False promise
THIS week the rugby community remembered the day we won the Rugby World Cup.
The role former president Nelson Mandela played in making the event a nation builder has been remembered by all. This is the event that brought the term ‘rainbow nation’ to everyone’s attention. Mandela walking on to Ellis Park at the final wearing the number six jersey was the highlight. When the predominantly white crowd, two years after they lost power to a black government, chanted ‘Nelson, Nelson’ was the moment we became one country. The scene made it almost impossible for the Springboks to lose. It was as if it was destiny, a fairytale no movie scriptwriter could better. Former Springbok captain Francois Pienaar uttered those famous words, ‘“We didn’t have 65 000, we had 43 million supporting us.” Pienaar said, “When the final whistle blew this country changed forever. It’s incomprehensible.” That is the narrative which has been replayed time and again over 20 years to prove that the human spirit can survive and even thrive. Differences could be worked out and be set aside for the common good. I wish I saw it that way, but no matter how hard I tried then and still do, I don’t. To me this represents the day Mandela assured the white community that nothing in their beloved rugby would ever change.
The chanting cemented Mandela’s place in that narrative. I am sure when Mandela stood alone in saving the Springbok emblem for rugby he must have believed he was making a reconciliatory gesture to show that the predominantly Afrikaner sport had a place in the new South Africa. The events that followed in the next 20 years have, disappointingly, not followed the script.
Twenty years later we had a single non-white representative in the team. We struggle to have a meaningful presence of black players in professional teams. Perhaps instead of celebrating that day as the one we became a rainbow nation we should look at it as the day the music died, the day that cemented what had gone before. I am sure this is not what Mandela had in mind.
He risked a lot when he unilaterally saved the Springbok and asked people to support an all-white team.
Has Mandela’s gesture been rewarded and reciprocated? Has the adoption of ‘Amabokoboko’ by the black majority been a large scale con?
You tell me.