Here lies a tyrant
19 Feb 2013
MARK KEOHANE, writing in Business Day Sport Monthly, says former South African rugby chief Louis Luyt was a power-hungry egotist who did more harm than good in his role as leader.
Louis Luyt is dead but the lie that defines his legacy to the game as legendary must also be buried. He was destructive in everything he did as president of the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) and motivated by his own agenda and ego and he was a risk to the future of the game.
He functioned on fiction because only he knew what was closer to fact.
This is a condemnation of Luyt the Sarfu president. It is not a reflection on his right to be respected as a father, husband and friend.
He was a crass leader who thrived on the humiliation of others and he caused pain to many people with decisions that were not based on rugby but on his own insecurity and paranoia. There can’t be reward for lacking emotional intelligence and there can never be justification for the chaos.
Luyt’s legacy was a dictatorship that threatened more than a sport’s unity. He harmed the sport and he embarrassed the sport without consequence or without remorse. He did it regularly and saw it as refusing to be intimidated.
He was a reminder of everything the world detested in apartheid South Africa but he survived on the fears of those who were uncertain about the future and ill-informed and still related to noise as leadership, when introspection and reflection were words more appropriate to change. A legacy is earned through innovation and the impact of an action; not an ability just to react.
Luyt was a fighter and his strength was based on survival. Sarfu needed calm and vision and he provided chaos and confrontation.
It suited his needs because the noise was part of the illusion that he was taking charge of rugby’s future. He was a fascinating character because of his contradictions, but he was not good for the game and he stifled progress through his inability to transform his own thinking. He was unsure about his status and he always overcompensated with boasts when unsure, be it because of lack of knowledge or because he threatened his ability to use Sarfu to define his influence in a community that used his voice when necessary but never fully endorsed him as part of the exclusive brotherhood.
This was down to class and not race. It was this lack of acceptance that tortured him. But he knew about survival because of a background that battled poverty. Wealth would also be measured on status and worth. To get there he would fight. So he fought because that meant not allowing for discussion and not risking being exposed on an intellectual level.
He was a clever man but he lacked introspection because of insecurities in not having a high schooling. It meant he only knew how to make statements.
In his world that was strength. To ask a question was to invite trouble.
Leadership is at its most seductive when those in charge can take pleasure out of another’s achievement. Luyt could never do that because he could not even take pleasure out of his own successes.
He had an incredible work ethic, which intimidated and compensated for an inability to see beyond what worked for him personally and as a leader. He also blurred the power of knowledge with the gathering of information on individuals to further entrench his presidency. He had menace when there should have been mentorship. He never made an apology for any of his actions and a man who always thinks he gets it right is a man who is rarely getting it right.
He embraced those vulnerable to his projections of strength and bullying and he never saw the contradiction in how he applied the morality of the God-fearing man and the lack of morality in his manipulation of people.
We once debated loyalty and he was absolute. People, he said, crossed him once and thought they had won. He told them to enjoy the feeling because he would make sure they spent the rest of their lives reminded of what price to pay for betrayal in loyalty.
His life was interesting but he was too preoccupied in the potential of others to be the enemy that he found a reason to justify an agenda that in turn would justify a reaction for a confrontational engagement.
His ego would never allow him modesty and he insisted he had earned the right to be called doctor. Titles and status are what he felt defined his characters. His actions were for gain. When was it ever about rugby?
His rugby world was a creation to compensate for what he felt he lacked in a personal space. He could be charming but his charm was too often determined by the personal gain. He bored easily if he was not the primary beneficiary. His mind was always busy but the intent wasn’t always flattering and he excused any criticism as a necessary to protect the game from those who didn’t understand it. He blamed the government and rugby was his status for greater acceptance in an Afrikaans elite that would never see him as their equal.
The bully was his default mechanism and if he was full of bravado he didn’t have to front his fears of being inferior. He did not trust anyone but celebrated just how many enemies he had. Enemies caused fear. Friends could only cause confusion.
He was convinced he needed no one to survive but he never understood that to survive is not to necessarily inspire. Not that it would have been a consideration. He was angry that he was disliked although he denied it and there was an element in him that deliberately added to the dislike. The man who made rugby his kingdom was always aware that the boy in him wanted acknowledgement and reward.
He never found his place in South African society and always felt he had been short-changed. If he wasn’t getting the recognition then why would he celebrate anyone else.
He took nothing from the game unless he was the beneficiary. He justified everything in the name of Springbok rugby and the Afrikaans culture and he manipulated the game that represented the culture more than a sport. Where most would find a smile he found suspicion.
