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, 11:16 am
@gunther-194:
That’s the whole point, isn’t it? He may or may not have intended killing his girlfriend, but he certainly intended killing someone. The girlfriend part is just a distraction.
19 Feb 2013, 11:17 am
@RL-10: Black suit yes but have never felt the need for platforms. Please insult me, but not my appreciation for quality shoes.
19 Feb 2013, 11:17 am
@keo-192: when are we going to see the back of Hoskins, he has being in power for about 8 years now – and unlike the tyrant Luyt he is still causing damage.
Please write a piece on the sad Hoskins years.
19 Feb 2013, 11:20 am
@nortierd-193:
Surely 5 is a lesser charge than 6?
And the chances of bail are greater even if only slightly?
Doesn’t the legal definition of murder imply premeditation?
19 Feb 2013, 11:20 am
@RL-18: I have written several pieces on Hoskins being a coward, a follower of what serves his best interest and an absolute disgrace to the ideals of transformation. Google the articles I have written about Hoskins. He has done the game a disservice, especially the drive for a transformed game in South Africa. He has been a disaster in his two terms but he does not have the ego or insecurity of a Luyt ito personality and is happy to accept the hand outs that come with being on the IRB and president of SARU and does not want to be the larger than life individual determining the hand outs.
Luyt was about confrontation and Hoskins is about convenience.
19 Feb 2013, 11:21 am
What an absolutely cowardly attack on someone who cant even defend himself?
I agree 100% with UFOs post above in this regard.
19 Feb 2013, 11:22 am
@David-201:
I don’t know we will see what the judge says.
The defense will argue otherwise I’m sure.
19 Feb 2013, 11:22 am
The State’s case: The couple had a massive row.Steenkamp was scared,went to the bathroom and locked herself in.Pistorius,calmly ,attached his legs,walked to the bathroom,and fired through the door.The bathroom was cramped and small ,so Steenkamp had nowhere to go basically.That’s the basis for their premeditated murder charge. This was reported by the Sky News reporter at court.
19 Feb 2013, 11:23 am
@keo-110:
lol
19 Feb 2013, 11:24 am
@Jeez-84: I actually think it is particularly well written but I do accept that if you live in a world of twitter sentences and stories of 140 characters any sentence may read like a paragraph. You’d be lost reading some of the English broadsheets but the more you read them the easier it gets. That is if you want to challenge yourself. But thank you for the feedback and the critique of the writing. I am however satisfied that in this particular instance the writing is of the necessary quality, which is not to be confused with a view on the subject and content matter.
19 Feb 2013, 11:25 am
@gunther-204: Difference between intent and pre-meditation.
Murder….intent to kill must be proved.
The scheduling 5/6 is for purposes of bail and punishment. (The premeditation label adds to the severity in terms of minimal sentences, bail etc etc)
I think?
Murder is Murder….if the intent was there: (whether planned or not…) Premeditation, Schedule 6, just takes it to a whole new level of ***** and evil actions…..
His ‘D’ will be desperate for a Schedule 5 re-classification. Can’t see it happening. Nel keeping his cards close.
19 Feb 2013, 11:25 am
@NZINCHINA-23: and accepted the holiday house (lol)
19 Feb 2013, 11:26 am
@keo-205:
Hoskins has never managed to impose himself, as the President of SARU, on the provincial presidents. He once referred to them, a few years back, as “that motley bunch”, when I asked him about their commitment to transformation.
19 Feb 2013, 11:26 am
@keo-197: Sound an awful lot like Skop there…
Where is he ? I reckon Keo is Skop ,an alter ego who is a pure troll that serves to drum up controversy to get more hits on the site .Probably the same with Heavens Game and many of the other Kiwis dickheads that post here.
KEO IS SKOP imho
19 Feb 2013, 11:27 am
@west indies cricket board-20: You will be back but enjoy SARugbymag … great site and the one I go to for all my rugby news.
19 Feb 2013, 11:27 am
@stormer in a teacup-198:
Too true
19 Feb 2013, 11:28 am
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-211: And to add, Murder is the unlawful AND intentional killing of another person blah blah…
Intent might be there (me shooting a person who is attacking me with a knife)
BUT: the unlawful bit can’t be proved, as I was acting in self defence, which means the ‘killing’, whilst intended, was not unlawful.
19 Feb 2013, 11:32 am
So there we have it – Hoskins is a coward. A corrupt pimp who sold SA Rugby down the river for a few shekels. He who sold out to s14 and he who sold out to s15 competitions in favour of convicts should be flogged in the street for his crimes (while he is alive of course) and nasty opinion pieces directed at this coward from today onwards.
