Hassan Howa, cricketer and anti-apartheid sports activist, refused to separate sport from political struggle. There could be no normal sport in abnormal times.

Howa was a founding member of the South African Cricket Board of Control (SACBOC) in 1947, which sought to promote cricket among the dispossessed and oppressed. Throughout his tenure he became a known for championing movements for equality and non-racial sport. In his time there he led the organisation in a campaign against ‘white’ cricket which helped ensure the Springboks were banned from international cricket.

While sport in South Africa is now seen and known as a key unifier this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when sports were the poster child for the apartheid regime’s façade of a peaceful South Africa. Howa and the people he worked with went to lengths to break that façade.

Hassan Howa – No Normal Sport… A Biography of his Life and Times is his story. Written by journalist Dougie Oakes with the support of Nazeem Howa this bold biography chronicles Howa’s journey into resistance, showing how apartheid turned sport into an ideological and real battlefield. It shows how Howa refused to compromise, how he fought power, apartheid’s overseas friends and, sometimes, even his own allies to demand non-racial sport. With Oakes’ sharp wit and Howa’s powerful story this biography draws readers in and leaves them with a better understanding of the history of sport in South Africa and a man who dedicated himself to it.

South Africa’s illustrious sports history, like all other aspects of its history and culture, can’t be divorced from apartheid and its discriminatory policies. Yet, that is exactly what Hassan Howa and the sportspeople of his time were expected to believe. When apartheid closed South Africa’s fields, courts, pools and pitches to most of its people, Howa stood firm – and thousands stood with him.

Their message rang out in South Africa and across the world: ‘No, no, no to racist sport!’

Howa’s impact went beyond the pitch and his popularity stretched beyond sport – as the photograph of him sitting at the top table with leading activists at the founding conference of the United Democratic Front shows. Oakes takes readers through the long boycotts, the isolation and the risks to life, livelihood and freedom. All these experiences, hardships and risks made Howa the unapologetic and resolute activist we know today.