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Pride and politics mix
By Clare Nullis, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Pride and politics mixed Sunday as South Africans celebrated their rugby World Cup final win over England.

Festivities reminiscent of the team's previous World Cup victory in 1995 continued through the night as South Africans packed fan parks and restaurants and filled the streets with honking cars draped with the national flag.

The country's sports minister, however, said the victory must mark the end of an era of white-dominated sport.

"Glory Boys," read the headline of the Sunday Times above a picture of President Thabo Mbeki wearing the team's green and gold colours celebrating in front of captain John Smit hoisting the gold trophy.

"Guts and grit in green and gold," the paper said.


"C'est magnifique, Bokke," said the Sunday Independent, in a play on the team's Springboks name.

Police said the partying passed peacefully, providing much needed ammunition to 2010 World Cup organizers charged with dispelling fears about South Africa's notoriously high violent crime.

Around the country, local authorities erected huge screens in fan parks in what was dubbed a trial run for coping with the masses of South African and foreign soccer fans expected for the 2010 tournament.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela joined thousands at the Boktown fan park in Johannesburg. Mandela famously donned the green-and-gold No. 6 jersey of captain Francois Pienaar at the World Cup in 1995 in a gesture of racial reconciliation one year after the end of racist rule.

In the Johannesburg suburb of Melville, revellers danced on the top of police cars. In other parts of the city, whole streets were impassable because of the crowds.

Shrugging off the racial division that still runs through the nation, black and white South Africans stood together and sang the national anthem at the start of the match and celebrated together after the 15-6 win.

"We are so proud, so very, very proud," said Sandile Saida Makwayiba, whose black suburb near Cape Town erupted with joy. "They are great."

However, as the partying died down, the politics picked up.

Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile praised the team for showing "distinction and commitment" before turning to politics.

"This victory should herald a new era - an era in which we all embrace change and tackle the challenges still being faced by our rugby and sport in general," he said in a statement.

For decades, sports in South Africa was used to showcase white power and instill a sense of inferiority in the black majority. Afrikaners, seen as the architects of apartheid, jealously guarded rugby in particular.

The rugby team's Springbok emblem became seen as an elitist emblem of the old order and there have been frequent calls to scrap it.

At the World Cup in 1995, South Africa fielded one non-white player. There were two non-whites, J.P. Pietersen and Bryan Habana, on the field Saturday, although a total of six were included in the squad which went to France.

"Our victory during the 1995 World Cup offered us a window to see what South Africa can be. We did not build on that," Stofile said. "May we not commit the same error after this second chance."

South Africa coach Jake White, who took the job four years ago vowing to win the World Cup, insisted on merit rather than skin colour as the deciding factor. He was repeatedly criticized for doing too little to nurture black players but withstood pressure to meddle with the composition of the team.

The head of the sports parliamentary committee earlier this year said that players should be stripped of passports to prevent them from travelling to France.

White is now expected to stand down - management hasn't offered to renew his contract despite the team's unbeaten record. South African media have speculated that a black coach will fill his shoes.

Although rugby has a strong black following in the coastal Eastern Cape province and strong roots in the mixed race community around Cape Town, players and fans in the rest of the country are overwhelmingly white.

Critics accuse provincial rugby union bosses of deliberately not selecting black players and grooming them to be national material.

There is also a cultural divide - soccer remains the game of choice for the black majority whereas white South Africans are more enthusiastic about the English Premier League than domestic soccer clubs.

There are hopes that the dazzling sprints and tries of Habana, who is mixed race, may help change this and inspire a new generation of non-white rugby enthusiasts.

Another big problem is that the majority of black South Africans are poorer than the white minority. A sport like rugby is an expensive luxury.

In a provocative piece for the Sunday Times, columnist Clinton van der Berg predicted that political interference would deprive the Springboks of victory for at least 25 years.

"They stand on their soapboxes and (whine) because rugby is a convenient target. But they don't develop fields in townships, underwrite coaching classes or supply the nutrition needed to turn 75-kilogram (165-pound) weaklings into 115-kilogram (255-pound) tighthead props," he wrote.

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/OtherSports/2007/10/21/4593988-ap.html