Let the Hoskin bashing begin.
19 Feb 2013, 11:32 am
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-211:
that’s surely the difference beteween murder and manslaughter?
Sure its for the purposes of bail.
But will also be the focus of the trial.
Gives an interesting insight into what the trail will be about.
19 Feb 2013, 11:32 am
To be fair…………………………………..there was a stunning resemblance to Benito Mussolini.
19 Feb 2013, 11:34 am
@rvanaardt-34: You misinterpret and conveniently distort. Our rugby should be about hope and not hatred and about forgiveness. This is my view on Luyt the rugby administrator. There is no hatred in it but how I observed him as a rugby administrator and an insight, which is my insight, which doesn’t make it right or wrong but it is an insight.
Why not challenge my insight with one of your own. Instead your blood boils over at what I had to say because that way it is easier not to challenge what you may think of Luyt.
How do we grow and adapt and learn if we are not prepared to challenge our own thinking. I have posted my view and welcome any other to challenge what I wrote about, which was Luyt’s rugby administration. What is the legacy? What was his modus operandi? What did people who served with him really think?
He ruled by fear and much of what I have said was spoken and written when he was forced to eventually resign. This is not an attack on him but my observation, conveyed in published articles when he was alive and conveyed now again on reflection of his death.
19 Feb 2013, 11:34 am
@cane-220:
Just with more hair.
And veldskoen.
19 Feb 2013, 11:35 am
@Mr Black-31: How can an opinion be disgusting?
19 Feb 2013, 11:36 am
@Slartibartfast-24: And you matriculated?
19 Feb 2013, 11:38 am
@keo-223: like this :YOU ARE SKOP in my opinion
19 Feb 2013, 11:38 am
@gunther-26: Originality is to be applauded but cliche and repetition says more about your personality than it could ever about my height. The nice thing about a brain is it is not measured by feet but by our own desire to grow it as big as we want.
19 Feb 2013, 11:39 am
@keo-223:
19 Feb 2013, 11:40 am
@Tacitus-30: Please challenge the opinion with a 2000 word own of yours as to why Luyt was good for the game, what he achieved and what he did and I will post it with the greatest of pleasure. Keo@keo.co.za
19 Feb 2013, 11:41 am
@keo-228: You missed #28.
19 Feb 2013, 11:42 am
@gunther-219: It’s all going to be about intent and unlawfullness….
I don’t think negligence is going to accompany anything Gerrie Nel alleges. had he been cleaning his gun and a shot fired off, happened to shoot through the bathroom door – negligence.
If the State are already talking about motives… a fight before with ‘shouting’ etc etc. Mr P’s ***** has already been blown out of the water.
This is OJ Simpson X 50000000.
(and Reggie Perumal, Oscar’s independent forensic expert…..well, he’s been used by more than 1 ‘accidental/self defence wife killer in the past….that KZN police officer for starters, but the courts ‘that will be a noooooooo’d his evidence in that trial)
Might be cheap, but for those who enjoy forensics, investigation and the sort, this is a big event.
19 Feb 2013, 11:42 am
@Taahirah-36: I have never been off the map
19 Feb 2013, 11:44 am
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-230: Anyways, I think Oscar is going to have a ‘breakdown’ long before any trial takes place. Hospitalised he will be…..
Betya.
19 Feb 2013, 11:44 am
Bunch of sanctimony fueled morons parading their highfaluting self righteous indignation.
Some these poor self righteous fools seriously take themselves seriously storming out of here in a huff of self righteous indignation.
Yeah who needs self righteousness when it’s challenged it chickens out and ducks.
19 Feb 2013, 11:45 am
@Karma-zaf-38: You are entitled to your view and opinion but I’d appreciate your view on the article content as that may challenge my view. Look forward to reading your view on Luyt the rugby administrator. Send it to me please keo@keo.co.za
19 Feb 2013, 11:46 am
@keo-197:Keo, In the article you’ve mentioned it twice that he was a railway clerk, which he was. He grew up in a modest home and did a lot of manual labour while still at school. Yet no mention is made of his successes in business (I guess you’ll say this is a rugby site…which it is.)
I agree that he was a dictator with no HR skills and caused embarrassment for a lot of us. One question though:
If he had done nothing for rugby in SA, what would you call the 370 million pound deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 1995 (between SA, NZ and Aus) ? This lasted a decade during which time SA reaped the rewards of a devaluating Rand currency. When the deal had to be extended 10 years later, our ANZAC brothers walked all over us. Luyt would not have allowed that to happen.
You are free to air your views and many of them are true but give the devil his due as well!!
