By Koketso Mamabolo
On the 29th of June 1999, at the incomplete Millennium Stadium, mere months before the World Cup, Wales did something that would have been unthinkable a year before when they had lost 96 – 13 to the Springboks. This time out, they didn’t give Nick Mallet and his charges an easy day at the office. For the first time in their proud history Wales beat South Africa in a test match.
But the match was also significant for another reason. As Rassie Erasmus notes in his book, Rassie: Stories of Life and Rugby, it was also the last time the Springboks would field an all-white team. Western Province legend Breyton Paulse was on the bench and from then onwards every Springbok line-up has had at least one player of colour. But for many reasons the numbers have been a trickle and not a flood, despite the country’s demographics.
The story of transformation in South African rugby features similar bumps in the road found in non-sporting domains. As a result there have been a disappointing number of non-white players who have made it to the top. Players such as Kaya Malotana, Thando Manana, Owen Nkumane, Eddie Andrews, Lawrence Sephaka, and Solly Tyibilika, were often exceptions in the late 90s and early 2000s. The pace of transformation has moved like a game on a muddy pitch.
Rassie remembers the game at the Millennium Stadium so clearly because he was at blindside flank that day. Little did he know that he would go on to play a pivotal role in the story by rewriting the script.
From the bottom-up
It all started in 2012 when the sport’s local governing body, the South African Rugby Union (now SA Rugby), appointed Rassie as high performance manager, part of his responsibilities being the development of young players with transformation as a key objective.
The next year he introduced the Elite Player Development (EPD) programme and roped in his long-time lieutenant and friend Jacques Nienaber. Together with a group of managers they appointed scouts across the country to help them identify players at the under-15 level who they could start working with.
“To make sure we were hitting transformation goals, we would pick three players for each position. If all three were white, we would keep picking until we had two black players,” explains Rassie in his book.
“And if we then ended up with five players in one position, that’s the number we would go with. Our final group varied from 75 to 100 players. If a promising black player missed out because he wasn’t quite good enough, we would monitor him and follow his progress. We’d regularly check how his skills were developing, possibly get him placed at a better school, or find him a mentor, suggest a better diet, or help him at his school.”
A decade later, when those players were in their twenties, Rassie was reaping the rewards of the seeds he’d sown by winning with squads which included some of the players who had come through the EPD pathway. The likes of double World Cup winner Damian Willemse, 2023 World Cup winner Canan Moodie, and other Springboks like Salmaan Moerat and Jaden Hendrickse.
But their work also had an impact on older players through the SARU Mobi-Unit which brought together a group of specialist coaches who would travel around the country to impart their knowledge and skills. It was through this work that they came across future World Cup winners Lukhanyo Am and Makazole Mapimpi, who was already 23-years old at the time.
What’s notable about both players is that the former is a centre and the latter is a wing, much like many of the non-white players who have made it through to the top of the game. One of the old quips about South African rugby sides of the 90s and 2000s was that they were like albatrosses, white with black wings.
Jokes aside, one of the things that made Rassie different in his approach to transformation was that he was curious as to why non-white players were more likely to play certain positions. Another Western Province legend, Gio Aplon, pointed out to him that the tendency to have a skillset suited for the outside back positions came from how players of colour learned the game.
For kids from environments such as the ones Aplon, Mapimpi, and Am grew up in, rugby was coming together on a piece of grass or on the road, sometimes with a makeshift ball. Quite often they were playing the minimal-contact form of the game, touch rugby, which favours certain skills and traits like fancy footwork, spatial awareness, acceleration and top-end speed, whether the kids are big or small. As Rassie explains, these kids were not learning how to jump in lineouts, how to scrum, how to maul, how to steal the ball at the breakdown. They were learning to be good wings and centres.
The exception has perhaps been in the front row (think: Sephaka, Nkumane, Andrews, Tendai Mtawarira, Brian Mujati, Ox Nche, and Trevor Nyakane), where physical traits can offset the need for skills up to a certain level. What they all have in common, which allowed them to breakthrough at the test level, was that they had coaches who taught them the techniques to match their physical traits, like Balie Swart who made Mtawarira into one of the most powerful scrummagers of his time.
It was the gap in skills and exposure which led to the mobi-unit to rural areas, where young players did not have access to resources such as equipment and technical expertise. This development effort spread to coaches too. In 2018 SA Rugby began working to fast-track elite black coaches by providing them with support and training, including working with industrial psychologists.
Diversity wins
There is still a lot to be done in the men’s game. The Sharks and Stormers are the only two professional sides in the country which consistently field teams with significant numbers of players of colour. The Sharks also boast the only non-white head coach among the elite sides in former Springbok wing JP Pietersen.
But there are green shoots in the local game overall. The women’s game is finally getting the resources it needs and has for a long time been a better representation of the country’s demographics, with a black captain having been appointed when Siya Kolisi was still in primary school. The number of black coaches working at the professional level has also climbed considerably over the years with notable examples being Springbok Men’s assistant coaches Mzwandile Stick and Deon Davids, as well Sharks defence coach Joey Mongalo, and Springbok Women’s assistant coaches Laurian Johannes-Haupt and Bafana Nhleko.
What Rassie seems to understand that others before him have not is that a pure quota system at the top level has failed to transform the game because it focuses on the end-goal instead of the pathway the players come through. Before a player can become a Springbok they need the foundation of skills, conditioning, and mentorship.
As he explains, the SA Schools squad needs to be representative, and if you get that right then the under-20 side, and eventually the Springbok side, will follow suit. Through the EPD pathway, Rassie and SA Rugby were securing the foundations, giving opportunities to players who may have otherwise slipped through the cracks.
“I did it not because I thought one day I’m going to coach the Springboks. I did it because I [wanted to] do something to give people an equal chance. Wouldn’t South Africa be a better place if everyone were given an equal chance?”
“When it started producing fruit, I didn’t have to worry about transformation targets, because the right players were ready for the big time. Transformation is not a matter of ‘white player out, black player in’. It’s about fair and equal opportunities. But first we had to create those opportunities.”
In Rassie’s opinion, other countries see transformation for what it is: change. And change can mean making space for more people with out pushing others out. It is about accommodating people from other backgrounds and offering them a fair chance.
When he became Springbok coach he continued his effort to transform South African rugby, by developing players like Am and Mapimpi, who he would go on to cap as Springboks; by giving players like Sbu Nkosi and Aphiwe Dyantyi an opportunity when no-one thought they were ready; by making the inspired choice of appointing Siya Kolisi as captain.
“We said, listen, we’re going to change, we’re going to call it ‘change,” he said after receiving an award from the FW De Klerk Foundation. “And that is how we operate, how we select the team team, how we train, how we select the management. It’s going to be [based] purely on what you put out, and how you get better, how you take ownership. You might not be the best player coming into the system. But, hell, if you’ve got potential, we’re going to coach the hell out of you until you’re good enough.”
For Rassie, transforming the team and winning while doing it is a proof of concept; it proves diversity breeds success.
“I think if we understand [that] if we take the strength of our diversity, we are unbelievably blessed with different things that we can do but other countries can’t do.”
While Rassie said that he may not be able to appreciate his place in history, he will certainly be remembered not just as the coach who brought trophies home, but also as the coach who gave everyone a shot at representing their country.
