RUGBY: Luke Alfred
GLADWELL MAJALIMA and I are sitting next to each other watching the members of his club practising against a distant backdrop of fir and eucalyptus trees. It is the last day of February and the first chill of winter is in the air.
We could be in southern Scotland or parts of New Zealand so universal is the intimate scene, but we are beside the Durban Deep ground in, of all places, Roodepoort. The game that is being played is rugby, those doing the playing are black, and besides me there is not a white face in sight.
Majalima, who is the chairman of the Soweto Rugby Club, is a large steady man who weighs his words carefully and needs a while before he starts flashing his crooked teeth. It comes as no surprise to hear that he locked for Griquas and Transvaal, appearing in the equivalent of several Currie Cup finals, although never managing to be on the winning side.
As a young player he was in such demand that he was collected from school and driven to games to ensure his prompt arrival, he was a black Springbok, and thinks rugby is the greatest game in the world.
“Shangaans and Zulus don’t play this game,” he tells me proudly. “It’s too rough. Only Xhosas play rugby. These players here — they come from Alice, Fort Beaufort, East London, from all over the Transkei and Ciskei.”
The Soweto Rugby Club is an amalgamation of several mine rugby teams from across the Reef. (A minibus brought players from one of the Randfontein mines for Tuesday night’s practise.) Majalima hopes to be able to field four teams when the season starts in early April but mentions that the financial base from which the club starts is negligible, and more often than not they are obliged to dig into their own pockets for things such as petrol money.
“A lot of things did come from Ellis Park — balls, tackling bags — but it wasn’t to our satisfaction,” Majalima tells me. He adds later that the British embassy donated R12 000 to their cause but the impression one is left with is of a club struggling to survive, let alone have anything left for an after- match braai or a celebratory round of beers.
The changing rooms are in horrendous repair (they have neither electricity nor running water) and Majalima mentions that the club would need R30 000 to restore it to its original condition — clearly money they don’t
Despite the bleak financial future, Majalima is enthusiastic about the club’s prospect in this its inaugural season under the “guidance” of the TRU. As we watch the practise under darkening skies (there are floodlights, but for some reason — financial perhaps? — they haven’t been turned on), the chairman confesses that one of his star players is back from a spell in the “coloured” league. “He was being paid R30 a game,” says Majalima, “but he has come back to play for us.”
So he’s turned his back on the professional game I say wryly, and while I wait we look out at a quaintly old- fashioned rugby practise, undertaken with grim seriousness by young men who look better suited to