By the way I’m glad you separated his private life from his “rugby life” because he has left behind a wonderful wife in Adri.
19 Feb 2013, 11:46 am
@wpallday-225: The good thing is you have an opinion. Hopefully you allow this opinion to be challenged by a counter opinion and that way allow for an evolution of opinion.
19 Feb 2013, 11:47 am
@The Sharks rugby pedigree is packaged as dog food-230: all he had to do was foresee that he could hit someone and they could be killed and that’s the murder charge right there.
Irrelevant if it was his girlfriend. Why would you take the step of shooting at someone locked in the *******? Not like you or your stuff is under immediate threat now is it? Simply dial the guards/cops with a “I’ve got some unknown mofo locked in the ******* – got the door covered with the 9mm. Get your asses over here pronto”.
Somehere one would also think he may have thought where his GF was?
19 Feb 2013, 11:48 am
Paramedics have arrived!
Could Oscar be down?
Could this be part of a ploy to secure bail a la Schabir-Selebi?
I smell Booth
19 Feb 2013, 11:49 am
@Stawm-206: Does somebody being dead preclude people publishing an opinion about them? We publish positive as well as negative articles about people when both alive and dead. There are plenty of examples out there. Should people not be condemnatory of Jimmy Saville because he is dead and unable to defend himself? I don’t think this article is cowardly.
19 Feb 2013, 11:49 am
Keo. The point is still: Give us examples of your claims. It is not that we don’t believe you, but perhaps it is time for someone with inside information to tell us what happened. Everybody knows Luyt was power hungry, because that is what we’ve been told, but tell us what he did! It seems people abroad knows more about his true legacy than us.
I said in the previous post it SEEMS like it is similar to the disagreement between you and Jake, because you didn’t give us anything with substance. Your article seems like you simply had a personal disagreement with Luyt. I’m asking you to be the outspoken journalist you attempt to be and give us the facts. Remember, we don’t have the inside knowledge that you have.
19 Feb 2013, 11:50 am
@keo-205: The article is quite damning and i am a little uncomfortable with the style, but I must say that I cannot disagree with the sentiment.
Luyt ran it like his own personal fiefdom, trampling any underfoot who stood in his way.
History is littered with individuals like him who through force of will achieved much, often at much cost to those around him. Captains of industry, political leaders, in this case Luyt all have that intense drive to succeed beyond consequence. In some cases they achieve much and are lauded for that, but they are very seldom balanced people who have the love and respect of all around them.
19 Feb 2013, 11:51 am
@keo-226:
Are you saying you have a big brain for your size?
Next thing you are going to tell me you are hung like a german sausage factory.
19 Feb 2013, 11:52 am
@CharlesM-235: I am challenging the fact that what would a Rebel breakaway have produced in a broadcasting deal at the same time. We don’t know but it may have made the deal done look small; it may have reinforced your view of how good it was.
The point is the assumption is to just say he saved our rugby but he saved a situation that entrenched his position. What was his business success at the LIons as a rugby union? What was their financial turnover? He paid players in an amateur era, owned them because of payments and ruled like a dictator. What legacy did he create in business and rugby administration? What was his succession plan? When he left the supposed empire there was no empire. That is not good business and that is not the makings of a good business man? I look forward to you giving me a reason to believe he was good for SA Rugby and that his methods were acceptable and that the end matched the means. Please enlighten me.
19 Feb 2013, 11:52 am
@gunther-238:
Paramedics are for a switch board operator.
Things are heating up.
19 Feb 2013, 11:52 am
@skopdiekan-233: Sorry my eyes appear to be failing me. Did you just accuse people of taking themselves seriously? I’ll have to check that Mayan calendar again.
19 Feb 2013, 11:54 am
@CharlesM-235: s14 and s15 rugby is worth less $ than the original s12 deal – blame Hoskins and kort broek Marinos.
19 Feb 2013, 11:54 am
@stormer in a teacup-245:
19 Feb 2013, 11:55 am
@CharlesM-235: True. The no gonad brigade currently “looking after” SA rugby interests are singing munchkins compared to LL in this regard.
19 Feb 2013, 11:56 am
@Dilligafrican-237: Unlawful and intentional – that is what you are describing. Murder. Both have to be proved for it to be murder – the unlawfullness of the act PLUS the intent to end a life.
He’s stuffed already with the intent (tick box) – regardless of who it was he ‘thought’ he was shooting at. 1.4m x 1.4m toilet room…. You shoot through that door, you’re going to kill….
Now it’s about the unlawfullness of the act mentioned above. What knocks the unlawfullness of his act out? Temporary insanity, self defence, drunk/hammered…..
