What was once a proud rugby playing nation, South Africa has, in the last fortnight, degenerated into a national embarrassment and sporting humiliation with defeats against six-nation minions, Italy and Wales.
To the unsuspected, in South Africa, pre- or post-apartheid, rugby is a national religion which permeates racial barriers, the politics of race and sports, national economy and society per se. New Zealand is the only other country that comes near to this obsession whose iconic All Blacks are the current world champions and dominant force in world rugby.
As if the Springboks’ 32-34 humiliation in their opening pool game in last year’s Rugby World Cup against Japan in Brighton was not enough. The Azzurri saw off the Springboks 20-18 in a historic first-ever test match win in Florence, which must have had Michelangelo’s David blushing with pride in the local Galleria dell’Accademia.
Last week, it was the turn of the Welsh dragons to slay the Springboks at the Principality Stadium, Cardiff, by 27-13, in probably one of the worst Springbok performances I have seen in the last three decades.
The Springboks have suffered a staggering eight defeats out of 12 matches this year — the worst record by a South African side since it started playing test rugby in 1891 against the touring British team captained by W.E. Maclagan.
The only redeeming feature of the team in Cardiff was the debut of the first two Muslims to represent the Springboks in a full international — loose forwards Uzair Cassiem and Nizaam Carr. Muslims, especially the Cape Malays, have been playing rugby since the late 19th century.
During apartheid, a defeat on the rugby field for the Springboks to the rugby-mad Calvinist Afrikaners was a divine act — a punishment for the ungodly sins of South Africans and, I dare say, “the dilution” of apartheid. The irony is that South Africans of colour always supported foreign touring sides in protest against them being excluded on the grounds of colour and race.
It was Nelson Mandela, the first black president of a democratic South Africa, who understood and appreciated the power of rugby as a weapon of reconciliation in a post-apartheid rainbow nation.
Who could forget the historic sight of Mandela reaching out to 46 million South Africans in 1995 when he famously donned the No. 6 shirt of the team’s captain — Francois Pienaar, a white Afrikaner — at the start of the Rugby World Cup final when he stepped onto the hallowed turf at Ellis Park, Johannesburg to be introduced to the Springboks and their opponents, the All Blacks.
Fast forward to today’s African National Congress (ANC) government of President Jacob Zuma, who have cemented this state capture of rugby as a national asset, especially the ownership of the iconic green and gold Springbok logo, which some diehard ANC militants regard as a symbol of apartheid and white supremacy.
Since the defeats against Italy and Wales, there has been much soul-searching, but the catharsis, unfortunately, as much else in South African society today, is still tempered in the politics of race. It is as if after over two decades of ANC rule, apartheid remains the main cause celebre of the woes of the rainbow nation.
Zuma and his anointed colleagues running government-linked entities such as Eskom, the electricity utility, once the World Bank-endorsed model for the emerging countries, only a few days ago conjured up the spectre of the “white beasts” and “white capitalism” dominating the South African economy and, by inference, the economic plight and the rampant inequality in its society.
Never mind the management shortcomings, the cronyism, corruption and the mismatch of senior executives and board members at utilities such as Eskom, which over the last two years have led to serious power shortages and overloads not for the purpose of a country aspiring to be a player in the evolving BRICS economic bloc.
Never mind the fact that under the ANC and its Black Empowerment policy, the country has seen the creation of probably the fastest middle-class segment in any society in recent history — that of a black professional class. This fast-track approach steeped in affirmative action whether in politics, corporate life and sports, while politically justified in the wake of apartheid, was hastily thought out and poorly executed.
The architects of other such affirmative action policies, such as Malaysia’s New Economic Policy, for instance, would surely testify that it takes decades, patience, resilience and above all leadership to implement such policies successfully.
South African rugby officials have been quick to apologise to the nation and have ordered an urgent review of the state of the game. Last year, SA Rugby, the national body, launched its Strategic Transformation Plan (STP) whose aim is to “increase black participation in the Springbok team and black representation at executive and board level provincially and nationally to 50 per cent by 2019”. SA Rugby is a wealthy sports union which last year reported
revenues close to R1 billion (RM322,000).
Some argue that black quotas and hastily thought-out affirmative action tempered with management ineptitude are some contributory factors to the governance malaise in South African society.
Recently, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, speaking at the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies Awards in Johannesburg, rued that “the hard reality we face today is that our country is trapped in a general and deepening political, economic and social crisis, which has, for many, begun to turn what was an Age of Hope into an Age of Despair. South Africa is grappling with growth that is too slow to raise average living standards”.
Perhaps the erstwhile Springbok captain, Adrian Strauss, and the head coach, Allister Coetzee, were echoing the plight of South Africans per se when they talked about “being in a dark place at the moment and we must get ourselves out of it!”
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Mushtak Parker is an independent London-based economist and writer