Efforts to reform rugby, apartheid’s sporting religion, have foundered on old attitudes in high places. Donald McRae analyses the shaky progress so far
AS white South Africa slipped into its usual breathless fervour for the first Test between the Springboks and the Lions, Brian van Rooyen sighed wearily. “I’m just an ordinary guy,” he said. “A normal man with a family, a coloured guy of average means. But I can feel the full weight of white rugby bearing down on me. These guys are furious with me. They’re out to hammer me. So, yes, you could say my mind is on matters beyond Saturday’s game …”
For the last 15 months, Van Rooyen has been embroiled in a bitter struggle with South Africa Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) president Louis Luyt whose control of his sport is akin to Don King’s hold on boxing. It is hard not to shiver a little when Luyt warns that “I have one more fight to fight – Brian van Rooyen”.
The next murky round is likely to end painfully for Van Rooyen. Soon he will appear before a Sarfu disciplinary committee. “One of the charges against me,” he murmurs, “is that I’ve brought rugby into disrepute by implying that Sarfu are racist. But let’s start with the Andre Markgraaff tape. If that’s not racism, then what is?
“Sarfu knew about this tape months before,” Van Rooyen says, “even when Markgraaff coached the Springboks in France last November. They deny it, but I’ve got the evidence to show otherwise.”
Sarfu’s chief executive Rian Oberholzer, who is also Luyt’s son-in-law, claims that “we’ve proved over the years that we’re not a racist organisation”. But Van Rooyen remains insistent. “Racism is alive in rugby. When I first challenged them last March, I asked simple questions. R7-million was supposedly used to develop black rugby. How was this money spent? Where are the benefits? I’m still waiting for answers. There are none.
“Sarfu has no commitment to black rugby. They ignore all these young players – even the brilliant ones, even Mac Masina.”
Macdonald Masina is an articulate and talented 22-year-old. Until he was 16 years old, he had never even held a rugby ball. “Ag, you know how it was,” he says nonchalantly. “We thought rugby symbolised apartheid. I was at school in Soweto, playing soccer, when this Afrikaans headmaster came along. He said we had to play rugby instead. We were definitely not interested. How could we take rugby seriously? But when we heard that trips to Cape Town would be involved, it became more appealing.”
Being the only rugby-playing school in Soweto, Masina’s team competed exclusively against white sides. His ability soon led to an offer of a rugby scholarship with the exclusive St John’s school in Johannesburg.
“At first,” Masina recalls, “I was dubious. Why leave my Soweto buddies for some white school? But my dad said that, beyond the rugby, it was a wonderful opportunity for a better education. And, sure, it’s worked out fine.”
Masina has since played centre for Gauteng Lions B, made Sarfu’s “Elite Development Squad” and has been chosen for the South African Barbarians sevens side in Paris. “It’s going okay,” he suggests. “But I would like to establish myself in the Transvaal side and then, one day, it would be great to play for my country.” But not every dream unfolds smoothly. Gauteng, along with Orange Free State, have yet to field a black player.
Many were especially disappointed when Masina didn’t appear in the last few Super 12 games when Hennie le Roux was injured. A white centre from Griqualand West was preferred.
“All I can really say is that I was fit and mentally prepared for the Super 12s. I was ready.” says Masina
Does he ever worry about discrimination in rugby? “Well,” he says after a pause, “as a black player you never really know what they think of you. There is racism in rugby. It’s just that you can never be certain when it’s being used against you.”
Rugby writer Clinton van der Berg, for all his misgivings, believes that things have improved. “This is not the same rugby country it was three years ago. Of course, with Sarfu being such a big animal there are conflicting views from one province to the next. Brian van Rooyen is right. Many of the administrators are verkramp but others are passionate about development.
“And there is a sudden flowering of guys like Jeffrey Stevens, who is a super talent, a star in the making.” Stevens is the new face of South African rugby. At 20, he already has the shimmering look of a great player.
Errol Tobias in the early Eighties and Chester Williams in the mid-Nineties broke through to establish themselves as Springboks, but Sarfu has even bigger plans for Stevens. Picked in 1995 for the first South African Schools side to include black players, he also represented the national Under-19s and played for the full Springboks sevens side this year in Hong Kong.
Sarfu’s slickest PR minds are fond of pumping out slogans like “Reach Out Through Rugby” and promotional material endorsing “various new development initiatives for the under-privileged”. Whether or not such initiatives have any substance, Stevens’s image is invariably used to colour the rhetoric. Yet this is not mere opportunism, for Stevens is undoubtedly the real thing.
Living with his family in Worcester, a hundred kilometres from Cape Town, Stevens remains curiously untouched by the surrounding political machinations. He laughs loudly as I pull out the latest Sarfu media handbook. This is one promotion he has not seen before. His delight is genuine as he stares at himself on the cover in a Springbok shirt, sidestepping past a rival wing with a white ball cupped in his left hand.
“Do you think it looks good?” he asks shyly.
“There was a time,” Stevens says, “when I never thought I’d wear this shirt. My uncle Pieter Claassen was an outstanding centre. He could jink past 10 men. He should have been a Springbok. But he was the wrong colour.” Stevens’s father played with Errol Tobias, the original black Springbok. A gentle but disillusioned man, Tobias still regards the game as belonging “to the Broederbond”.
“Errol made us dream of the Springboks,” Stevens says.
While Tobias, in turn, rates Stevens as the country’s finest prospect, he rues the fact that his own rugby knowledge is ignored by Sarfu. “I’m behind Brian van Rooyen,” he said. “Sarfu wants to block us. We’re too outspoken. We want to kick out Luyt. Only then will Jeffrey and the others achieve their full potential. We want them to have the chances denied to my generation.”
If Stevens is too reserved to make such public pronouncements, he opens up quietly at home. “There are disappointments. The Markgraaff tape for example. Before South Africa played New Zealand last year, Markgraaff invited me to train with the Springboks. He treated me well. He didn’t see me as a coloured, he saw me as a player. So when I heard what he said …” Stevens trails away, shaking his head.
“It reminded me that once I supported the All Blacks. I couldn’t give my heart then to the Springboks.
“But things change. Our house was packed for the World Cup final. Fifty people were here. All coloureds, like me, born into rugby. But me and my dad were the only Springbok supporters. Everyone else was cheering the All Blacks; they said the Springboks excluded us.
“But we had Chester Williams on the wing. That was something. I was happy when the Springboks won. I want to play for them.”
It may be a year or two away, but that day is coming. As Nick Mallett, Stevens’s provincial coach and Markgraaff’s former assistant, says: “Jeffrey Stevens must be nurtured. When he plays for the Springboks, it will be because he is the best in his position. His background, heritage and skin colour will have nothing to do with it. They will pick him because of his brilliance.”