His story stinks. To high heaven. And as said on day 1, his only saving grace might be a shyteload of roids/alcohol/coke in his blood…… Because this ain’t going away with the story he is spinning (unless paranoid as hell and unaware of sorroundings, but that would ALSO be due to narcotics…)
He’s toasted unless the cops have screwed up forensics, and the chain of evidence etc.
19 Feb 2013, 11:57 am
@RL-203: thank me later
Hoskins has failed the game
8 Aug 2011
MARK KEOHANE , in his weekly Business
Day column, says Saru president Oregan
Hoskins is to blame for the lack of
transformation in South African rugby.
Let’s hope the Springboks’ World Cup
defence has a bit more substance than
Oregan Hoskins’ defense of the lack of
transformation within South African rugby.
Hoskins’ defence, in the six years he has
been the president, has been to write a few
letters to the 14 provincial presidents and
urge them to commit more to transforming
the game.
It’s not good enough Mr Hoskins. It never
was and it never will be and you need to be
held accountable for how you have failed
the game.
In 2007 when Springbok coach Jake White
named seven players of colour in his World
Cup squad of 30 Hoskins told the media it
was unacceptable and that it would never
again happen in Springbok rugby.
In an
interview with Rapport newspaper,
published on Sunday, Hoskins said he was
comfortable with six players of colour in a
Tri-Nations squad of 24.
White had two players of colour in his
preferred World Cup starting XV. In 2011,
Springbok coach Peter De Villiers will have
three, a Zimbabwean-born black prop and
the same two coloured wingers White
invested in four years ago.
When the Boks play Wales in New Zealand
in their World Cup opener on 11
September, little would have changed in
four years. Zimbabwean born-and-raised
prop Beast Mtawarira (for retired Bok
legend Os du Randt) is the sum total of the
Boks’ transformation since the 2007 World
Cup.
If Hoskins was the leader he said he would
be he would have changed the situation or
he would have resigned. Clearly he is not a
leader, let alone the leader.
Nothing will come of the situation because,
as with every Bok World Cup squad
announcement, the winning is deemed far
more important than an irritation like
transformation.
Black and coloured administrators have
been consistent in showing themselves to
be yellow-bellies when it comes to
transformation and even more culpable
than the white apartheid-type dinosaurs
that remain as large a presence as ever in
South African rugby administration.
The white dinosaurs believe they are
safeguarding their past. The black and
coloureds are simply failing their past.
Hoskins escapes media scrutiny because he
isn’t confrontational and bullish. What he
is, is a president comfortable to do as he is
told to do by those who elected him.
Hoskins, a fortnight before the selection of
the Boks’ 2011 World Cup squad, has again
publicly denounced the lack of
transformation in the South African game.
But as the leader he hasn’t offered a
solution; just like he didn’t in 2007.
He is
unhappy with transformation but very
happy he has done his bit through writing a
letter to 14 provincial presidents on the
subject every four years.
Transformation is not a short- or long-term
project. It is a way of life, but to
understand that rugby’s administrators
have to live it. They don’t, especially the
black and coloured ones who, once elected,
are only interested in their first-class travel
and not the painful crawl of the pace of
transformation.
Hoskins must be made to feel the pressure
through constant media reminders of how
he has failed himself and the game he
purports to love so much.
The Portfolio
Committee can’t summons rugby’s spineless
leaders to Parliament enough to make them
explain, if only to be an irritant, but don’t
believe for a minute it will have any
meaningful impact. Those who make up the
Portfolio Committee are as spineless as
those they summons in providing action
that is true to living transformation and not
just talking about the need for it.
The Springboks, with the exception of
Schalk Burger and Juan Smith, will be at full-
strength against Australia in Durban this
weekend after the miracle recovery from
injury during a two week training camp in
Rustenburg. This match, more than the New
Zealand Test a week later, will provide
realism about the Boks’ World Cup defence.
New Zealand will rest as many as seven
first-choice players against the Boks in Port
Elizabeth, but Australia will play their best.
The Durban Test will be the only time South
Africa’s best plays the best of Australia or
New Zealand before the World Cup. It is the
relevant Bok Test in the next fortnight
because there is a big difference in the All
Blacks side that played the Wallabies in
Auckland and the one that whipped a South
African XV in Wellington.
The pressure is on the Boks in the next
fortnight. De Villiers has had no pressure on
getting a winning result when playing
weakened sides away from home. The
demand has to be that the Boks win in
Durban and Port Elizabeth – and win well.
But, like with the transformation demand
on Hoskins, don’t expect it to be met with
delivery.
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