Get real about unity in SA sport

The Citizen online yesterday published a shortened academic-centred piece that chronicled how the Rugby World Cup is reminding South Africans that local sport is still divided.

In it, the author, Francois Cleophas, argues stakeholders should cultivate “principled sports unity that is forged from grassroots upwards to national level” and form a “new progressive sports movement that works for equality and peace based on mass participation and social justice”.

These thoughts immediately had me thinking about the whole Eben Etzebeth saga. I really don’t want to wade into the warzone that is the merits of the case against the Springbok lock.

Universal law, whether it’s applied or not, is that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. The debate over whether Etzebeth should actually be in Japan, though, is an interesting one.

The Springboks have clearly embraced the word of one of their senior players and decided that’s enough for them to keep him in the group. The South African Rugby Union (Saru) initially adopted that attitude, too, before this week’s events prompted them to belatedly launch an “internal investigation”.

I want to get back to Cleophas’ argument because Saru’s predicament neatly illustrates the realpolitik of broad-based social change in SA sport. The governing body is on a hiding to nothing.

The in-house probe, which it stated would be confidential, is either a measure to appease a significant group outraged by the allegations, or it’s a clumsy way of getting him out of Japan while limiting the potential outrage from a more conservative section of rugby’s fan base.

Since the 2017 agreement with MTN as main sponsor, Saru has tried hard to broaden the Springbok brand’s appeal and support base. Yet the reality is that its economic base lies with white consumers, who still pay to watch DStv, and whom Saru uses to leverage TV rights that keep the game alive commercially.

That’s the reality of the true state of unity in South African sport.

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