What exactly are the legitimate concerns of South African rugby and its portfolio ministry over the refusal of some white rugby players’ point-blank refusal to bend their knee in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement?
Their version and to a certain extent rightly so, is that their own kith and kin (white farmers) are being brutally murdered by blacks at random and no finger has been raised publicly to condemn these senseless barbaric acts.
For starters, these blokes are proudly representing an entity built solely on white privilege. It’s no secret that the Springbok emblem is the symbol of white supremacy as can be attested by word of mouth through the lips of Danie Craven … verbatim hereunder.
“We, as the Springbok team, we don’t like to lose our identity, Springboks have always been associated with white, the leopard cannot be associated with the blacks.”
Well you heard it from the horse’s SNAWEL, those were the precise sentiments of the man who ruled South African rugby for decades with an iron hand. Craven made damn sure the oval ball remained a sacred Castle for the uncompromising Dutch Boys, not anticipating that the Springboks would one day be led to World Cup glory by a pure Xhosa captain in front of a Zulu war dance. Needless to remind the South African rugby authorities and its government that they blundered big time when they resolved to keep the much-despised Springbok emblem intact after the rainbow nation gained her long awaited democracy from the apartheid regime in 1994.
Logic suggests the Springbok emblem should have been buried in the same graveyard of the abolishment of racial discrimination at the dawn of democracy but they chose otherwise, trying to please the colonisers.
That was a grave error of judgement that has unfortunately come back to haunt them … leaving them with egg on the face. You have made the bed, sleep in it.
The Springbok brand has been given carte blanche by authorities to maintain their entrenched entitlement to the oval ball game in the form of systematic white supremacy.
If my ageing memory serves me correctly, Namibia had a similar issue with colonial names; our national senior rugby fifteen were famously known as the “Biltong Boere” but the new regime under Dirk Conradie would have none of that.
The name was summarily chalked off that name from all memory walls at the Lichtenstein headquarters, obviously much to the chagrin of the kaki-clothed Boerewors smashers and Klipdrift guzzlers.
The dominant view amongst sympathisers of the uncooperative white rugby players is that whites are being wiped out in front of their eyes but authorities, including the vocal local and foreign media houses, seem to be deliberately turning a blind eye to these barbaric inhuman acts on citizens.
As it stands, there’s unquestionably a varying level of expectations from the general majority of South Africans to oblige players to bend their knee in solidarity with the BLM movement.
This could be in conflict with freedom of choice and association. Such exercise invites vigorous answers to clarify the difference between moral duty and personal principles. I rest my case.