The All Blacks players perform the Haka ahead of the Rugby Championship Test against the Springboks at Ellis Park Stadium. FILE - The All Blacks players perform the Haka ahead of the Rugby Championship Test against the Springboks at Ellis Park Stadium. Photo: Phill Magakoe/AFP
Image: Phill Magakoe/AFP
There’s nothing quite like the arrogance and bravado of a misguided Springboks fan. They also tend to gather in numbers, and there was no greater example of that than during the haka performed by the All Blacks ahead of the Rugby Championship clash against the Springboks at Ellis Park in August.
It’s not the first time it’s happened either, but it was still just as shameful as the Ellis Park crowd sang Ole Ole while New Zealand performed their sacred Maori war cry.
It didn’t help either that the stadium announcer played music and an aeroplane flew overhead just as the Haka began. That can be forgiven, though, as it was down to human-error and bad timing. SA Rugby has also since apologised for the playing of music and the poor timing of the plane flying overhead.
The singing of Ole Ole by the fans, in contrast, is quite deliberate and intentionally disrespectful of Maori culture synonymous with New Zealand rugby. Bring this up with Springbok fans, and they will likely double down in defiance before the thought of an apology even enters their minds.
It made me as a Springbok fan feel absolutely disgraced to call myself South African. We like to think as the Rainbow Nation, that we’d be more sensitive to different cultures both in the country and from international visitors like the New Zealanders.
It’s also not just about disrespect, it smacks of a sense of entitlement by Springbok fans. Since the Springbok rugby team have won the last two Rugby World Cups, it feels like the fans feel they have licence to behave in such boorish fashion because of the success of their rugby team.
In fact, if you asked Springbok captain Siya Kolisi if he felt singing Ole Ole was disrespectful, he would likely do his best not to be offensive. I imagine his answer would go something like this: “We can’t control what the crowd does, we can only control what we do and that’s what we’re focussed on. Whether it’s disrespectful or not is not up to us.”
It’s not difficult to imagine Kolisi saying that at all. And yet, Kolisi who is an incredible rugby talent but an even more impressive humanitarian would never consider disrespecting his opposition, and certainly not their culture. The two-time Rugby World Cup captain just gets it, he gets what it means to be an ambassador for South Africa and how to promote unity and inclusiveness.
The actions of the Ellis Park crowd were the opposite of that. It hearkened back to the days of Apartheid, some of which I was part of at Ellis Park almost 35 years ago.
Thanks to my older brother who was a passionate rugby supporter, I attended many a match at Ellis Park starting from the age of four in 1989, when players like Jannie Breedt, Gavin Johnson and a young Francois Pienaar were some of the players at Transvaal.
Back in those days and before 1994 – and if I’m honest there were still plenty after then too – racism, persecution and bullying were part of rugby culture. Since then, and after winning the Rugby World Cup in 1995 at Ellis Park the nation thought it was unified. In some ways it was, but you don’t beat racism overnight and the remnants of Apartheid are still with us today.
What we can do, is do our best to overcome and eradicate this ugly side of the sport in Mzansi. That starts with small things like respecting the haka, and being proud of South African rugby for the right reasons.
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