PW Botha & SA Rugby — steeped in the past or doomed for the future?

The Krokodil is well known for his Crossing the Rubicon speech in 1985 in which Botha was widely expected to announce new reforms. Instead, he refused to give in to pressure for concessions to the black population including the release of Nelson Mandela.

His defiance of international opinion in this speech led to further isolation of the country, calls for economic sanctions and a rapid decline in the value of the rand. The following year, Botha declared a nationwide state of emergency.

Thousands were detained without trial during his presidency, while others were tortured and killed. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found him responsible for gross violations of human rights. It also found that he had directly authorised “unlawful activity which included killing”. However, he refused to apologise for apartheid. In an interview to mark his 90th birthday he suggested that he had no regrets about the way he ran the country.

He claimed that the apartheid policies were inherited from the British colonial administration in the Eastern Cape and Natal Province, implying that he considered them something he and his government had followed by default.

Enter SA Rugby with their phalanx of legal advisors, who are one and the same as those employed by PW Botha.

Is it any wonder then that in October 2008 we find ourselves observing SA Rugby as if it were in a time warp, guilty of the same repressive, intimidation and victimisation of its members?

SA Rugby faces enormous social and organizational challenges within its structures.

1. Racism
2. Transformation
3. Exclusion of 200,000 of its rugby players from Super Rugby
4. Financial liabilities resulting from the Exclusion of the Southern Spears
5. No coherent expansion plan for SANZAR
6. Massive financial losses due to mismanagement

This does not instill a confidence in an organisation that is supposed to uphold the basic tenets of its Constitution:

THAT rugby should be played, administered and promoted on a non-racial, non-political and democratic basis;

THAT all persons, irrespective of race, colour, creed or gender, should have the right in whatever capacity to participate, in the game of rugby;

1.2 The national rugby controlling body shall, in all its activities and functions, forbid any form of discrimination based on race, colour creed or gender.

1.3 The national rugby controlling body shall, at national and at all other levels – right down to club and school level – pursue policies and programs aimed at redressing imbalances and at creating a genuine non-racial, non-political and democratic dispensation, such policies and programs to be aimed at achieving, expeditiously, the non-racial, non-political and democratic structuring of the union and all its constituent elements.

4.1.8 To bind its Members and Associate Members to all contracts, deeds and agreements entered into by the President’s Council of the Union on behalf of the Union and for the benefit of the Game;

14.1.7 Decisions binding
All lawful resolutions of the President’s Council shall be binding on all Members and Associate Members of the Union until revoked or rescinded by the President’s Council.

It is no coincidence then that these hallowed clauses of SA Rugby’s own Constitution are being violated by none other than SA Rugby itself. Not once, but serial violations that are perpetuated by the parent body.

It places the SA Rugby Presidents Council and its leadership in doubt that they are knowingly violating their own Constitution meant to uphold and grow the game of rugby in South Africa.

In the case of the Southern Spears, SA Rugby’s Presidents Council unanimously agreed on June 8 2005, on a sixth Super 14 Franchise for the Southern and Eastern Cape and further issued a binding SA Rugby Super 14 Franchise Participation Agreement, that not withstanding signature from the six South African Franchises binds them from January 1 2006 to May 31 2010. This agreement is still binding on SA Rugby and its six franchises.

The Cape High Court ruled in favour of the Southern Spears and declared June 8 2005 agreement legal and binding and that SA Rugby were in breech of this agreement.

Consider the level of desperation and act of malice of SA Rugby that they approached the then Southern Spears Coach, to sign a document that he would not continue coaching for the Spears. Today he is the Springbok Coach.

Consider the desperation of SA Rugby’s legal counsel offering to pay for third parties costs of interdicts and legal action to gag individuals. It is a staggering indictment on SA Rugby, that they are being counselled with a laager mentality.

Small wonder then that the Minister of Sport is gravely concerned with the discriminatory and exclusionary behaviour of SA Rugby, its abuse of power and violation of its own constitution.

Small wonder then that the Competition Tribunal are looking into SA Rugby’s exclusionary acts, abuse of power and collusive behaviour. The arrogance and denial of any wrong doing by SA Rugby, will ultimately lead to its own demise.

The tragedy is that this can be fixed and resolved to the benefit of the nation and its rugby players in a couple of weeks. The answers and the remedies exist.

We are witnessing shades of the Crossing of the Rubicon in sport in South Africa and evidence that SA Rugby is stuck with an apartheid era mentality, unwilling to transform itself for the future.

“The game of rugby is in peril” – Prof. Willie Basson 29 March 2006.

sa-rugby-constitution-28mar-08.doc