I liked him but he was not happy.
I always got the feeling he wouldn’t even allow for that because that could be an admission he had not won.
He was always in conflict and his tenure was about fighting whoever he felt provided a cover to the real issue, which was his insecurity.
He took but he gave little.
It is one thing to preach from a self-made pedestal but a leader of men is also an inspiration to the very men he leads.
He wanted mystique but then couldn’t resist telling you what he had done for South African rugby. He created an identity he believed would give him acceptance and he alienated every dominating personality.
He was a preacher of what he wanted portrayed, yet the intention to be liked and revered was not something he could ask for, so as he lost a disciple who realised the legend is what makes the man but the actions of the man that confirms the flaws in the legend.
If the game was his passion and the future of the game was his only concern we would be talking about his vision, his succession plan and his leadership.
The story would be of the guy who turned rags into silk but knew God. It is embarrassing. The only thing he gave rugby was conflict and blood. He adopted a militant style approach in which he spoke and never allowed for a response.
He stripped players of power and humiliated them and threatened their futures in the media. In a country where fear and conflict were positives that someone was in charge, he put himself in charge of the game and was never asked what he was actually going to do to make it the game for all South Africans.
He used the divide and rule among blacks and whites because he recognised weakness in an individual and played the vulnerabilities to facilitate whatever outcome that comes with uncertainty.
He took Nelson Mandela and the government to court to prove he was still a white Afrikaner who would not be intimidated by the black government.
He made sure it was a page one report.
He did it, he said, to show Afrikaners still had a voice and still had fight. He then used rugby as the punching bag.
He used culture, white fears and black unknowns to have so many applauding his strengths. But it was never about resolution or calm. It was about conflict and chaos because when there is no fight then there is usually reflection. In a fight there is only time to react.
Luyt’s legacy conflicts with every single entity that makes up the fabric of the game. He took the game he supposedly loved and made it his own game. He was an untouchable because he manipulated the executive structure – and when fear no longer sufficed neither did his games inspire even laughter.
He still couldn’t see the moral crime in subjecting Mandela to take the witness stand. He claimed victory but it also confirmed stupidity.
He tried so hard to create an identity of the Lions but he was a railway clerk whose arrogance and defiance was a misrepresentation of the culture whose silence he interpreted as a fight.
He fired by fax and turned the most disgraceful of acts into a kind of legend which applauded a man who was prepared to make the hard calls. All he knew was hardship and that is all he gave back to South African rugby.
It is disgusting that he was allowed to operate in such isolation and as a law unto himself. He clearly had a mind that favoured his own survival but emotional intelligence is the result of an environment and tutorship and being taught, not self-taught.
He never added value to the game’s evolution. There is no legacy to applaud. His rugby administration was a contradiction. Morality was as interpretive as was loyalty and betrayal.
Rugby was the platform for Luyt to turn a lost soul into a tortured one and he tried to make everyone believe that his soul knew only sacrifice.
He was a sad man because not only did he derive pleasure at the expense of others but the ultimate humiliation was of his own doing because his identity and influence believed there was substance to his existence, but he could never get what he thought was a show of strength. And arrogance was ignorance and in degrees of ignorance the worst form is when there is a belief that all the ugly qualities that make a leader uninspiring are presented as strengths of a no-nonsense leader.
Luyt did not entertain minds that would expose the limitations of his own and it is one thing to fight but another to succeed without a fight.
A day before his death no one cared for his rants. A day after the myth is magnified. The platitudes have been predictable and inoffensive but the inane nature is more insult than compliment to the King of Ellis Park and self-proclaimed King of the Rugby Jungle.
In death he did no evil. In life he only knew evil.
Luyt’s final act as South African rugby chief was to embarrass the intellect and integrity of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans who are excited by inclusion on the world map and not offended that it was not listed as the chosen planet.
The good doctor was so insecure at what he hadn’t experienced because of his environment that he believed titles would create the illusion of intelligence and that fear was just another way of making sure no one disputed he was the boss.
His decision to humiliate one of the world’s saints was the act of a sinner; alternatively a man who was showing his lack of class, education and upbringing. His attempts to justify his action and his conviction in doing so belong on The Jerry Springer Show.
He always spoke of not needing to be popular and then he found something in popularity that he sold to himself as weakness.
Come to think of it, he rarely spoke about what was good for South African rugby. He always spoke about what he was doing for South African rugby and he created the chaos and never had time to explain what it was that kept him so busy. He didn’t give South African rugby professionalism. He didn’t care. In the last few years all he did was condemn the government. He manipulated the weakness in rugby’s administration to impress his strength.
