‘Parties, racism’ split Cape rugby club
Provincial union could show red card in row over racist slurs
THE men in charge of a Cape Town rugby club are scrumming down for a bruising battle.
On one side is businessman Nico Hoepfner, who accuses Brackenfell Rugby Club of racism and religious intolerance. On the other are club managers including president Danie Scholtz, who says Hoepfner is running the club into the ground with raucous parties and dodgy dealings.
This week the Western Province Rugby Football Union stepped in as referee.
In a letter to the union, Hoepfner said he was the club’s main sponsor and had contributed more than R2-million to it. He was co-opted onto the club’s committee last year and is responsible for managing the club’s pub.
“Great was my surprise on how pathetic the group of people running the club is,” he said in the letter. “The H-word and the K-word are used as generally as the words ‘it’ and ‘is’,” he said, referring to pejorative terms for coloured and black people.
“Obviously not in front of the players, because we have all races there. But it happens on a daily basis at committee meetings, committee WhatsApp groups and discussions between committee members and their tjommies, as the club president would term it,” said Hoepfner.
The club had been successful in recent years — it had won promotion to the top provincial club league — thanks to “the help of fantastic players of colour”, he said. “We could not have done it without these guys. Yet they and their racial group are often referred to as ‘H ***** s’ or ‘f***ing H ***** s’.”
He said he could no longer “deny my conscience” and “try to live with it” because it “is just not right”.
He gave the union a recording of a conversation between Scholtz and another man, in which Scholtz says that since Hoepfner came on board “moerse” parties had been held on club premises and bad elements allowed in.
“At the moment we have a club . . . with the emphasis on ‘H ***** s’. We get characters who are not our people, it’s not the people we want there,” Scholtz says. He speaks about Hoepfner making the field available for a dog show organised by “slamse”, or Muslims. He expresses concern that the dogs could bite a child.
Scholtz said in an e-mail to the Sunday Times that the recording had been made illegally without his knowledge.
“I can assure you in Brackenfell Rugby Club there is NO, I repeat NO, racism,” he said.
He admitted to using racist terms in the conversation but said the context was that he had been speaking to an employee of Hoepfner who was a “far-right supporter”.
He said: “We are in a legal battle with Mr Hoepfner and I don’t want to say too much . . . we as a club are trying to get this man off our premises, not because of money but moral values.”
He sent the Sunday Times an anonymous, written complaint about Hoepfner that referred to late-night parties, drunkards on the premises, fistfights and damage to club property.
“As a result, the club received several complaints from players who do not feel welcome and threatened to end their membership,” the letter read.
Hoepfner dismissed the criticism of himself as lies. “[They] are nothing more than a smear campaign against me. I have reported the racist behaviour . . . in the interest of our club, town and coloured players.”
Asked about Hoepfner’s racism allegations, the Western Province Rugby Football Union said in a statement it was investigating. “We treat all such allegations seriously and will do everything in our power to get to the bottom of the matter.”
We get characters who are not our people