Steve Morris : Rugby
The real fight for control of South African rugby was joined this week with the confirmation that Mluleki George is to be nominated to oppose Louis Luyt for the presidency of the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu). It is a battle which promises to bloody a few noses and carpets.
It is also the racial aspects of the issue as so inappropriately raised by Border Rugby Union vice-president John Ncinane apart a looming battle which could redraw forever the parameters of the games administration in this country.
Both men are as tough as they come. Both are inveterate survivors: Luyt a castaway, increasingly marooned on a lonely island of power forged by his own ego; George a patient stalker of the halls of power that were so long denied him in the days of apartheid.
With the lines drawn through a growing disquiet among rugby followers of the way the game has been manoeuvred, as the Browde Commission poised to examine the governance of the game, a still seething revolt among the provinces over the arbitrary redrawing of provincial allegiances in the Super 12, and a singular lack of success at international level from our World Cup champions, this will not be a confrontation for the faint of heart.
But, again, it must be restated that Luyt is a survivor, a canny committee veteran skilful enough to have survived and prospered in the commercial world after the collapse of his fertiliser and brewing endeavours.
That said though, Luyt cannot be classified as a loser in the classic sense. He bulldozed Transvaal rugby in the days before the misconception that renaming the province the Lions would add pride to the province out of what seemed terminal lethargy and restructured the union from a morass of abject bankruptcy into a fearsome financial fiefdom.
They are, in many ways, no mean feats. Luyt has done this largely through the force of his own personality; the fires of his own ambitions. He has also achieved what he has with very little regard for popular sentiments or sensitivities.
Witness to this have been his gloating speeches in Springbok victory and his almost childish glowering petulance in the national teams defeat; his insistence on removing men of the calibre of Jannie Engelbrecht and Morne du Plessis because they did not happen to agree with his viewpoint; his insistence on having a say in the selection of national coaches and Springbok teams. It has all added to the arrogant enigma.
For, while Luyt has not been short of detractors, he has carefully built his powerbase at Ellis Park, using the presidency there to catapult himself into the chair at Sarfu, all the while building his defences against attack.
The most recent example of this was his seeing-off of the challenge of Brian van Rooyen, who questioned the unions financial matters.
Luyt has also had the foresight in the light of the looming fight for the Sarfu presidency to engender massive popular support among the smaller unions, a factor which has staved off the attacks of the bigger provinces on more than one occasion.
Against him this time though he has a man who has fought battles against the establishment all his adult life and, while it might have taken him most of that lifetime, George has emerged undoubtedly battle-scarred but still unbowed.
He has no real reason to remember the old order of which Luyt is very much a part, despite his willingness in the days of apartheid to become one of the first sports administrators to talk to the ANC in exile with anything approaching affection.
As a member of the non-racial sports movement and a strong affiliate of the South African Rugby Union, a body forced on black players and administrators to underpin racial segregation, George has taken his convictions and the fight to open the doors to the club locker-rooms to all South Africans, into the hallowed halls of Sarfu as the bodys vice-president.
He has walked softly where Luyt has trampled, stayed quietly convinced that change will come if it is worked hard enough for.
Most of all though, George has kept the spirit of reconciliation alive in times when his colleagues have openly come out with demands for a more representative look to rugby in this country. You need look no further than his personal decision to put behind him the outpourings of disgraced former national coach Andre Markgraaff in unbelievably blaming die kaffirs for his problems, and publicly reconcile himself with the man.
It takes a certain strength of character to do something as big as that and, while the bespectacled George lacks a tower of inches on Luyt, there can be no doubt that he owns the same kind of steel in his spine as does the present Sarfu supremo.
Georges supporters claim to have the backing of Free State, Natal, Boland and Eastern Province in the bid to take over the reins at Sarfu. There is no doubt that more will join them in the battle set to rage across the trenches of the November 4 elections at the annual congress in Cape Town.
It would take a brave man to stake serious money on the outcome, but one thing is for sure, rugby in this country will have to change radically now that George has thrown his hat in the ring, whether he beats Luyt or not.
ENDS