He was an impostor as a leader and the game deserved so much more. Luyt, when he lived, benefited from the illusion of his leadership.
Don’t allow the lie to continue.
– This article first appeared in the March issue of Business Day Sport Monthly, which is distributed FREE with the newspaper on the second last Friday of every month.
748 Comments
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19 Feb 2013, 15:05 pm
@Sharks_are_gonna_get_you-471: bwahaaaaaaa!and this coming from a guy that says he is less than two weeks on this blog!!!
19 Feb 2013, 15:08 pm
@WP-Forever-496:
Drieballs neighbour’s interweb is broken so he’s gone underground .
@Jeraldjay-500:
We will find out tomorrow.
19 Feb 2013, 15:09 pm
@gunther-502:
His advocate has indicated that Pistorius has graciously offered to surrender his passport.
19 Feb 2013, 15:10 pm
@Sharks_are_gonna_get_you-485: Tyrone,I see that your name is number 1 ghetto name in the USA .
19 Feb 2013, 15:11 pm
@gunther-502:
ET got quite excited in the Pakistani 1st innings at Newlands.
19 Feb 2013, 15:13 pm
@gunther-494: There are more questions than answers here.
You see….Roux was insistent from the get go that Nel tell them where he has evidence that Oscar’s legs were on when the shots were fired (Ballistics will prove that – either way, and Perumal the independent will attempt to provide alternative reasons to discredit the state.)
I do believe Nel has until tommorrow to answer the 5 questions Roux asked. Which means: Roux isn’t 100% sure what he should and should not say in this bail hearing….They’re fishing, because with every statement Roux makes in court, he could be nailing his client further, before the trial even starts….
But the Defence can’t afford to have Oscar shooting through that door with his legs on….as his whole defence is going to rest on “the fear and terror he felt because he was without his prosthetic legs”.
Personally, I’m not sure Roux and co have done the right thing here….Gambling already, without knowing wtf the state have or don’t have at this stage.
One thing – Oscar is not going to make this trial. He seems broken, klaar, finished.
19 Feb 2013, 15:14 pm
@S_K-501: How’s my little Angolan “Diamond Dealer”… or Irish Property “mogul”….
Fark, I still chuckle at those little self descriptions my little Poodle Pomper….
19 Feb 2013, 15:14 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-506:
I imagine Oscar is a big suicide risk at the moment.
19 Feb 2013, 15:15 pm
Mark
What’s with the anti-Afrikaner sentiment lately?
19 Feb 2013, 15:17 pm
@Jeraldjay-505:
Ja.
Quietened down a bit by Sunday.
19 Feb 2013, 15:17 pm
Wow what a mouthful on Luyt…Funny it is not said when he was alive to his face. Its easier when he not around….What has happened to thew Lions would not have happened if Luyt was was still in charge. Let a person have the courage of his convictions.
I actually think this is disgusting and bloody cowardly.
Can you put up your great hand of what you did for rugby…………..
He got where he was from not taking **** from cowards like you
Very dissappointed in this article as there are worse people out there………oh yes I forgot, they still alive. We will see their characteristics when they dead……..
19 Feb 2013, 15:19 pm
@WP-Forever-508: I believe the devastation is real. The remorse he is exhibiting.
(But ones not sure what inspired it) The Loss of a lover? Or the Loss of his life as he knew it?
####reallyshittystateofaffairs
19 Feb 2013, 15:19 pm
@Jeraldjay-500: He would need to get a Panama visa first.
Can’t just board a plane on a Green Mamba passport.
19 Feb 2013, 15:19 pm
@willievz-509: Solidarity with Luke maybe…
19 Feb 2013, 15:19 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-506:
What I don’t understand is that he was so afraid of being attacked but he slept with the sliding door open?
Do they not have aircon in Pretoors?
I still would like to see her phone records.
19 Feb 2013, 15:20 pm
Consider, for a moment, the possibility (however unlikely) that Oscar acted in a genuine fear of his life, in a confused state in the early hours of the morning, with no ill intent whatsoever.
Stranger things have happened.
If so, he must be at the end of his tether, having just tragically and accidentally killed the love of his life.
19 Feb 2013, 15:20 pm
@WP-Forever-508:
That’s what his lawyer will be saying tomorrow.
