Staff Writer
A group of teenage men warm up before a rugby match by performing push-ups on the hard ground on a parched pitch in a poor South African township.
In Tembisa, a mostly black neighbourhood northeast of Johannesburg, where dusty roads bustle with street vendors and football is king, the oval ball was formerly an uncommon sight.
Siya Kolisi, the first black player to hold the armband in an international game, led his nation to victory in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, which has helped shift the tide.
The Springboks, who will defend their world championship in France in September, have lost their reputation as a symbol of white supremacy.
Tembisa is no exception, a city with a high rate of crime, a high rate of unemployment, and a number of people that live in temporary corrugated iron structures.
“We have a lot of new players coming in week in and week out,” Siyabonga Mogale, a 21-year-old fullback for the local team, the Tembisa Stallions, said. Mogale has short dreadlocks and quick feet.
Rugby has sparked a lot of attention recently.
Analysts claim that despite the excitement surrounding Kolisi, progress toward equitable representation in sport is still being hindered by South Africa’s long history of racial discrimination.
“Rugby has manipulated its image to brainwash black South Africans into supporting the very system that they are excluded from,” claimed Mark Fredericks, a sports activist and professor.
Mind change
For 90 years, Springbok selectors solely picked white players, keeping sportsmen of color and mixed races in their own leagues and barring them from international competition.
Even after apartheid was abolished, progress has been agonizingly slow.
Only one winger was black on the 1995 World Cup-winning team, which Nelson Mandela memorably praised, and only two black players made up the 2007 World Cup-winning squad.
Six black players made up the starting 15 for the 2019 green and gold team, which Kolisi served as captain of.
In Soweto, the epicenter of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and where the Springboks were once despised, a countrywide tour to display the trophy began.
Tembisa Stallions captain Amohelang Motaung, 21, said, “It was inspiring to watch because I believed I can also make it.
But, according to Peter de Villiers, who in 2008 became the first black man to coach the Springboks, digging under the surface shows a different tale.
“If you look at the Springboks team, you will see the strides that they’ve made, the mindset shift,” De Villiers said to AFP.
But there needs to be widespread involvement in the sport if you want the finest to represent your nation, and this hasn’t happened yet.
The road to athletic achievement is arduous for individuals born in townships, like Motaung.
The same small number of private schools that produced a large number of Springboks under white rule continue to rule the scene.
The public schools in the townships, where even appropriate restrooms are occasionally lacking and physical education is a last-minute addition, have staff and facilities that are incomparable to theirs.
uneven field of play
Tembisa, where the Stallions, a local school team, play on a rough football field without goal posts, is a prime example of the problem.
Some members of the team practice barefoot.
“The field is not straight as it ought to be, or suitable. Rugby is not appropriate there, according to head coach Zwelakhe “Themba” Mawela. “There’s a lot of ground, but there’s not a lot of grass,” he added.
The majority of black South Africans, who make up around 90% of the population, cannot afford to send their children to expensive private schools or devote all of their time to rugby.
Motaung, a recent animal sciences graduate, spends his free time seeking for work when he’s not leading the Tembisa Stallions.
The coach, Mawela, stated, “We want them to have dreams, to be hopeful, and to know that it’s possible even if you’re black.”
“But without the proper facilities, I mean, what do you expect?”
Elite institutions have pushed to increase their student body and give scholarships to talented athletes.
One example is Kolisi, who was discovered by a prominent college at a young age despite being born in a township.
However, detractors contend that choosing scholarship winners from within communities just serves to exacerbate inequality.
The tallest trees in the township forest are being destroyed, according to Fredericks.
According to SA Rugby, rugby is presently the second most popular sport in South Africa, behind football.
Francois Cleophas, a professor of sport science at Stellenbosch University, warns that if public infrastructure and schools are not supported, the momentum could be short-lived.
We won’t have a squad that is truly representative of this nation unless we have a system that makes quality education accessible to the majority of the population, he claimed.
