Sporting failures of more interests than academic unrest

Sandile Dikeni

EIsh! Aai tog and damn! That’s the feeling that guided the sentiment last week when the All Blacks of New Zealand technically humiliated and demolished the Springboks on the rugby field in England.

The crowds in Khayelitsha were all in support of the Springboks. I mean the crowds in the shebeen, if you know what I mean. If you read this as me saying I was in the shebeen, I will say okay, but I only went there to watch what I thought was going to go down in history as the Springboks teaching the All Blacks the humilities of rugby.

The match, you see, was played in England, a place where for historical reasons South Africans, all South Africans, want to exhibit some superiority over English snobbism. Okay we were not playing against England this time, but I do feel that we should in some way have tried to speak English with a Springbok accent only to say we are not afraid of twigs like New Zealanders.

But ouch we did not!

Okay it is sport, but you know how the “sport discourse” loses strength in a Springbok-All Blacks rugby altercation. Let me be clear and explain that there was a time in the 1970s and 80s whenever the All Blacks played the Springboks, my wish was that they would win against the South African team. I stopped that when Nelson Mandela took over the reins in this country.

Most of the people in the country began supporting the Bokke. In fact, they became amaBhoko-bhoko, which is a universal black language play on “the Bokke”.

Besides them being a South African rugby national squad, let me confess that I like their aesthetic. There is in me a thinking that appreciates the many intellects in a South African national team. I can imagine the difficulties that are regularly negotiated in say a pass or a kick, but let me hasten to express my impression on how South Africa is able to narrate a victory over the cultural differences. In other words the South African rugby team winning a game is not only a statement in sport, no, it is also a cultural statement.

It is general knowledge that a Springbok game is not only a rugby encounter. It is more. It is fair to say that the history of the game in the country can not be limited to a ball sometimes thrown, sometimes kicked around on a field for 80 minutes. I wish it was. It is not.

Rugby is also not as violent as its historical image wants to project. My theory is that rugby’s narration is that we can learn ways and means of avoiding the violent tendencies of life. The trick is in the articulation of those in 80 minutes of play. I can hear people shouting me down and saying that they cannot see the peaceful tendencies in a game like rugby. Let me be honest to say that this approach is a bit limited in the narrations of the depths of sport. Most sporting games are violent. Some of them in disguised manners that are cooler than others, but still violent. Then there are others like boxing, wrestling, karate or judo which do not need analysis to see their innermost natures.

At school many times the only reason we participated in sporting activities had to do with them being linked to the bigger and rather more glamorous national range of things. In other words, Naas Botha and them guys did not just play rugby because of the adrenalin factor or the parties after a game. They played also for the big national acclaim that came with representing the country.

I am not a sportsman. But I am also not against sportsmen. I only wish that they be allowed not to limit sport to the physical side of that moment or day. I sound deranged but I do not wish to be seen as a weak man who is now weeping because of a rugby match in England. Fine I am hurt but not deranged. Look at it this way, I don’t mind losing games. In fact I prefer winning games. I also believe that the majority in the world are not in favour of being seen as losers. There, however, was something that disturbed me in this loss!

A friend suggested that I write about the academic unrest at the tertiary institutions recently, but I found it boring and tired.

It is clear to anybody with some intellect that Blade Nzimande is not just a communist but a thinker with a depth deeper than many rivers in the country. Imagine then how fed up I become with people who want to show me the so-called stupidity of Blade. I do not think of Blade as a non-thinker, I rather consider him one of the intellects of the continent.

But this column was not intended to dissect Nzimande and his obvious brilliance in his role as minister when we can discuss the emotions of a country’s failures in sport. There is a thinking in me that South Africa, in showing its humanity, is likely to demonstrate to the world the real depths that we possess.

It is sometimes so scary, we do not think or see the effort in it. There are times when I am proud of this discovery and then there are instances when I feel it strangling me. I obviously don’t like being strangled. An open secret is that I am not a narrow nationalist.

But I am also a believer in the human element that decorates a complexity called life.

I do not know how it happened, but I am aware that the rugby discourse has been for a long time, for me, a gap that fills the many voids of life. There is a theory in my head that says it is not only rugby that must be seen in this human deepening role of sport; soccer can also play that role.

Ja well, the ou is Shakes Mashaba. He is not, in my opinion, doing well now, or am I being harsh? When Shakes took over Bafana Bafana, I was relieved that our soccer team was in the hands of a professional soccer person we all admired. I also know that the entire South African soccer community was optimistic. Are we still charmed? I do not know.

It is not easy to know. It is better to see sport as a sociological tool that teaches us how to use physical attributes in a manner that screams the beauties of our sociologies. It might not be too intellectual to cry about losing against New Zealand, but hey me, I don’t like losing against them. In an aside, I also don’t think I would have jumped with pleasure if we lost against Australia.

I also don’t like the memory of the Japanese loss. I am told that the Japanese are still proud of the moment of defeating former Rugby World Cup champions in England nogal, they say. I am just saying Eish, finish en klaar.