by Thembelani Mayosi
As the celebration of Heritage Day dawns a lot of us will reflect on the things that reinforce our respective cultures and we look to celebrate our differences which underpin a larger national identity. The legacy of our forebears will also be a central feature in these thoughts as they are a vital part of our heritage.
In so doing, I reflected on South African rugby, particularly rugby in the Eastern Cape and specifically the Border region and the legacy which our generation will leave behind for the future to look back on and hopefully celebrate. Secondly, and more importantly, the untimely and saddening loss of uTata Monde Tabata (OoMpinga just like us have lost a wonderful man) this week, brought these thoughts into sharp focus as he played such a key role in Eastern Cape sport and gave up so much of his time to it.
The elephant in the room is the lamentable state of senior professional rugby in the Eastern Cape, both in the Eastern Province and Border region and what, if anything can be done to restart Unions which appear to be their own worst enemies, and allow them to take their rightful place in South African rugby. Our World Cup winning coaches and captain hail from the Eastern Cape and so it’s clear that the talent is there.
In terms of player numbers, every year, the top rugby schools nationally descend upon the province and raid the Eastern Cape schools for the best schoolboy rugby talent annually and leave the region, depleted of its best young talent. So, the development of players is also present at school level. However, more can be done to harness the untapped talent of kids from rural and township communities and to particularly improve their access to better infrastructure and in some cases coaching. The rugby being played at an amateur level particularly at school is still at a high standard with first team games attracting bigger crowds than the Union’s professional teams.
So, with all that being said, the question once more is what legacy are we going to leave behind for the next generation and others after them so that they can celebrate a proud rugby heritage? The answer is not an easy one because if we are going to be honest, we have to look at ourselves as fans or players and some difficult home truths becomes apparent.
The biggest stakeholders in the game in the Eastern Cape are the clubs, players, coaches and more importantly the supporters, so us however we have not been vocal enough in our displeasure at the state of affairs of Eastern Cape rugby at the professional level. We have not been involved and have not held those who were in charge to account, we have not expected excellence or a version of it at Border or EP for a while now, so we cannot be surprised that these Unions were not properly run and we had to get stalwarts like Mr Tabata and others to take on the thankless job of steadying a sinking ship.
This apathy on our part, myself included, has played a significant role in the steady decline of these two unions and as long as we stand by and watch as things get worse and worse, we run the risk of leaving nothing behind for the future to look up to and to try emulate. In fact, lets be honest, you would be hard pressed to find any top junior player in the Eastern Cape who is considering playing for Border or EP. This is one of the reasons, amongst others, why the Eastern Cape loses so many players after craven week to the big unions.
Before we take aim at SARU or the boards of the two unions, we as the rugby public need to look at ourselves and the role that our apathy has played in the decay and understand that the missing ingredient is the rugby public. This also speaks to, on a more general level, to a malaise in our society where we are apathetic to bad leadership and then we lament the deplorable conditions that we find ourselves in. For some peculiar reason we have lost our appetite for activism in sport or other social milieus.
“People will treat you the way you allow them to treat you”
The saying that “people will treat you the way you allow them to treat you” rings very true for our rugby and society at large and we as an interest group need to do more to get SARU and the ministry of Sport to help get senior rugby in this region back to where it belongs otherwise we will lose any semblance of rugby heritage.
As a final thought, we, unfortunately, bear the shameful badge of being part of the generation that ‘watched on’ as Eastern Cape rugby to slowly faded away into obscurity. The only way of erasing this unfortunate legacy would be to become the generation which was responsible for the renaissance of our rugby and leave a legacy that generations after us will look back on with pride.
