South Africa that will continue with the Springboks’ nation-wide tour as the 2019 Rugby World Cup winners. If you were reading these words last week, I bet there would be some who would not have thought it possible that the Springboks would beat England 32-12.
England were the strong favourites – and we had lost a pool game. And then we won the final! It was just what South Africa needed, wasn’t it? It appears from commentators that two men were key to securing the victory: Siya Kolisi, the first-ever black Springbok rugby captain in South Africa’s 128-year rugby history– and the first black player to hold up the Webb-Ellis cup – and rugby coach Rassie Erasmus. Kolisi, who grew up poor not always knowing where his next meal would come from, encapsulated what the Springbok victory meant in his post-win TV interview. “We have so many problems in our country, but to have a team like this. . .we come from different backgrounds, different races, and we came together with one goal and we wanted to achieve it. “I really hope we have done that for South Africa, to show that we can pull together if we want to achieve something,” Kolisi said. Apparently coach Rassie Erasmus brought that perspective to the team. Said Kolisi: “The coach just came and told us the last game: ‘We’re not playing for ourselves anymore, we’re playing for our people back home.’ That’s what we wanted to do today. . . People in the taverns, people in the shebeens, people in farms and homeless people that had screens and people in rural areas, thank you so much, we appreciate all the support. We love you South Africa and we can achieve anything if we work together as one.” Erasmus apparently also brought a new perspective about pressure to the team. “In South Africa pressure is not having a job,” Erasmus said. “Pressure is having one of your close relatives murdered. There are a lot of problems in South Africa which are real pressure. Ruby should not be something that creates pressure. Rugby should be something that creates hope. We’ve got the privilege of giving people hope.” Wouldn’t it be great if we could hold on to the idea of achieving something good by working together? It’s easy to get overwhelmed by crime, poverty, corruption, but those of us who come from a position of privilege can start small. Perhaps we can go into the poorer schools and help with reading lessons. Or take a school leaver and train them to do some aspect of our business. Or coach sport. Or train someone in market gardening, or computer skills, or setting up a small business. Or even find one of the “Kolisis” out there that just needs a leg-up. Kolisi wrote on Instagram this week under a pic of him and Erasmus: “I can’t thank you enough. You believed in me when I was still at school, and now we are sharing this moment forever.”
