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By Ben Trovato

Columnist and author


Rachel’s red card for Siya Kolisi

One reporter said the announcement of Rachel and Siya Kolisi's divorce “shook the country”. The news left me mildly stirred but far from shaken.


Dear Siya,

Congratulations on the impending severance of your matrimonial bonds. Too many people talk about divorce as if it’s a bad thing. They have no idea.

The happiest day of my life was when I got divorced for the first time. I got married a second time just to again experience the sheer joy that comes with ending an unhappy marriage.

It’s the best feeling in the world. I expect you’re already scouting around for wife #2 who lacks what it takes to stay with you forever.

Rachel hung in there for eight years. That’s fine when you’re young, but you’re getting on a bit now and I suggest you find someone who will bail after, say, five years.

The duration can be reduced incrementally so that by the time you reach wife #7, the marriage would hopefully not last longer than six months or so.

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The chattering classes would have it that news of your and Rachel’s uncoupling came as a devastating blow to the hopes and dreams of the nation.

One reporter said the announcement “shook the country”. Hyperbole, much? The news left me mildly stirred but far from shaken.

However, it did get me out of bed and down to the tote to put a few grand on it all being your fault.

For some reason, they weren’t taking bets, which is ironic since you now play for the Hollywoodbets Sharks. Pity. The permutations would be staggering.

Speaking of staggering, I believe you referred in your 2021 biography to previous battles with alcohol.

You’re a big bloke and I like to think you kicked alcohol’s ass every time you tangled with it.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe two glasses of Chardonnay left you lurching around the living room gibbering about biased refs and missed penalties.

Perhaps you had more of a rugby problem than a drinking problem. Or maybe a Rachel problem.

There’s nothing worse than being married to a woman who drinks less than you. Well, apart from being married to one who drinks more than you.

Talking about women, which, if unreliable sources are to be believed, you spend a lot of time doing, the pearl-clutchers claim that your “womanising” is entirely to blame.

Again, they speak of womanising as if it’s something negative. Or that it’s something a man can even avoid.

Women are everywhere these days. They’re in the streets, on the beaches, in the stadium stands. Some even play sport themselves!

But if you pay attention to them, you’re a womaniser and deserve to be dragged into a public place and have your goolies lopped off.

And if you don’t pay them any attention, you’re a misogynist, an incel or gay. A guy just can’t win.

Which is unfortunate because, as the captain of the Springbok rugby team, winning is your entire reason for existing.

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As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference if you’re scoring tries, chicks or a baggie of weed. You’re a bro, bro, and bros do what bros must do.

If I had your looks and physique, my strike rate would be phenomenal. I wouldn’t even have to play sport. I’d be able to win lucrative tenders, get very rich and have women flocking to me.

One newspaper said, “The golden couple were regarded as a true South African love story.”

What a load of hogwash. Just because you’re a darkie and she’s a whitey?

Does that mean those who marry within their own race groups somehow have a less true love story? Nobody buys this rainbow nation bollocks any more.

Having said that, I hope you’ve learnt your lesson. No more jungle fever, you hear? White women are nothing but trouble. Black women, too.

But speaking as a man who has only ever married white women, I can say with conviction that they are impossible to live with. Their standards are either unrealistically high or terrifyingly low.

Their sex drive is off the charts when you marry them and nonexistent by the following Tuesday.

They talk endlessly – until one day they stop and then it’s like living with a grenade that’s had its pin pulled out.

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I read that you’re worth R200 million. Is that all? Elon Musk is worth R4 trillion and he’s a fraction of the man you are. There’s no justice in this world.

Speaking of which, it’s said that Rachel will walk away with half of your money. A cool R100 million. Not bad for a girl from Grahamstown.

I’d live with you for eight years for that kind of money. I wouldn’t even care how much porn you watched or what you drank.

All I would ask is that if you brought women home, you shared them. And that if either of us ever showed signs of wanting to get married again, the other one would intervene and put a stop to it.

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