Apartheid legacy soils rugby's name

Youngsters train at Soweto Rugby club.

SOWETO // As dusk falls over the huddled urban sprawl of Soweto, a few youngsters gather on a sport field for an incongruous training session. The members of Soweto Rugby Club should be a symbol of the changes South Africa has undergone since the end of apartheid. For years, the all-white national Springbok side's prowess with the oval ball was a totem of Afrikaner identity, so much so that black South Africans would often cheer for their opponents in protest against the discrimination they suffered. All that was supposed to have been abandoned in 1995, when the newly democratic country won the Rugby World Cup on home soil, Nelson Mandela donned a Springbok shirt in one of his most renowned gestures of reconciliation, elation was unconfined and suddenly it seemed as though the ANC leader's vision of a united "rainbow nation" was a reality. The phenomenon was repeated last year, when South Africa defeated England in the final to retake the trophy, Thabo Mbeki, the president then, was carried around the pitch on the shoulders of white players, and even crowds in Soweto, who refer to the team as "amaBokoboko", roared "Hier kom die Bokke!" in the language of their former oppressors. But old sentiments die hard, and according to the Soweto club members racism remains rife within rugby, which is still an overwhelmingly white sport in terms of participation. "We get unified when the Boks win, then it's back to the old ways," said Kabello Mbewe, 22, a lock forward for the team and one of the juniors' coaches. "I have been called a Kaffir, people say I have got Kaffir hair. We are getting used to that, but it's not cool. They don't want us playing rugby." The club has even threatened to disaffiliate from its provincial rugby union in protest against abuse its players claim to suffer, which would leave its teams forced to play only against themselves. Fourteen years have passed since apartheid was abolished, but race remains an unavoidable issue in South Africa, and it has returned to haunt the Springboks. At a national sport conference in Durban, Butana Komphela, the chairman of parliament's sport portfolio committee, told delegates the team's emblem had to go and there could be "no negotiation". "The Springbok divides us," he claimed. "We have a responsibility to unite our country on one national emblem. Minister, I want you to observe the arrogance of white people on the Springbok emblem." Mr Komphela is something of a driven man on the issue of race and sport - last year he threatened to have the Springbok players' passports confiscated if he considered the team was not representative of the South African population, and after the country's abysmal performance in the Beijing Olympics - it secured a single silver medal - claimed that the media wanted to write that the head of its athletics body was "a Kaffir who failed". The controversy around the Springbok logo is a long-running one, and at its conference last year the ruling ANC expressed a preference for all national sides to use the same emblem - a veiled way of raising the subject, as the most likely choice in those circumstances would be the protea flower used by the cricket team. After the fall of apartheid in 1992 the a wreath of proteas were added to the logo, but there were still calls to remove the springbok. But the leaping Springbok symbol is a hugely valuable commercial asset, and the irony is that the rugby XV are the country's most flourishing national sport team by far. After the World Cup win last year, a cartoon in one newspaper showed one of the animals asking plaintively: "Can we stay now?" The football side - known as Bafana Bafana, "the boys" - also uses a different emblem and is ranked a lowly 85th in the world, below Benin and Qatar, but football is mostly followed by blacks, and they have come under no pressure to change. Among the wider South African public, views over the Springbok were divided, but there is an awareness in some quarters of the need to ensure whites feel part of the new South Africa, and that the logo is hugely important to many. The ANC itself sought to play down fears of change. "The ANC would like to state categorically that it would not like to see any replacement or change of the Springbok emblem until sufficient debate and consultation of all stakeholders, including rugby supporters, has taken place," it said in a statement. "We would also like to encourage our world-acclaimed sportsmen to continue winning more world cups for South Africa and not be distracted by debates on the future of the Springbok emblem." Oregan Hoskins, the president of the South African Rugby Union, the sport's national body - who is coloured himself - said: "Rugby believes that the Springbok emblem is actually a force for unity in this country and anyone who saw the tens of thousands of South Africans of all races flock to welcome back the World Cup-winning Springboks last October couldn't help but conclude that the public had voted loud and clear on just what they think about the Springbok emblem." There has been some progress though. This year the first non-white coach, Peter de Villiers, was put in charge of the side and 16 of the 35 Springboks appointed by former coach Jake White were non-white. On the Soweto field, views were mixed. Mr Mbewe said he had nothing against the name, and it was mindsets that needed to change. But his teammate Jafta Ntshangase, 26, a fullback, took a different view: "We feel as if we have earned our freedom and freedom is here, yet it isn't. "If we are to take the next step to work out all this racial prejudice we need to start afresh, we need to get a new name. The rainbow nation idea, it's a good concept; I still pray it happens one day." [e-mail]