Cosatu slams Matfield scrum cap
JOBURG – Cosatu has slammed Springbok captain Victor Matfield's scrum cap and called on ministers and sport administrators to intervene in rugby more decisively to speed up transformation in the sport.
Tony Ehrenreich, Provincial Secretary at Cosatu Western Cape said the “old boys’ club” in rugby were still in control of the sport “in the same way they always have and they manage their public relations to reinforce this,” he said.
Over the weekend, the Springboks beat Scotland 55-6 at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth. Oregan Hoskins, president of the South African Rugby Union urged Bok coach, Heyneke Meyer to select more black players in the squad.
“Looking at the match on Saturday, again black players are brought onto the field in the last five minutes, even though the Springboks are comfortably ahead. This is because the coach is scared that the black players will outshine the white players, if they get lots of game time,” claimed Ehrenreich.
“Even when players go off for injury, they are rushed back on because the black replacements may shine,” he added.
Ehrenreich added that the camouflage scrum cap which Bok captain Victor Matfield wore was a ‘symbol of apartheid’. “Matfield wears an old South African riot squad skull cap, completely disregarding how this may impact on the sentiments of black South Africans,” he said.
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From Wikipedia:
Tony Ehrenreich is a South African trade-unionist and regional secretary of the Western Cape region of COSATU. He also do not understand that Caucasian rugby players are taught how to play rugby from the age of 6 and that non-Caucasian people don’t have the opportunity to learn, because their parents don’t care about rugby, or the government has not fixed and funded rugby infrastructure in rural schools. Tony Ehrenreich also cannot distinguish between a rugby scrum cap and an angry police force. Ehrenreich joined COSATU in 1989, raising to become its National Deputy General-Secretary from 1999 to 2001.[1] He represented COSATU at the World Trade Organization in Doha, International Confederation of Labour Trade Committee in Geneva; Organization of African Trade Union Unity in Ghana, and Unions Bi-lateral with French Trade Unions in Paris.[2]
Ehrenreich was nominated by COSATU as the 2011 mayoral candidate for the ANC in the City of Cape Town in the 2011 municipal elections.[3] Ehrenreich lost substantially to the Democratic Alliance mayoral candidate, Patricia De Lille. He is now the leader of the humiliated opposition in the Cape Town City Council where he is a member of Economic, Environmental and Spatial Planning Portfolio committee.[4]