Rajendra Chetty and the marathon that outran apartheid

As South Africans prepare for the spectacular Comrades Marathon, often forgotten is that until 1975 black people were not allowed to participate. But a powerful and prefigurative alternative was pioneered by journalist Rajendra Chetty and involved a ‘ghost runner, aka John Tarrant. It was one of the most remarkable moments in South African sporting history, and ‘Comrade fever’ is an apposite moment to remember what came to be known as the Gold Top marathon.

- Allan Sillitoe

Running is rebellion against the limitations imposed by society.

THE story of Rajendra Chetty, the Drum correspondent, and John Tarrant is eerily reminiscent of Allan Sillitoe’s 1959 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which revolves around Colin Smith, a working-class boy in England.

Smith was incarcerated in an institution for juvenile offenders. He was a brilliant runner, and the institution's governor thought he could use him to highlight the success of his rehabilitation programme. This moment came when there was a race against a nearby elite private school whose students were mainly from the upper classes.

Though Smith was ahead in the race, he refused to cross the victory line, for that would have given the governor legitimacy and act as a cover for the institution’s brutal practices of discipline and class prejudice.

How did a working-class white boy from England and a local sportswriter’s lives intersect?

Part of the reason lay in Chetty’s indomitable spirit once he set his mind on something. Nothing exemplified this more than the Gold Top Marathon, named after a famous cool drink of the time.

Let’s jog backwards a bit.

The pre-eminent long-distance road race was the Comrades Marathon which had been run between Pietermaritzburg and Durban since 1921.

But as was apartheid’s madness, non-white (black) runners were barred. And as was Chetty’s way, he organised a counter. It was in the late 1960s that Chetty formed the non-racial Natal Roadrunners Association (NRA) in direct response to the decision of the Comrades’ organisers to prohibit black runners.

Chetty’s masterstroke was to organise an alternative race from his hometown of Stanger, to Durban.