In a little more than two weeks’ time, the Springboks will set out to win back the World Cup they won in 1995, where they defeated favourites New Zealand in the final.
It was a wonderful day for the new South African rainbow nation, just a year after the country’s first democratic elections and just three years after the mighty Springbok rugby team was allowed back into international sport.
But after winning the tournament 12 years ago and representing the nation at the 1999 and 2003 tournaments, it may be the last time the South African rugby team — considered one of the powerhouses in the world — runs out at the four-yearly event known as the name Springboks.
While the South Africans will go into this year’s World Cup as one of the favourites, they will also be a team closely watched back home by the politicians, who’ll not only be eager to see them lift the trophy, but also give the six black players in the 30-man squad as much game time as possible.
Politics and rugby in South Africa go hand in hand and while the politicians have not made a peep about the composition of the team since its announcement a few weeks ago, the players and management team heading to France will know they’ll be closely monitored.
Jake White has been criticised on numerous occasions since taking up the position of head coach in 2004 for not selecting enough black players, while the African National Congress-led government has also had its say about the lack of transformation in the Bok team.
There have also been murmurings about politicians pushing to see the end of the leaping Springbok — the symbol of national rugby in the country — on the teams’ rugby jerseys.
The South African rugby team has been known as the Springboks since 1906 and while other sporting codes in the country have systematically abolished the Springbok as the national team’s emblem since 1992 — when South Africans teams were allowed back into the international fold — South African rugby has hung on to the talismanic emblem.
It is seen by many, especially the black leaders of the country, as a symbol of racist sport and apartheid.
Cricket and other sporting codes have adopted the king protea — a flower — as their official emblem.
Earlier this year, ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said: ”Within the context of nation-building, the creation of a non-racial, non sexist South Africa, it is imperative that we rally around single emblems and symbols.”
Not only may it be the last time the South African rugby team play as the Springboks at a World Cup, it may also be the last time the team is coached by a white man.
It may also be the last time the majority of the side is white.
Transformation at senior level has been slow on the domestic front, with the authorities unable to make the kind of progress the politicians are looking for.
Still considered by many as the traditional sport of the white Afrikaner, the men in government who make things happen are not a happy lot.
Just weeks ago there were newspaper reports that the first Bok team of 2008 would have 10 black players in the starting XV and the coach would also be a black man, current South African under-21 coach Pieter de Villiers.
Other newspapers said there would be up to eight black players in a Bok 22-man squad, but that those black players who’d already won three caps at international level would not be considered ”transformation players”.
Moves are certainly afoot to speed up the transformation process and if the politicians need anything to back up their plans, they need look no further than the slow progress of transformation at World Cup tournaments for evidence to exact change.
In 1995, the only non-white player in the Bok squad was the brilliant wing, Chester Williams, and four years later the figure was four non-white players — Breyton Paulse, Deon Kayser, Wayne Julies and Kaya Malotana.
Paulse was the only regular starter of the four. In 2003, under Rudolf Straeuli, five non-white players were part of the squad of 30 — Paulse, Lawrence Sephaka, Ashwin Willemse, Ricardo Loubscher and Dale Santon.
Twelve years on from that victorious day at Ellis Park when the Boks beat the All Blacks, there are only six non-white players in the squad, four of them wings, namely Willemse, Bryan Habana, JP Pietersen and Akona Ndungane.
The other two are scrumhalf Ricky Januarie and prop Gurthro Steenkamp.
The Boks are indeed among the favourites to triumph in France, but while they might win on the field, the politicians will see nothing other than failure due to the composition of a non-transformed Bok team, supposedly representing the Rainbow Nation. — Sapa-AFP