendon took the ‘Europeans’ to the cleaners.

Hitting with ‘considerable power and precision’, he smashed 187 out of his team’s total of 260. He is also recorded as taking a ‘double hat-trick’, four wickets in four balls in 1892.

According to Cozens he was awarded a medal for batting in 1898. Sadly, much like Krom Hendricks, the cricketing authorities refused to select him for South Africa on the basis of his colour.

But Grendon was remarkable for many other reasons. He played the organ, sang, wrote a book on botany (which has been lost), was actively involved in non-racial politics and was the editor of several newspapers.

He was even a soldier in the British Army during the Anglo-Boer War. He drove the forge wagon for the 42nd Battery of the Royal Field Artillery.

It was during the Boer War that he began to pen his epic poem ‘Paul Kruger’s Dream’.

Up until recently the poem was thought to have been lost. But it was discovered in an archive and there are plans afoot to republish it – there is a Thundafund page available for those interested.

As Grendon stated, he penned the 200-page poem as an attempt to show what Paul Kruger was like. Or as he put it, to show the ‘aged chieftain’s character … from the time he ascended the supreme chair of his country up to the moment he shook South African dust from his feet in flight.’

Now discovered in its entirety, the poem is the first extended piece of literature to have made it into print by a Black South African. The work itself is a rollicking tale, including Greek gods, battles and details of the striking landscape and flora of South Africa. Perhaps its most poignant and touching moment, however, is a footnote in which he describes his friendship with a Gunner Cooper, who ‘was my intimate friend, and always took a lively interest in this work.’

Grendon, would go on to have dealings with many of the founders of the ANC. He even edited their first newspaper, Abantu Batho.

He was however sacked from almost all the positions he held by colonial authorities due to his radical non-racial beliefs.

Although Grendon, is largely forgotten, his story still has some similarities with the present. He was removed as editor from Abantu Batho after he exposed corruption within the ranks of the early ANC.

The above article was published with permission from writer and journalist Matthew Blackman