19 Feb 2013, 15:23 pm
i feel really sorry for reeva and her family.
they must be absolutely shattered.
i dont know if i could live through such a loss.
and i feel very bad for oscar too.
he gave lots of people hope for what can be achieved and though i dont really look to sports stars/ celebrities as role models they can inspire people.
his failure though is not a failure of all the people who expected him to be something, rather a simple failure of himself.
19 Feb 2013, 15:23 pm
@gunther-515: Does Pretoors have aircons? I know they have airheads.
I’m sure they are on that iPad and mobile telefoontjie like a flyonHG.
Far too many questions? Logical ones….
(He kind of shothimselfinthefoot – apologies – when he declared to all and sundry straight after the shooting that it was an accident and that he thought she was an intruder….
He has to stick to this now – regardless of whether there could be a scenario that served him better?)
19 Feb 2013, 15:24 pm
@gunther-510:
The Proteas are guaranteed no.1 test status in April which means a $200 000 bonus from the ICC. Could be more.
Majola really missed out.
19 Feb 2013, 15:24 pm
@stormersboy-516:
I don’t buy it.
He gets up, thinks there is an intruder in the house and doesn’t check where the “love of his life is”?
Computer says no.
And so, I think will the judge.
19 Feb 2013, 15:24 pm
in other news, the brokebacks must vuka, the sharkies are waiting for them.
19 Feb 2013, 15:26 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-506: Ballistics will be key here.
19 Feb 2013, 15:26 pm
@Jeraldjay-520: each or the whole team because if its the whole team splitting 200k dollars then majola is probably splitting his sides.
19 Feb 2013, 15:28 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-506: so if the bullets angle of entry into the door was from a standing poisition and not from a lower angle he will get the death penalty?
19 Feb 2013, 15:30 pm
@stormersboy-516: A very wise friend of mine once said: “Sometimes it’s the defences that seem the most ridiculous, that are in fact the most truthful…”
However, I’m not getting that vibe from this……..I see people trying to fit a ‘defence’ into what they ‘think’ they state know, and trying to ‘fit’ a defence into what the accused himself said minutes after the shooting…..(when he called various people)
I do believe in his right to a free and fair trial though.
19 Feb 2013, 15:30 pm
what if he was passed out when she came over (surely she has the keys?) and he woke up to hear movement in the room,, took a shot in the darkness and then pursued the “intruder” towards the bathroom, shooting through the door in the fear the intruder may come out guns blazing?
unlikely i know but once at varsity i honestly thought in the middle of the night that the corner of my digs room was actually a lovely big tree outside my tent and that i was camping and needed a midnight wee.
sadly i had carpets in my room and after tearing them out, winter was a cold one.
19 Feb 2013, 15:31 pm
@Sheriff-288: And that is why you are
the”Sheriff”Your posse can now “afsaal”
19 Feb 2013, 15:31 pm
@Jeraldjay-520:
That’s small beer for him.
Besides I think it’s only the team and coaches.
19 Feb 2013, 15:32 pm
@gunther-521: I was talking more to his potential state of mind at the moment, given that possibility (however unlikely).
At this stage the courts are obliged to consider that possibility, and it may well affect his bail.
There was a famous American Lawyer called Clarence Darrow who once argued for leniency in favour of a youngster convicted of murdering his parents on the basis that he was now an orphan……
I agree with you that something is rotten in the state of Denmark to be sure.
I’d like to see how the evidence presents itself.
19 Feb 2013, 15:33 pm
@The Rangerman-524:
Whole team splits the $200 000.
I wonder whether Majola has decided to go back to his original occupation as a realtor.
19 Feb 2013, 15:33 pm
@RL-525: Um,….we don’t do that anymore.
19 Feb 2013, 15:35 pm
@The Rangerman-527: They spent the evening together…she arrived at 5pm on the 13th. He says he watched tv in the bedroom, and she was doing yoga, and then they went to bed.
19 Feb 2013, 15:36 pm
@The Rangerman-527:
He said they had an early night after he watched some tv and she did yoga.
Seems odd.
If Fräulein Gunther did yoga on the bedroom floor I’d be the first to get my salutation to the sun fully extended.
I certainly wouldn’t be watching masterchef repeats on the tube.
19 Feb 2013, 15:37 pm
@RL-525:
Cruel and inhuman punishment.
Just like if you were to lock him up next Extraball.
19 Feb 2013, 15:38 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-526: As I said in my post 530, I’d like to see how it shakes out, evidence-wise.
