On Springbok rugby, colour blindness and seeing red

In the 1980s, colour blindness was not a political term, just another thing to make one the laughing stock of the “jocks”. But it did not get me out of national service and was not seen as a disability.

For that, one just about had to lose two limbs, cut one’s wrists (and be sent to a mental institution called Groendakkies in Pretoria) or go to the “malhuis”.

So, it was with surprise I learnt I have a disability. Nothing to write home about – nobody notices and I function normally. I tweaked a photograph in Photoshop and it was pointed out that I had made white faces green. The penny dropped. I have red-green colour deficiency.

For me, colour blindness is a reminder of serious conditions other people suffer from because nobody ever told them the world could be different. Like a friend who, at age 30, got her first set of glasses and went through weeks of trauma. For 30 years she thought everybody saw the world through blurred filters. She felt cheated.

It turns out colour blindness is political, after all. It affects 8% of males of Euro descent (and 0.5% of women). So, colour blindness is a white male problem.

It is caused by malfunctioning cells in the retina that are unable to distinguish the colours red, green or blue.

Since learning that what I see is not what I get, I have started to notice small ways in which I am sidelined by default.

What do I do when the teller tells me to press the green button? Or when the electrician giving me advice tells me the brown wire goes left? I caused my father endless frustration because the earth wire in a plug (back then) could be brown, brown and green, or black. The live is red. Colour nightmare.

Traffic lights are easy, as the green is so bright. With amber and red, I judge by the position on the pole.

My wife has learnt to say, “Yes dear, it is lovely”, with no hint of sarcasm, when we drive through Western Cape valleys and I comment on how peacefully green the grasses are. She has long since stopped telling me they are as brown as can be. The same goes for lovely blue (pink) flowers.

I am 51. I have multifocal glasses but at school rugby matches I first have to find the right place to look through the glasses to focus. I try to make out which team is which.

I squint in the right direction because I don’t want my son to look around and see me looking somewhere else.

What does all this have to do with rugby? Frighteningly few comments on social media are sympathetic to the decision to get teams at the Rugby World Cup to wear kits contrasting in hue to help people like me.

I see the issue as one of whether rugby supporters love their game enough to share it with others. It took years for white South

Africans to love it enough to accept transformation – after years of denial that there are more black rugby supporters than white.

So, here I am with my disability that registers ridiculously low in the bigger scheme of things for people with needs, special needs or social injustice.

But I love rugby. I watch the Springboks’ and the Stormers’ games and I’m crazy about sevens rugby.

Covid ended my first son Edja’s aspirations to become a Springbok. He used to explain things to me.

Now my second son is my eyes and ears. He knows every World Cup player by name and position, knows the words to every national anthem and can tell you the game plan of every team. He aspires to be the first black World Cup referee (go Siphs!).

The point is, watching the Springboks play is how I bond with my family.

Naysayers, do you want me to support your sport or move on to another? Remove 8% of white male rugby supporters and see what the advertisers have to say…

When there is a ruck or a maul and my eyes jinx the colour recognition, I can’t follow the match. I have to stitch together parts I can follow and fill in the blanks.

It sometimes forces me to be a half-hearted supporter, watching the score, not the game. As a teenager, I wished they would indicate the direction in which each team was playing by switching the score panel.

So, Bok management, I salute you for going all the way in your creative redesign of the jersey – even if the colour looks a bit like our beloved supermarket chain. Besides loving the Ndebele-inspired geometric patterns, I enjoyed actually seeing the Boks.

Our first World Cup match was so much easier to follow. When Steven Kitshoff was offside, I could identify him and his error.

Moaners and groaners, get over yourselves. Remember you have advantages over many others. If colour blindness is such an issue, I wonder how you respond to income inequality, poverty and other serious issues in our nation that do not affect you directly.

Perhaps you suffer from colour blindness after all – the social and political kind.