We must do the same with the Springbok, argues Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal. We used to sing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika anxiously and with longing. Now it nestles confidently alongside the old anthem, erstwhile emblem of that anxiety and disposession. That is part of the self-assurance of our new democracy.
Who can fail to have noticed that Die Stem has been robbed of its opprobrium and captured creatively for the purpose of cementing a new order? Who can doubt that our new double-voiced anthem is a legitimate desecration of HF Verwoerd’s purist ideological legacy? Those symbols had and have no inherent or talismanic force, apart from the institutional realities that sustained their real meaning.
It is, therefore, a false radicalism that remains fixated by impotent symbols, as though they contained still the formidable power of the past. Self-styled radicals, resisting the President’s call for the retention of the current Springbok emblem (which is a modification of the old one, sporting, as it does, a string of proteas), in the limited context of the sport of rugby, confer an inadvertent power upon that which they claim to abhor.
They confer an unintended compliment upon the architects of apartheid. They deny that we, the victors, have the power to possess and transform the symbols of the past. They accuse us of a kind of
Symbols, then, are a battle ground, a terrain upon which we can win or we can lose. In rugby, we have won.All South Africa has won. The President’s presence on the sporting ground at the Rugby World Cup final was a charged political claim, a foray into cultural nation-
After the final, Pienaar’s interviewer, subconsciously reflecting the old rugby symbolism, asked the captain how he felt to have the 60 000-strong stadium audience backing him. Who can forget Pienaar’s response, after a
Yes, the Springboks have played for 43-million people, for everyone across the country!
Anyone who supported the Boks supported them on those all-inclusive terms, so clearly stated by Pienaar. It requires a hermetic delirium to think that, in this context, Springbok symbolism could remain racist. The devil of old had, finally, been exorcised. The reason for the retention is, simply, the genuine reconciliation that the step implies.
There are parallels to be sought in events in the parliamentary sphere. The ancien regime, expecting to exercise a kind of minority veto through the device of the Government of National Unity, clearly underestimated how rapidly the trappings of power would become meaningless in the new order.
They overestimated the symbolic power of office- holding. We, representing the new order, were, in contrast, able to see beyond symbolism and to grasp the real mantle of power.
Symbols are not an end in themselves. They can be powerful means towards desirable ends. Our democratic political culture must pioneer a new and complex symbolism for the future.
What real radicals must press for is a reciprocal gesture from the custodians of the old symbols. Like priests who have lost their faith but kept their jobs,the monks of the old order cling anxiously to old symbols, hoping to preserve some glimmer of old realities. True radicals must, with confidence, expropriate their shrines.
The most obvious case is those, in politics and elsewhere, who have yet to acknowledge that apartheid was evil in its very conception, and not just a well- intentioned error. In a more practical sense, a gesture of reciprocity would involve genuine steps to reconstruct schools rugby, to bring grass to township rugby fields, and to provide the sort of coaching that, before long, will make our national rugby teams representative of our people.
Yes, we as South Africans won — not only the rugby. We must now see reconciliation as strength and not weakness. To retain the Springbok, together with the protea, is to forge, out of strength and confidence, a new symbol of belonging.
We must claim our joint victory rather than abandoning it to the dwindling band of moral hermits — in the media, in suburban fortresses and elsewhere — who would like to ensure the survival of the old meanings of old symbols.
There is evidence that a laager mentality survives in some quarters, and there is evidence that new political alliances, based on that laager mentality, are being sought. The antidote is recognition of the essential oneness, with all our distinctive traditions, of South Africans, a oneness that Francois Pienaar so graphically noted in public.
In the case of the Springbok rugby emblem, no less than in an our constitutional arrangements, we must, in the words of the late Joe Slovo, be careful not to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