I’d like to firstly see the results of the toxicology reports for both, which may shed light on potential lack of rationality, and then the ballistics evidence, which should paint a picture of the sequence of events, and then other stuff like telephone records, entry and other info which add to the circumstantial picture.
19 Feb 2013, 15:39 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-533:
Of course, it also doesn’t help that the neighbours heard shouting.
Or that there had been “previous incidents of a domestic nature”.
Or that it was not Pistorius who actually phoned the police.
19 Feb 2013, 15:39 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-533: a couple of weeks in Pollsmoor as John Mongrels bitc.h he is as good as dead.
19 Feb 2013, 15:41 pm
For those who don’t know – John Mongrel is not ga.y. The men he rapes are the ga.ys.
19 Feb 2013, 15:42 pm
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-533: @gunther-534: ah, so the midnight wee defence will not hold then.
@Jeraldjay-531: its kinda peanuts for these guys really, maybe R70k each?
majola charged that by the hour didnt he?
in other news i see telford vice gave norm arendse a verbal blowie in the sunday times.
old telford reminds me a bit of cheeky who reminds me of verwoerd. sports cocktail with a political mixer.
19 Feb 2013, 15:43 pm
@RL-525: Nope, he gets to spend 14 hours in your company. Him sitting on a toilet seat, and you waffling away on the other side of the door.
(I might be inclined to add HG and Skop)
I would say that justice had been served?
@willievz-523: Oh yes. Case rests on it. I always find it a little dodge when accused folk immediately appoint independent forensic and ballistic ‘experts’ for hire.
Their job is usually to provide alternatives for what the state is alleging, using ‘its’ forensic evidence. Then again – with current record….it could also be read as an innocent man petrifed the police cockitup.
The Inge Lotz case comes to mind – set the precedent for shattering police processed forensic evidence led cases.
19 Feb 2013, 15:43 pm
@RL-538: surely mongrel could be taken the wrong way in the context you use the word?
not that i care because i will defend you to the death on keo my sharky redp us sy brother
19 Feb 2013, 15:44 pm
Toxicology and Ballistics reports?
Everybody is an expert these days.
I blame Horatio Cane.
19 Feb 2013, 15:45 pm
This from News 24:
Pretoria – Oscar Pistorius has described, in an affidavit read out to the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, how his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp died.
According to Pistorius, he and Steenkamp went to bed at about 22:00 on 13 February 2013.
He explained that he keeps a 9mm pistol under the bed as he has been a victim of crime before.
During the night he went out on the balcony and heard a noise in the bathroom. He said he felt a “sense of terror” rush through him.
Vulnerable
“Because I did not have my legs on I felt vulnerable. I fired shots through the bathroom door and told Reeva to call police.”
He then explained that Reeva was not in bed. “That’s when it occurred to me that she could have been in the bathroom. The bathroom door was locked. With the benefit of hindsight I realise that Reeva went to the bathroom when I went to close the balcony door.”
Pistorius then used a cricket bat to break down the bathroom door.
“Reeva was alive. I took her to the bathroom, called Netcare, picked her up and went downstairs.
“I tried to revive Reeva but she died in my arms. I am mortified.
“I trust the South African legal system and the facts will show that I did not murder Reeva.”
Pistorius said in the statement that he is not a flight risk, will not interfere with witnesses, has no previous convictions and is not disposed to violence. His continued incarceration will be of “no benefit” to the State
19 Feb 2013, 15:45 pm
@gunther-543: the guy who has the sideways stand down pat?
cheesekop cheeseball but the little blonde is foxy.
19 Feb 2013, 15:46 pm
@gunther-543: Call me Petrocelli.
19 Feb 2013, 15:47 pm
@The Rangerman-540:
It seems he’s the only cricket writer left at the Sunday Crimes.
I wonder if he’ll still be around when Big Norm starts sending abusive texts to the players again?
19 Feb 2013, 15:47 pm
@stormersboy-536: The fact that the police had their forensic folk in lockdown at that house for 3 days, shows the care they are taking (unlike a few other high profile cases….)
It’s a very interesting case from the forensic and ballistic side. And I see that vd Nest fella who lead the forensics in the Eugene Terblanche investigation is running the show here. Not a fool that fella.
19 Feb 2013, 15:47 pm
@The Rangerman-545: The reason Horatio Cane always stares at the ground is that the actor is such a stoner that he can never remember his lines, they tape it to the floor next to him, and he reads them, only looking up during the last line.
19 Feb 2013, 15:48 pm
@RL-525: what a dom doooos!typical lions mentality I guess. The death penalty has been abolished many moons ago, guppyboy
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