‘I’M GRATEFUL TO BE ME’

Ruben Kruger’s widow, Lize, has found new love and made a life for herself and her girls in America

IBY JANA VAN DER MERWE

T’S a sunny morning in Bradenton, Florida, and the woman on the other side of the screen looks fresh and vibrant – a far cry from the grieving young woman who held her daughters in her arms as she buried the love of her life.

It’s been 10 years since Lize Kruger’s husband, legendary Springbok flank Ruben Kruger, lost his long battle with brain cancer at the age of just 39.

Life hasn’t been easy over the past decade. Her daughters, Zoë and Bella, were just seven and four respectively when their dad died and becoming a single mom while grappling with her grief was tough.

But time is a healer – and for Lize, the pieces of the shattered puzzle of life have slowly started to knit. She is now settled in America after moving there so the girls, both talented tennis players, could pursue their dreams of making the big league.

Both kids are doing well – Zoë (18) is now based at a prominent academy in Barcelona, Spain, while Bella (15) is at the prestigious IMG Academy in Bradenton.

Lize (50) also has a new man in her life, a South African who lives in Pretoria where she still has a home, and she sees him as often as possible.

“I think with any situation, any trauma, you can choose to get stuck in it or you can choose to grow, no matter how hard it may be,” she says.

“For my children’s sake, I couldn’t get stuck in the past. I couldn’t keep carrying the pain and telling them how hard it is. So looking at myself now, I’m grateful to be the person I am.”

THE family’s American journey began in 2014 when Zoë was awarded a scholarship to the IMG Academy at the age of 12. Lize’s mom, Mitzi (84), who’d been her biggest support after Ruben’s death, had died the year before

FAR LEFT: Lize Kruger, widow of legendary 1995 Springbok flank Ruben Kruger, with their youngest daughter, Bella. LEFT: Lize now lives in the US and is dating a South African. ABOVE: With her eldest, Zoë. and her dad, Hendrik, had passed away back in 2001.

So when the scholarship offer came, Lize didn’t have much tying her to SA.

Her mind was well and truly made up when the academy also offered thennine-year-old Bella a full scholarship.

“I decided I had to take the opportunity,” Lize recalls. “We each packed only two suitcases and flew over.”

She laughs. “Thinking back, I don’t know if I’d do it again!”

At first it was hard without a support network. “It was different to just going on holiday because that’s exciting and you know you’re going back. I decided to hang onto the house and car in South Africa in case we wanted to go home after six months. But we’ve been here six years now.”

They’ve built a good life in the US, says Lize, who has made a full-time job out of her children’s hectic sport and academic schedules.

“I try to keep active too,” she says.

“I enjoy going to the gym and walking on the beach – we live about 2km from the ocean and the beaches here are fantastic.”

Lize is as supportive of her daughters’ budding sporting careers as she was of Ruben’s when he was playing top-tier rugby. She and Ruben met when they were in high school in Bloemfontein and married at 23. “He was my first love,” she says. Ruben’s cancer diagnosis in 2000 came as a huge shock. He was only 30 years old.

“When he was diagnosed, we didn’t have children yet. And then suddenly he had to start chemotherapy.”

Lize and Ruben made the mutual decision that they wanted children, despite not knowing what the future held. Bella – who is 1,81m tall now, not far from Ruben’s 1,88m – was born five years after her father’s diagnosis.

Lize missed her husband a lot when it came to the girls’ sport. “Because of his background, he’d have understood the children better, even just knowing to ask after an intense training session or match, ‘How do you feel?’ Or when a conflict would arise with a coach, he would’ve known what to say.”

Every year on the girls’ birthdays, Lize buys them a gift from their dad to keep his memory alive and remind them that he’ll always be their father.

“The grieving process was incredibly hard for me, going through all the different phases. Sometimes I’d think, ‘Why hadn’t it rather been me?’ Because I’d been left to deal with everything on my own.”

It took eight years before she felt ready to part with Ruben’s things. As she was packing his clothes and personal items, she came across the speech he’d written after the Boks’ 1995 Rugby World Cup win and made copies of it for the girls.

“It was as if he was speaking to them,” she recalls. “He said, ‘If you want to be a champion, you must train like a champion. You must eat like a champion’.

“Ruben wasn’t afraid of losing the World Cup in 1995 – he was just afraid of disappointing his country.”

LIZE still has strong ties to SA and comes home for a visit every year. However, given the turn in her love life, those visits may become more frequent. “Love happens by itself,” she

ABOVE: Lize with Zoë and Bella at Ruben’s funeral in 2010. He succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 39. RIGHT: Ruben played a vital role in SA’s 1995 World Cup win. says. “There was a lot I needed to process first. In the beginning, you’re overwhelmed by grief and it wouldn’t have been fair to [start something] with someone else because my mind was still with Ruben.”

But last year she crossed paths with a

Pretoria businessman she’d met years before in SA.

The man, a divorcee, was in New York and he contacted her and asked if they could meet up in the Big Apple. She went to the city and they had a date at a café underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

SAnd that was the start of something that’s still flourishing.

“So yes, there’s someone special in my life – but there’s no talk of marriage, okay! Still, it’s good to have someone again,” she says, adding she doesn’t want to name him just yet.

The pair got to know each other better during lockdown. Lize and the girls were in Tunisia for a tennis tournament when the pandemic hit and they decided to come to SA and spend lockdown here.

They were able to leave only in August – Lize and Bella flew back to Florida and Zoë to Barcelona.

Lize says lockdown was a precious time.

Her elder brother, Frans Cronjé, is a tennis coach and when hard lockdown ended, he helped the girls with their training.

And Lize and her new man took advantage of the more relaxed rules to spend more time together too.

The future isn’t set in stone, she says. She’d like Bella to finish high school in America and thinks her youngest will then head off to Barcelona like Zoë and hone her skills on the red clay courts.

She can see herself returning to live in SA one day, Lize says, once her children are old enough to build lives of their own.

“We’ve been through a lot together and I’m grateful for the human beings they’ve become. Looking back over the past 10 years, I realise we have come a long way.”

‘When a conflict arose with a coach, he would’ve known what to say’