There has been some disquiet about the lack of black African representation in the Springbok team for this weekend’s clash against Argentina at Ellis Park.
With captain Siya Kolisi still injured, the team to face Los Pumas will feature hooker Bongi Mbonambi, prop Trevor Nyakane and centre Lukhanyo Am, all from the bench.
The mutterings cannot be compared to the hysteria that preceded and formed part of the fall out from the 2015 RWC when Heyneke Meyer was at the helm.
Still, the Springboks are again uncomfortably close to a RWC to deal with the racial makeup of the starting team.
Apart from the obvious difference, the set of circumstances that brought us to this point is hardly comparable.
Unlike Meyer, whose lead balloon assertion: “I don't look at colour. I look at the best players,” the current Bok set-up, under director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber, very much looks at colour but through the prism of long-term pragmatism.
Erasmus and Co are process driven. By sticking fastidiously to their well-laid plans they have helped elevate the Springboks from a lowly ranking at the end of 2017 to the top of the world in 2019 and beyond.
With the Rugby Championship now seemingly out of the Springboks’ reach, the remaining four matches before the RWC, in particular the next two, before the squad for France is named, require alchemy in team selection.
The Bok coaches need to give the players in their squad a fair crack to state their case for RWC selection. Failure to do so would be unforgivable.
The composition of the Springbok team will always elicit debate. That used to take shape mostly along provincial fault lines but that has made way for something more sinister and potentially deeply dividing.
Equally, painting them as racists, tacitly or otherwise, would be irresponsible.
In all the rough and tumble that precedes a RWC, it is easy to forget how players emerged through the system, or indeed how the Springboks scaled the game's highest peak four years ago.
Erasmus has seen and experienced the best and the worst of the local landscape for almost 30 years.
As SA Rugby’s high performance manager between 2012 and 2016 he was charged with developing young talent with a particular bias towards transformation.
The Elite Player Development (EPD) pathway followed a year later with the help of Nienaber as they charted a course tinged with green and gold for black players.
That process perhaps culminated in the Springboks’ victory in the last RWC in Japan when the inclusion of Am, Mbonambi, Makazole Mapimpi, Tendai Mtawarira and captain Kolisi in the starting line-up along with Cheslin Kolbe and Damian de Allende stirred the nation and seemingly put to bed the stigma of racism with a Springbok context.
Mapimpi of course, is a rare case, as he and Am were plucked from the relative obscurity of the poorly administered Border region.
They were identified from outside the EPD pathway and were allowed to fight their way to the top. Other players have been presented the opportunity and have not maximised what was in front of them and it is perhaps a little disconcerting that more black African players have not emerged at the highest level over the past few years. Ox Nche and Joseph Dweba are notable exceptions.
Let’s be clear. The composition of the Springbok team will always elicit debate. That used to take shape mostly along provincial fault lines but it has made way for something more sinister and potentially deeply dividing.
Since Erasmus took over in 2018 the Boks have bridged those narratives with greater assurance. That has largely been done by cultivating a winning habit while attaining other key objectives.
Transformation, as Erasmus has been at pains to explain, is not a matter of black replacing white but that has not stopped him copping flak — most notably for making Kolisi Bok captain after his predecessor failed to do so.
Erasmus and Co have produced a RWC winning squad before and are perhaps best placed to mix and match their combinations as they see fit in preparation for the defence of that title.
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