There is no such person as Oregan Hoskins. The president of the South African Rugby Union (Saru) is known to his friends, of which there are many, as Regan. When his wife to be, Geraldine, met his parents, she was shocked to discover this other identity and wondered whether she was marrying the wrong person.
It is similarly difficult to locate Hoskins within the South African context. You know, the one that still demands you fill in the box marked ”race” on official government forms. As it happens, Hoskins went to the only coloured school in Pietermaritzburg, but, if you think that means his antecedents come from a mixed-race marriage in the Cape, you’d be wrong again.
In fact, both parents are no more than a generation or two removed from their origins on the island of St Helena, one of the most isolated places on Earth. You can’t fly to St Helena, but there’s a boat that stops at Cape Town, Walvis Bay and Ascension Island. One day, Hoskins plans to catch the boat and visit relatives there. Maybe he’ll also visit the museum devoted to Napoleon, who spent his final years in exile on the volcanic bump in the South Atlantic.
Just 10 months ago it would have been easy to insert a joke right here. Visiting Napoleon’s museum to get a few tips on dictatorship, was he? After all, that’s pretty much what the presidency of Saru had come to mean during the reign of Hoskins’s predecessor, Brian van Rooyen.
But since coming to power in February this year, Hoskins has spent his time empowering his colleagues on Saru’s president’s council and avoiding the headlines. It’s almost as if he didn’t take his job seriously, as though he thought that being president was a conciliatory rather than an antagonistic task.
He says: ”I didn’t have to change structures fundamentally when I assumed office, I just had to make sure that we were adhering to good corporate governance, which was something that didn’t happen under Van Rooyen. I had to remind people to be honest, open and transparent in their dealings.
”I was conscious of the fact that the president shouldn’t be constantly on the front pages of the newspapers for the right or wrong reasons. Saru should not be about one person and that I think is where the problems lay with my predecessors. Ultimately, if you make corporate decisions instead of individual ones then one person is not going to be in the newspapers all the time.
”There has never been a culture in Saru that allowed the presidents of the smaller unions to regard themselves as the leaders of South African rugby. We needed platforms and forums to allow [platteland] presidents to lead themselves. The president’s council is a body that was set up to provide leadership and what I tried to do was to get every member of it to express an opinion.”
That’s an admirable goal, but historically, the smaller unions have voted en bloc for the man in charge. They have generally been satisfied with crumbs from the top table, refusing to rock the boat as long as they receive Test tickets and the odd trip abroad to watch the Boks. The idea of thinking for themselves must have come as a shock to some, especially given the dark final days of Van Rooyen’s presidency.
Says Hoskins: ”I think Brian enjoyed the majority support of the president’s council, right up until the last two months of his presidency. Things changed fundamentally when the sponsors, the players’ association, the public and the media were united in their view. The president’s council was the last body to open its eyes to reality.
”When Brian was first elected to the presidency of Saru, I made a special trip to Johannesburg to meet with him and offer my support. I promised that I would work with him and obviously I also wanted to do the best for my province, but it was an honest and sincere gesture.
”Almost immediately I could see that there was something wrong. First of all, I couldn’t believe that Brian would only give me an hour of his time. Then, as I attended more Saru meetings, I found that I was on the opposite side to Brian on most issues.”
It’s hard to believe that Springbok coach Jake White would have survived the vote of no confidence in him proposed by the Blue Bulls Rugby Union last month if Van Rooyen had still been in charge. Hoskins was on tour with the Boks when the news came through and, after discussing the matter with White, he persuaded the coach to fly back and face the council in person.
”I had full confidence that the president’s council was going to make the right decision. I didn’t have to canvass anybody and I didn’t phone anyone to tell them to make sure that Jake didn’t get fired. My predecessor saw them as a bunch of guys who could be told what to do, probably because of what his predecessors had done.”
To an extent, the media stimulated Hoskins’s advice to White. The day after South Africa had lost to England at Twickenham, Rapport carried a front-page story saying that White had already been dismissed and that the new coach was the Bulls’ own Heyneke Meyer.
Says Hoskins” ”Before I became president I didn’t realise how powerful the media are. They are way more important than the guy who pays his money at the gate because they think they have the right to make decisions for administrators.
”I no longer worry about leaks from Saru meetings. It’s a problem that will never go away and my tactic is to give it to the media before they ask for it. We had a meeting of the ex-Springbok coaches earlier in the year to look at ways to help Jake and I said to each of them, ‘Look guys, let’s keep this confidential.’ They all swore it was confidential and the next morning it was in the press.”
It’s not surprising to discover that Hoskins’s background is in the legal profession, but it’s not always easy to equate the man’s equanimity with his background. He says: ”My ambition to become a lawyer was galvanised by the apartheid system. Growing up, I saw people having their individual freedoms denied in the name of the Internal Security Act.”
Realising that ambition was not easy for someone who dropped out of school in standard nine. He studied as a teacher and taught at his old school for four years before returning to the University of Natal (Maritzburg), this time as a law student. He opened his own law firm after completing his articles and along the way he gathered the one thing that would stand him in good stead for his current position, confidence in his own ability.
”I never felt that I was an affirmative choice for Saru. I have always had confidence in my own ability and I believe that I’m here now because I’m the best person for the job. I’ve got good people around me and I believe that successful leadership comes from unity, so I continue to work for unity around me.
”There have been times this year when some people have been working towards disunity, but I do my best to keep the leadership united, to work through the problems and work through the problem people.”
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But history tells us it is not.