It took nearly a year, but Brian van Rooyen has finally delivered on his promise to shake South African rugby to its foundations. This week he buried both the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) and SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd and replaced them with one structure, to be known simply as SA Rugby.
Many things remain the same, including Van Rooyen as president of the new structure, but have no doubt that the new broom has swept clean. Van Rooyen’s presentation on Monday was as plain as a pikestaff: at the top of one page the logos of both Sarfu and SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd were obliterated by a bold red cross.
So Sarfu is no more. The organisation that attempted to unify the whites-only SA Rugby Board and its non-white counterpart the SA Rugby Union lasted just more than 12 years. Its office bearers ranged from the charismatic to the confrontational and the utterly anonymous. To prove the point here’s a quick quiz question: Who preceded Louis Luyt as Sarfu president? If you answered correctly, Ebrahim Patel, I bet you can’t answer the next question. What’s Patel doing now? Nope, neither can I.
The glory years, if that is the right phrase, for Sarfu were between 1994 and 1996, when the Springboks shook off the rust of isolation, won the World Cup and, almost coincidentally, the respect of the rugby-playing world. Many people would like you to forget that its president during that time was Luyt.
At the conclusion of the 1995 World Cup, Luyt was one of the power brokers responsible for taking rugby union into the brave new world of professionalism. He helped secure the 10-year deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp that ensured there would be plenty of carriages on the gravy train of professionalism.
At the same time he fought accusations of nepotism when he installed his then son-in-law, Rian Oberholzer, as South Africa’s representative on the board of a new organisation, Sanzar (South Africa, New Zealand, Australia Rugby).
Oberholzer’s business acumen kept him in place despite Luyt’s eventual departure, however, and in many ways the protégé turned out to be far more influential in the running of the game in this country than the master.
It was Oberholzer who began the dismantling of Sarfu just over three years ago when, ostensibly as a tax dodge, he helped create SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd. The latter organisation would henceforth handle all the sexy stuff — the Springboks, marketing, money — and Sarfu would revert to the amateur body in charge of the provinces that it was upon foundation in those far-off days when the Boks weren’t allowed to play Tests.
The philosophy behind the move was that there was too much money coming into the game to allow it to be controlled by a bunch of amateur union presidents. Oberholzer and his executive council would make the important decisions about South African rugby and when unpopular ones were made the organisation’s front man, Silas Nkanunu, would pour oil on troubled waters.
Incidentally, it is interesting to note how long the gravy train lasted for Nkanunu. He was on Sarfu’s executive board from its inception until he resigned as president late last year, when it became apparent that Van Rooyen would beat him in the vote.
Right up until the moment of his resignation he was sending envoys to Van Rooyen, attempting to broker a deal that would have allowed him a dignified exit. It might be argued that nothing summed up Nkanunu’s contribution to the game in this country so well as the manner of his departure from it.
With hindsight the resignations of Oberholzer, Nkanunu and, to a lesser extent, Rudolf Straeuli sounded the death knell for both SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd and Sarfu. Van Rooyen believed that the former had too much power, the latter too little and he rode to victory in the presidential election by championing the cause of the 14 provinces and their presidents.
Inevitably he will now be charged with plunging the game back into the dark ages. Both Danie Craven and Luyt maintained the ability to run the game autocratically through divide and rule. The presidents of the smaller unions could always be relied upon to support unpopular moves by the two doctors, and their numerical superiority made it impossible for the Test unions to intervene.
The new structure of SA Rugby has created a new body — the general council — that has ultimate authority. It consists of the president and his deputy, two independent directors and two coopted members. But the president’s council sits immediately below the general council and the 14 provincial presidents sit there.
It is far too soon to say how SA Rugby will benefit the game, but at the very least Van Rooyen can claim to have done more in 11 months at the helm than his predecessor did in five years. May the new organisation last longer and create less cant than the two that it replaces.