Manana’s story tackles big issues
Short careers of SA’s black rugby players explored
It is not surprising that Thando Manana’s memoir – Being a Black Springbok – is among the bestsellers since it was launched in July.
Author Sibusiso Mjikeliso did justice to this biography by not imposing himself on his subject and one can actually hear Manana telling his story with the tone synonymous with his rugby commentary.
Not many can claim to have known Manana despite him belonging to a small band of black African players that donned the Springbok jersey shortly after isolation.
He was the third darkie to wear a Bok jersey after unification in 1992, but he was not as famous as Lawrence Sephaka or as Makhaya Ntini was to cricket.
Manana, though, reinvented himself with his no-holdsbarred analysis of the state of the game in SA as one of the famed Room Dividers on Metro FM.
Being a Black Springbok transports the reader from where it all started for Manana, right through the trials and tribulations that he went through before he put on the green and gold of the Boks.
Born in New Brighton in Port Elizabeth, the 39-year-old highlights, among others, why most black players have such short rugby careers and why many never reach professional levels. Manana is also critical of the selectors, flaying them for “not digging for more rough diamonds once they find one good black player”.
He believes that quite often, where he was the only darkie in a setup, he mostly had to overcome “a mental hurdle set up by the prejudice of the coaches and selectors”.
“This prejudice is the reason most black players have such short rugby careers and why many never reach professional levels,” he noted in the chapter titled Dressing-Room Culture.
This is the man who refused to be initiated in his first camp with the Boks. He viewed the practice as a “desperate attempt to subscribe to Afrikaner norms”.
He is proud of his Xhosa roots.
“I’d already been initiated as a man in my culture and no one else had the authority to initiate me thereafter,” Manana told Boks team manager at the time, Gideon Sam, although this made the player gain infamy.
Manana is the voice of reason that, if the country had plenty of similar forthright characters, the constant debate on transformation in rugby – or lack thereof – would not be the subject of bother it has become.
As Bok coach Allister Coetzee noted in the foreword to the book, Manana is passionate about changing the system in rugby. Above all, it is Manana’s good sense of humour and attention to detail that makes his story a must-read.