I understand why my EFF-loving acquaintance cheered for England

When the 1995 World Cup was being played, my sister and I went shopping.

Blissfully, we had Eastgate all to ourselves, although in each shop there was a television with staff clustered cheering around it, so we knew the score.

But the rules? The weird habit of throwing the ball backwards? The logic of the scoring? Nope.

It was a hangover from our school days as English-speaking kids at an English-language school, where Afrikaans was a chore and rugby the game of “the dutchmen” down the road.

We were the rooineks, and Benoni High had a much-lauded soccer team. On the rare occasions South Africa played rugby against a vaguely international team, we learnt to hope the opposition would win, not the hubris-filled local side with their swagger-talk about South Africa being the best in the world and that’s why “they” wouldn’t let us play internationally, for fear of the Springbok might.

From where we stood, rugby wasn’t a white man’s sport, it was an Afrikaans white man’s sport. Such were the divisions of apartheid.

Who’d have dreamt that one day a black South African rugby captain would lift the World Cup? Not a posh chap from one of the private schools either, but a regular guy born into hardship, an inspiration hoisted from destitution by his talent.

So why then, I wondered, was my old acquaintance and sparring mate – black, successful and a staunch supporter of the Economic Freedom Fighters – cheering for England on Saturday? Why was he supporting “the colonialists” over his own country, as other black people reminded him mockingly on Twitter?

He argues the team is too white, that (wrongly) we’ve added only “three black faces” in 25 years. He calls it the apartheid team.

I understand though, because I was once that person.

So too was much of black South Africa, cheering against the establishment, the team of the oppressor. I accept too that 12 out of a 31-member squad is in no way a perfect representation of the country’s demographics.

But things are changing. Even Benoni High’s hallowed football fields have long since been converted to rugby – as have I.

And on Saturday, rugby once again united a fractured nation. It was beautiful.

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