In his biography, former Springbok rugby player Joost van der Westhuizen has written an open letter asking for forgiveness from South Africans.
Here is an extract from Joost, The Man in the Mirror:
‘In my life, I have achieved many things that took a lot of guts, determination and self-belief, I have sometimes faltered, but I have never really been scared, or doubted not making it through to the end. Perhaps that is why I actually enjoyed Kamp Staaldraad. I knew they couldn’t break me.
But just when I thought life had got easier and that never again would I have to be as strong as I had been, I was confronted with something far more terrifying than anything I could ever have imagined. I came face to face with my own human frailty and my conscience. I have found that when you yourself are the problem, there is nowhere to hide. And I’ve tried to hide.
Throughout my life — and I suspect this also happens in everyone else’s life — I have made stupid decisions. Thankfully they have usually been about inconsequential stuff that I was able to deal with by being suitably repentant or performing my own little penances. But just over three years ago I made the biggest mistake of my life. I did something I will probably regret for the rest of my days. Against all my principles, I had a sexual liaison — we never had intercourse — with a woman who was not my wife. And we took drugs. As fate would have it and unbeknown to me, the girl I was with filmed the incident.
There is not sufficient space or enough words to explain how my world came crashing down when the press reported that they had a copy of the video. I had long since blanked out the afternoon with the girl — it happened over three years ago and somehow I had hoped it would disappear into the mists of time.
The simple fact is, from almost that exact period when the video was made, I can chart how I changed. Since then I have tried, and most succeeded, to live and exemplary life.
I was used to being the man who could do anything he wanted. I was windgat in the worst sense of the word.
I was. Until in exactly that same period Amor pulled me up — the morning I got home late after drinking with my mates at Loftus — and explained to me that I was either in our marriage or I was out. And if I was in, I had to get my act together.
Ever since, I have had ‘my act’ together. To then be revisited by my past so publicly was punishment so indescribably horrible that my first, and I now know incorrect, reaction was to run and hide; to deny everything and pray that for one last time in my life I could get away with my bad behaviour, because nothing like it would ever happen again. The more I denied, the more I had to deny. It just got worse and worse. My every waking moment was consumed by the video and the fact that I was living a lie.
I also asked the wrong people for advice. They promised me they could make it all go away. I had people giving me false hope that it would all be okay. I knew it couldn’t possibly be okay and I fell into a spiral of self-loathing, fear, futile hope and anger that was so awful, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Then, a few weeks ago, I ended up in hospital. Lying in bed, I knew I had to deal with the situation. So here you have my unreserved apology. No excuses. What I did with the girl was wrong. Taking drugs was wrong, and lying and denying were wrong.
More than anything, I fear losing my family. Everything else can go, but not my family. I may still lose them; I hope and pray that I don’t and that Amore can find it in her heart to forgive me. To her and my other family members and all the people who believed in me, I am sorry — I let you down. Worse, still, I let myself down. I’ve decided to stop running and face up to myself. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”
Joost Heystek van der Westhuizen