Rugby: a last word before the game

We’d better enjoy winning today. It might be our last chance to win for a generation, and the last South African good news story for a while.

But support for the Springboks isn’t universal:Na’eem Jeenah has an excellent post in which he bravely asserts that he doesn’t give a toss about the rugby.

“A winning nation will be one where society ensures that the basic needs of all its people are taken care of, where we are all able to live in dignity and safety, where our relationships with each other are characterised by compassion and cooperation. The pride that comes from being able to stomp the sports team of another country into the ground does not make us a winning nation….

“We need to redefine patriotism. We need to redefine winning. We need to redefine reconciliation. And we need to redefine what it means to be part of the “South African nation”. Support of the largely white rugby team is not enough of a criterion.”

He’s right, of course.

But I am still out there supporting the rugby because I feel that SA is so desperately in need of a positive boost right now that uniting behind the rugby team is not a bad thing.

Also, what a pleasure to see the old imperialist master, England, take a kicking, to see an African team, from a torn and troubled nation, defeat a European one.

We should enjoy winning while we can, because it might be a long time before we win again.The spectre of affirmative action looms over South African rugby. Future rugby squads will need to reflect the demographic make up of the country.

While I understand that it’s embarrassing for a country supposedly celebrating its miraculous conversion to a multiracial utopia to be fielding teams that are almost all white, I think this is lunacy. What’s the use of a politically correct team that doesn’t win, and of talent players who can’t get on the team because they are the wrong colour?

We’ll lose their talent to other countries, as we do with all our talent.

The Glasgow Herald makes an interesting point about this, comparing us to Scotland, where rugby is played almost exclusively by upper middle class people who’ve been to public schools.

Fitba is the sport of the people, and the rugby team is not reflective in any way of Scottish society – but that doesn’t stop people supporting them.

If Scottish rugby was forced to fill a teams with schemies fae Castlemilk, Easterhoose and Wasters’ Hell, their national squad would be in a poor state too.

“The process would likely be equally painful and discordant. Imagine the wrath and outrage if Scottish players of greater ability were excluded because they were insufficiently “working-class”, and the team was overwhelmed while such better players were sidelined.”

So here’s an idea: why not spend a lot of money developing black rugby players. They’ll have something to aspire to – a national team that plays world class rugby – and the support they need to get there.

South Africa has gone about affirmative action all wrong, in sport as well as the economy. We have opted for superficial changes, for tokenism instead of a thorough transformation of society. We need to nurture black talent and promote excellence, instead of giving jobs to people because they fill the right demographic. Because at the same time as we’ve had affirmative action in the economy, black students have been financially excluded from universities in a massive struggle over access, and the black working class has got poorer.

We shouldn’t be glossing over our faults as a country, racially or otherwise. We have a fragmented recent past, and we need to all acknowledge that it take a lot to put ourselves back together again.

Honesty about where we really are would be a good place to start – even if that means admitting that most of the rugby talent is still white.

So, in a few hours, I’ll be down the pub with the Scots, who’ve cleaned out Glasgow’s sporting stores of green and gold jerseys over the past few days – I couldn’t find one anywhere.