Mushtak Parker
London - The political discourse in South Africa is currently so dominated by a transformation agenda defined largely by Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), that other functions of development have been neglected especially during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the multitudinous global shocks as scarce resources are “re-prioritised” to mitigate their effects.
This includes cultural and sports transformation which are equally important imperatives in the sports-mad South African psyche for a frontier nation which in a space of over a century straddling colonialism, apartheid and democracy, witnessed perhaps three of the most iconic incidents in sporting history.
The first was the ludicrous hubris during the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899-1902 when a Boer general sent a letter to the leader of a besieged British garrison, offering a temporary truce so their men could play a rugby match.
That match failed to materialise because of shenanigans on the battlefield, but there was a precedent during the Siege of Mafeking in 1990 when the two sides similarly signed a ceasefire and actually played a cricket match.
Fast forward a century later at the cusp of the nascent democratic South Africa. Who can forget the symbolism when then president Nelson Mandela resplendent in the famous green and gold jersey – bearing the No 6 shirt of the team’s captain – Francois Pienaar, a white Afrikaner – and donning the Springbok cap, bent over backwards to reach out to millions of South Africans in 1995 at the start of the Rugby World Cup final in Johannesburg, when he was introduced to the teams at Ellis Park Stadium.
Madiba recognised the value of rugby, erroneously seen by radicals on both sides of the race spectrum as a “White Man’s Game”, as a weapon of healing, reconciliation, transformation and nation-building.
The third and perhaps the most symbolic event of sports transformation in post-apartheid South Africa is when a triumphant Siya Kolisi lifted the William Webb Ellis Trophy in Yokahama after the Springboks walloped England in the final of the Rugby World Cup in November, 2019.
He was the first black Springbok rugby captain to have that privilege and honour.
Coinciding with the transformation agenda has been a transformation in sports-writing in resetting the historical narrative from the perspective of sports people of colour.
The aim is to call out the white supremacist racist history of sport and to exorcise South African sport from the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
But judging by the pockets of push back by a minority of privileged whites, this process is a mere “work in progress”.
The latest offering comes from prominent sportswriter, Jonty Winch, in his impressive “World Champions – The Story of South African Rugby”, (published by BestRed, ISBN 978-1-928246-43-5), a meticulously researched exposition charting the multifarious threads of the history of South African rugby.
Winch is spot on, reflecting a microcosm of the diverse roots of South African rugby from the very beginning and exploding the myths of racial stereotypes.
“Rugby was established in the Cape in 1879, in support of a political desire to promote Englishness, but the Afrikaner developed a special affinity for the game, and it became a significant part of its culture. It also spread rapidly among ethnically mixed communities: the Muslim descendants of slaves and a black middle-class emerging from (Christian) mission stations.”
Winch has form in historical sports-writing. He was co-author with Richard Parry of “Too Black to Wear Whites”, which unearthed the story of Krom Hendricks, barred by Cecil John Rhodes from inclusion in the all-white South African team to tour England in 1894, on the grounds of his coloured race.
The reality is that it was all the ethnic groups that developed a passion for rugby, and not merely Afrikaners.
The colonialists controlled the narrative because they owned the politics and press. The Cape Times and Cape Argus of 19th Century Cape in cahoots with the Town Council were virulent racist, talking about “Cape Town’s Curse” and the “criminal and vicious tendencies of the human scum of this City, the offensive and aggressive half-breeds”.
As Winch stresses, “sport gave pride and identity to those immersed in a vibrant culture, (comprising) the different population groups in the Cape”.
Rugby gripped the coloured (and Malay) sportsmen in the 1880s, and despite the racial ill-feeling that prevailed thanks to the colonialist rule of Rhodes, sport still provided hope for the people.
In democratic South Africa “reversing the imbalances of the past” together with the significance of meritocracy – albeit on a level playing field, and upskilling talent through empowerment in line with the ANC’s “Ready to Govern” document, cuts across sectoral efforts to advance transformation. And rugby is no exception.
There is an emerging genre of literature in and about the history of South African sport. In rugby, Manie Booley’s “Forgotten Heroes”, was the first attempt to chart the evolution of Black South African rugby, patronised by none other than Irish and British Lions legend Tony O’Reilly in his capacity as the then chair of Independent Newspapers.
Jonty Winch’s prodigious book tries to chart the story of South African rugby in an almost impossible literary paradigm combining the politics of empire and race; the racialisation of sport; the evolution of parallel histories of rugby defined by the five ethnicities that dominated rugby – English white, white Afrikaners, coloureds, Cape Malays and black Africans; non-racial rugby in an age of sports transformation; and getting the balance right between sports justice and empowerment based on meritocracy.
The challenge is whether race remains a consideration in team selection and sports administration. Mandela’s era supposedly was one defined by non-racialism while Thabo Mbeki “introduced race populism” in sport. That race continues to define the very essence of being South African is not a moot point.
The fact that the Freedom Advocacy Network in May sent a clarification request to the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) on the latter’s stance on non-racialism is implicit.
Siya Kolisi famously said that “your past does not define your future”. For millions of black and coloured kids it is their ethnicity that still largely defines their future, because of the inherent inequalities that persist.
The policy of racially integrating rugby judging by the number of non-white Springboks is paying dividends. The question remains how long will it take to right the wrongs of rugby’s past before non-racial meritocracy truly sets in?
Winch’s book is a valuable contribution to the discourse on South African rugby. It will take several readings to absorb the sheer scale of scholarship. Some would argue that the book is largely written from an establishment perspective in terms of sources and input from people and administrators of colour, would have added further value.
There are some gaps, especially relating to the socio-cultural dynamics of the attraction of rugby in a supposedly socially conservative Muslim Cape Malay community or a Christian coloured population seemingly caught in a perpetual identity crisis, or a black community brutally marginalised seeking redress on the rugby field.
I am so glad he did cover the exclusion of the great Maoris, George Nepia and Jimmy Mill from Maurice Brownlee’s All Blacks touring team to South Africa in 1928 on the grounds of race, a sordid affair for which Rugby New Zealand still today refuses to apologise. What would have been revealing is, who took the political decision to ban Nepia and Mill – was it in London, Wellington or the Cape Colony?
Parker is a writer based in London
Cape Times