Patriot: Rassie Erasmus embraces the values of the democratic South Africa, where we celebrate each other and our truly working class origins. Photo: Springboks
Generally the values of amateurism signify a love or passion for a sport or discipline as opposed to professionalism, which is mainly about monetary reward or commercial appeal.
Amateur sports is understood as that which allows all to participate, not just the elite. So you would be forgiven for believing that Rugby Union, one of the world’s premier sports and among the last to allow professionalism, would have its amateur ethos being about ensuring all can participate and is rooted in working class values.
But the opposite is true.
Rugby, despite looking like a sport of ruffians and good-for-nothings, is deeply rooted in bourgeois and elitist society. It was not a sport of the poor and working class masses.
The Rugby World Cup trophy is named after William Webb Ellis. In the UK everything is owned by the reigning king or queen, therefore the word public or publicly-owned is that which is not owned by the royal monarch. So unlike South Africa, where a public school would mean government-owned, in the UK, when they say public school, it really means private school.
Ellis attended Rugby School, which was an English upper-crust public school that only the rich and their children could afford.
The legend goes that one day while participating in an inter-school football match, Ellis decided to pick up the ball with his hands and run with it. By doing that ‘revolutionary’ act, the game of Rugby Union was born.
Ellis and his friends met later and devised a set of rules to govern their sport. It is my contention though that this was not a revolutionary act, but one born out of frustration. Football is a working class sport
and has always been dominated by the poor.
I am sure that Ellis and his fellow middle class school mates were growing weary of losing to working class football teams. Instead of being constantly pummelled by those they considered beneath them, they created a new sport that they could play away from the ‘unwashed masses’.
Rugby held on stubbornly as amateur and not professional, because if it paid athletes, then that meant the poor and working class could afford to participate in the sport, like they did in football.
However, although the roots of Rugby Union in the founding countries remain elitist, this is not necessarily the same in the former British colonies, like South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, that adopted the sport.
Remember that the settler Europeans who occupied and colonised those countries were themselves mainly working class and the poor of European society. Argentina was different though. The sport was generally middle class and closely associated with the polo crowd of Argentine society. The Argentine and Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara, who came from a noble family famously loved and played rugby.
In South Africa, rugby was founded in the working and middle class areas of the country. Even amongst the middle class created by apartheid, its home was among the Afrikaners, not necessarily the wealthy English-speaking Europeans.
The International Rugby Board (IRB) is dominated by those who remain not just middle class and bourgeois but regard it as a duty to retain the Anglo-Saxon dominance of Rugby Union away from the grubby fingers of the working class.
Therefore it should have come as no surprise that the best Rugby Union coach for at least the last 10 years, South Africa’s Rassie Erasmus, could not even merit a nomination for Coach of the Year in 2025.
If you ask anyone who has even a passing interest in Rugby Union, they will tell you that Rassie has revolutionised the sport. Even those rugby country unions who cannot stand him, would not blink an eye if they could have him as their national coach.
Let’s face it. It’s not because of a personal hatred of Rassie or his history of taking on the Rugby Union establishment.
Many of us remember the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 and Rassie being involved in putting together a video exposing the bias of the referee against South Africa, including treating captain Siya Kolisi with utter disrespect. It is, as Karl Marx would remind us, about class struggle.
Rassie represents the working class public school rugby guy. He is truly working class. You will see him on TikTok videos dancing clumsily and being that oke you can relate to.
You would imagine him drinking cheap beer out of the bottle and then wiping his mouth on his sleeve, swearing like a sailor, invading your personal space, speaking loudly, almost spraying saliva on you while he roughly slaps your back. He is that guy in the restaurant laughing loudly and not knowing how to pronounce hors’ d’oeuvres.
These old money elites in the IRB cannot stand what Rassie represents. They prefer their champagne, crumpets and prawns crowd who hail from top private schools and fit in easily with the hoity-toity of French and British society.
Unfortunately there are many in South Africa, especially whites, who may not like the Anglo-Saxon dominance of rugby values but still hold the mistaken belief that Europe likes and wants them. They are not able to recognise that Rassie has evolved despite his formative roots in racist apartheid culture.
Rassie grew up in Despatch, a place not too far from where I grew up in Port Elizabeth (known as Gqeberha today). All of us were scared of going into Despatch, the stories of white kids hitting and torturing Black children as a sort of rite of passage scared us as kids.
Rassie is a patriot who embraces the values of the democratic South Africa, where we celebrate each other and our origins.
Rassie has not just embraced transforming rugby on the pitch but also that the sport must be open to all South Africans, whilst recognising that deliberate action must be undertaken to undo the wrongs of the past.
The cases of Manie Libbok and Salman Moerat are testimony that this commitment to transformation is not rhetoric but genuine.
In the 2023 World Cup, both
Rassie and coach Jacques Nienaber seemingly staked their rugby reputations on selecting Libbok above Handre Pollard.
But in the semi-final against England, with hardly 30 minutes gone in the match, Nienaber and Rassie took off Libbok for Pollard. They placed the needs of the team above that of their commitment to Libbok and what he represented for transformation. However, that was not the end of the story. Fast forward to the 2025 season, Libbok has seemingly gone past Pollard in the pecking order.
In the case of Moerat, Rassie was even more direct about his commitment to the player being one of transformation. He essentially said that in a press conference, where he indicated that we must all understand where we come from as South Africans and the responsibility of rugby to help change South Africa.
Rassie selected Moerat time and time again, even as a captain and celebrated his commitment to rugby. Therefore, when he has not selected Moerat either for a touring squad or playing one, like he did by subbing Libbok in the match against England, no one, not even the most ardent Moerat supporters can complain about a lack of commitment to transformation by Rassie. But do not be surprised that a year from now suddenly Moerat appears again.
The South African rugby team represents all that is truly good and bad in the country. It is a mixture of luck, humour, relentless stubbornness, ability to change and embrace different styles and culture, talent, sheer hard work and markedly different types of people playing in a team where they look like they will die for each other.
Rassie knows that he will never be good enough for the Anglo-Saxon dominated IRB. He knows that he is too working class for them. He knows that he is too Black for them.
It is a pity that his fellow Afrikaners and whites do not see what he does. If they did, they would be celebrating South Africa’s leadership in the G20 and standing up to the racist behemoth that is Donald Trump.
They would be telling everyone that South Africa not only will get better, but it is one of the greatest places to live in. And they would be asking the people of South Africa what they can do to ensure that all those denied by apartheid racism and colonial inequalities receive the benefits of democracy.
Donovan E Williams is a social commentator. @TheSherpaZA on X