World-beating Boks edge closer to the rainbow

Our 2019 Rugby World Cup (RWC) win will go down as a turning point: when rugby realised it could no longer ride on the coattails of the Nelson Mandela 1995 RWC moment – endlessly, emptily, toting rugby as the “rainbow” game that brings everyone together.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, it was largely business as usual. Whiteness continued to be prized and blackness marginalised.

Saturday’s Springbok team cut through the crap, announcing itself as a team viscerally in touch with the country’s woundedness. At the same time, with their courage, tenacity and creativity, they pointed to a way forward.

It was the first time that black culture was given a spot in the limelight. Where, in earlier campaigns, an entire team would have had to shoehorn its joy into a sombre prayer of thanks in Afrikaans to a white Calvinist god, this team not only acknowledged its diversity of cultures, it promoted them on a world stage. The sight of black players toyi-toying on the winners’ podium was proof that black players feel confident enough in the team to express themselves.

Hopefully, this is a sign that our national team will in the future draw on the rich cultural heritage of all South Africans, not just that of a minority.

That moment of spontaneous exuberance reminded me of a derby between two Eastern Cape rugby school powerhouses, Dale College and Queens College. To the beat of a large drum, massed ranks of schoolboys drew on hymns, Xhosa war ballads and anti-apartheid songs to produce the most melodious and moving soundtrack to a rugby game I’ve ever heard. Even the swelling magnificence of a Welsh male choir performing under a closed roof in the Cardiff stadium comes a poor second. More of that and less of Kaptein would be good.

It was significant also that it was a white, Afrikaans coach who enabled this shift. Rassie Erasmus’ championing of Siya Kolisi and the foregrounding of black experience this entailed is a huge step forward. His empathy with the reality of the majority of South Africans: “Pressure in South Africa is not having a job. Pressure is one of your close relatives being murdered” diminishes the power of the recidivist racists who still believe they have a haven in rugby,

His promotion of Mzwandile Stick, and the apparent closeness between the two is also to his credit. Presumably, as Erasmus moves upstairs to orchestrate a new coherence in professional rugby, Stick will be part of his succession plans.

Stick, a former Springbok Sevens captain, is a thoughtful man who, like Kolisi, had a difficult childhood: growing up in poverty with a single mother in an Eastern Cape township. Even though he had proven his worth as captain of a winning Springbok Sevens team, he could easily, like many a talented black coach, have fallen through the cracks of South African rugby’s blinkered structures.

But interviews with black players over the years have made it abundantly clear how important black coaches are. One, a long-serving Springbok, told me about seven years ago:

“For black players, it’s been tough over the years because it’s a white dominated sport. We don’t have a lot of black coaches and, you know, often your coach is a kind of mentor. Someone you can lean on; tell him when you are stressed or whatever. So it’s much easier to confide in a black coach than it is to confide in a white coach because you feel the guy can relate to what you are saying.

“It’s quite difficult to confide in someone who has not gone through the same kind of hardship you have been through.”

A provincial player told of how, throughout a training session, he would be fretting about whether he had enough cash for the taxi home afterwards while his white teammate climbed into the Golf bought for him by his father.

This is serious because it distracts the black player from what should be single-minded concentration on his performance. The coach notices and chalks it up to lack of commitment – and he ends up being sidelined. Poverty brings with it a sense of shame, so the black player is unlikely to try to explain his predicament.

With Kolisi’s story now the dominant narrative, poverty is no longer a source of silent, debilitating shame but a badge of honour. Proof of resilience and courage. Most of all, it speaks to the majority of South Africans.

The team has done its bit and now it is over to the rugby administrators and politicians. Will they follow the team’s lead and ease the path for the thousands of potential Siya Kolisis newly fired up by his triumph? MC

McGregor is author of Springbok Factory and Touch, Pause, Engage: Exploring the heart of South African Rugby (Jonathan Ball Publishers).