I like rugby, no scratch that, I love rugby. I know football is meant to be our thing at the moment, but I really do love rugby. And I love Tendai Mtawarira. If I could adopt him as my brother, I would. I’m not too sure if adoption works that way, maybe I’d need to adopt him as my son? Ok, that’s a bit weird. But whatever, I dig him. And so do a bunch of other South Africans. And we want him to stay, permanently.

The Beast is one of the great icons of modern rugby. He has given us endless joy on the rugby pitch. No one inspires a crowd like him. To hear the roar when he touches the ball is a beautiful thing. It is the beauty of the beast, so to speak. He is a towering example of human potential, a role model and all those other fuzzy things we like to say about sport. And he lives in Durban, so clearly he must be a nice guy. I’m not joking, Durban people are the nicest people in South Africa. It is a scientifically proven fact.

Which obviously means our national sport administrators are NOT from Durban because they are a bunch of twats. The Beast has played 22 tests for South Africa without any problems. He has official sanction from the IRB to play for us. The country, the team, and the fans have adopted him like kin. But to our national sport dictators, he is an illegal, a kwerekwere in a Springbok jumper. Yes, they have been quite happy to rake in the millions of rands in ticket sales, TV rights and advertising revenue that he has brought in. Yes, they have been quite happy for him to fill the taxman’s coffers with loads of overseas moola for the last few years. But play for his new country? No, he can’t do that.

Their reason? They say he is not a South African citizen, even though he has been here for four years. (What the hell does that make me, a guy who has spent ten years overseas?). It is not like he is from France or Russia or some place that has no connection to South Africa. He is from Zimbabwe. Yes, I know, we are meant to be hating on Zimbabweans these days, because they come here and steal our jobs or some other such bunkum. But come on, really, this is a country we share so much common blood with. They could easily be our tenth province. Mzilikazi, Rhodes, the struggle days, the men who dig our mines, the crazy zimsoc kids who line every campus bar across SA, the ties are there to be seen. The Limpopo only exists in the minds of small people. People like our sport administrators. Zimbabweans are not foreigners, they’re our bros. The Beast is our bro. And we really should give him a bloody passport. Preferably by Saturday 2pm.

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  • David Smith is a world famous artist and a British Olympic hammer thrower. He is a curler for Scotland and Manitoba. A pro wrestler fondly known as the British Bulldog. A Canadian economist and a Mormon missionary they call the Sweet Singer of Israel. He is a British historian and a bishop. David Smith is the biographer of HG Wells, a professor of physics, a composer and a music teacher at Yale. He played rugby for Samoa, England and New Zealand. He created the Melissa worm, a deadly computer virus. He is the Guardian's man in Africa, he starred in a reality TV show and shot his way to silver in the 600m military rifle prone position at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. But this isn't that David Smith. This is the blog of the other David Smith. David J Smith. The one from Durban by the Sea. The one who lives in Amsterdam. Yes, him. The David Smith who likes to write about himself in the third person. To learn about all the other David Smiths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Smith To contact this David Smith: [email protected]

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David J Smith

David Smith is a world famous artist and a British Olympic hammer thrower. He is a curler for Scotland and Manitoba. A pro wrestler fondly known as the British Bulldog. A Canadian economist and a Mormon...

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