Bongi shows big boys do cry - and it’s OK
● I’m a crier. I cry when I’m sad; I cry when I’m overcome with emotion; I cry in public. It’s not something I’m ashamed of — on the contrary — it’s a life skill I’m extremely proud to have achieved. It took me years of hard, introspective work to develop the emotional maturity that allows me to express my emotions through tears.
Like many men, I was raised to be stoic. My father had a traumatic childhood. Having fled Germany with his mother and siblings during World War 2 when he was just five years old, he spent a large part of his boyhood in a refugee camp — a fact I would only come to learn at the end of his life. For 80 years he kept this hardship hidden, even from those closest to him, along with all the hurt and trauma that came with it.
Had those feelings been expressed and shared through cathartic crying, perhaps my dad might have found healing for those secret wounds. But that was not the way of his generation. He was a man, and men didn’t cry. And so, his trauma became my trauma as I learnt that a man must hide his hurt by any means necessary. Growing up, I cried very seldom and always in secret.
As children, our parents are not our only role models. There are other heroes to be found — in our circle of friends, sports teams, and bands that we admire, teachers and community leaders. As an angry young man, it was my friends who taught me that it was OK for a man to express his feelings. Ironically, my toughest “alpha male” friends are the ones who are the most vulnerable. Being around them flipped a switch for me. It empowered me to go to therapy and learn to process the trauma that I had been bottling up. I learnt how to express my feelings and, eventually, I learnt how to cry.
Watching Springbok hooker Bongi Mbonambi sobbing in the locker room at the end of episode 4 of the rugby documentary, Chasing the Sun 2, was simultaneously relatable and revolutionary. For me crying is freedom in its purest sense in that you’re
able to show exactly how you’re feeling without shame, guilt or ego. I saw in Mbonambi a man who had given his all to lead his team to victory against England, being overcome by emotion and unashamed to show it. After witnessing his leadership on the field and his might in the scrums, that quiet moment in the locker room, for me, was Bongi’s biggest display of strength. It’s easy to be macho; it takes enormous character to be vulnerable.
Equally impressive was how the coaches responded. Jacques Nienaber and Rassie Erasmus who, earlier in the documentary had been dropping f-bombs and raging at the players to toughen up and dominate physically, didn’t tell Bongi to “stop being a crybaby”, “man up”, “get over it” or any of the other clichés we’re used to hearing when men dare to show emotion. There was no teasing or joking. There wasn’t even awkwardness. They responded with kindness, checking if he was OK, and then respectfully letting him have his moment.
When we started soSerene, it was important for the team that if we were going to create a wellbeing platform, it had to have mental health as the cornerstone. I’ve experienced first-hand how damaging it can be when you don’t have the tools to look after your mental health. I’ve also experienced, through years of therapy, how liberating it is when you do have them, and we wanted to make those tools available to more people.
I have no doubt that being a role model was the furthest thing from Bongi’s mind as he sat sobbing in the locker room. And that, in the moment, Jacques and Rassie were simply acting with the maturity that comes with being a world-class coach. But later when they made the decision to allow that scene to feature in the documentary, that was a conscious choice to make a positive impact on young men and boys around the country and even the world. I’m grateful to them for their courage.
Top-level sport is a pressure-cooker environment and scenes like this one probably play out regularly. But it’s not often we, as fans, are permitted to see our sporting heroes at their most raw. When they watch that powerful scene, a generation of boys and young men will see that masculinity is not one-dimensional machismo. They’ll realise, some perhaps for the first time, that the same brute of a man who steps up to scrum with a swagger can also be vulnerable.
After witnessing his leadership on the field and his might in the scrums, that quiet moment in the locker room, for me, was Bongi’s biggest display of strength