Cronje's real lesson – forgive but do not forget

His homeland's response to the one-time icon's troubled life and death spoke volumes

To those reporters who were in the room in April 2000, the image is as clear now as it was then. Hansie Cronje, an icon to millions around the world and South Africa's best loved son, looked each inquisitor squarely in the eye before defiantly declaring: "I am telling you one hundred and ten per cent, I am not guilty."

A collective sigh of relief. The captain with whom we had travelled so far had spoken, assurance enough to pour scorn on Indian police allegations that he had been snared in a betting sting.

That was Saturday. At 3am the next Tuesday morning a mentally tortured Cronje confessed to his pastor, Ray MacAuley. The stories breaking around him indeed had substance. "I have not been entirely honest," a prepared statement revealed at a press conference later in the day.

It was as if you had just caught your beloved sleeping with the next-door neighbour. Hurt, anger, acceptance, forgiveness. The four essentials of the healing process, though there is no definitive timescale to these most human of emotions. When Cronje's coffin was laid into the Bloemfontein soil from which he had been raised, thousands of South Africans publicly showed their feelings, suggesting the process had taken 26 months. Case closed, if not solved.

Not surprisingly, the outside world has yet to forgive Cronje for changing the face of the sport. However, in South Africa there has long been a view that the disgraced former captain got more than he deserved: a life ban from all aspects of the game, to which he still had much to make in the way of positive contribution.

Following the news that he had been killed in a plane crash in the Outeniqua mountains, among the first to rush to the side of his grieving widow, Bertha, was Jonty Rhodes. Cronje and the clean-cut Rhodes, cricket's version of Michael Owen, had been close friends for years, and the former captain's betrayal had not broken that bond.

While South Africa may be one of the world's most violent countries, it could teach the world a thing or two about human values. Forgive, but don't forget. After all, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail fighting an abhorrent apartheid system, and returned to society not bearing malice against his persecutors. A hundred thousand US dollars taken by Cronje is small beer by comparison.

We might never know the true extent of Cronje's involvement, but since he faced the King Commission in Cape Town the hostile feelings towards him in his homeland softened. Particularly when the result of investigations around the globe into match-fixing and corruption came up short of finding fellow culprits.

Had Cronje acted alone when he historically forfeited a Test innings against England at Centurion at 2000 and contrived a result? Sneering through the hurt, the public felt not. While he supplied team information to bookmakers, he did not routinely throw games, they said, as the highest winning ratio in one-day cricket at the time would attest. If throwing a meaningless Test and not limited-overs matches sounds like a contradiction it is, but Cronje's life was full of them.

From 1998 Cronje wore a canvas wristband with the letters: WWJD. Given his popularity and his image, children had another item in their Christmas stockings. WWJD... What Would Jesus Do? It was an outward public declaration, a constant reminder, of the captain's deep faith, the way he lived his life. "In a moment of weakness and stupidity, I allowed Satan to dictate terms to me. The moment I took my eyes off Jesus, my whole world turned dark," Cronje said of his involvement with bookmakers. That "moment" lasted years, considering he had called a team meeting to discuss losing a match to India in 1995; some players thought it was the practical joker at work.

Perhaps South Africans are still in denial, perhaps there is still anger that he was humiliated at the commission, that he helped shine a torch into the dark corner of cricket's underworld, while other countries were less successful in finding guilty parties.

In death, the wagons have been drawn back into the laager. At his funeral his South African team-mates wore their blazers, and captain Shaun Pollock had tears in his eyes as he rendered tribute. "H, we'll miss you," he closed.

His former convener of selectors, Peter Pollock, joined in. "What Hansie did was wrong, but God forgives the repentant sinner, and Hansie stood with no excuses. He took his medicine." If taking that medicine has helped rid the game of the disease that is corruption, Cronje can still hold his head high on that cricket field in the sky. The life and crimes of Cronje may be over, but the memories remain fond ones for many.