The Springbok emblem debate is as tired as Julius Malema’s divisive politics, but inadvertently he may have stumbled upon an important discussion point.
But it’s not whether the national rugby team should keep the springbok, name and the green and gold colours.
That’s done and dusted. I was one of several journalists at the National Sports Council meeting at a hotel on the banks of the Vaal River on March 30, 1996, when the organisation’s head, Mluleki George, said the executive had acceded to president Nelson Mandela’s wish that rugby keep the emblem.
The issue wasn’t put to a vote that day or else rugby’s Springbok emblem would have been history.
The King Protea was the official emblem of South African sport, but with Madiba’s blessing rugby was given a pass.
This matter has been dredged up occasionally since then, with the springbok being shifted to the right side of the jersey so the official King Protea could sit on the left, over the heart.
Malema must have been smoking some good stuff, perhaps provided by his cigarette benefactor, when he decided the colours should go as well and claimed that rugby was being played in South Africa before the settlers arrived. His knowledge of history is down there with his woodwork ability.
There’s never been a discussion on the national colours — green and gold — so why raise it now? That springbok has bolted, even if you’re desperate to buy a couple of votes.
Look, I understand the historical significance and notoriety of the Springbok emblem.
The team was intertwined with the ruling National Party and its apartheid policies.
There was a time I supported every touring team to this country in the hope they beat the Boks. Frustratingly it was a vain exercise because the home side went unbeaten in series on home soil from the 1976 All Blacks to the so-called World XV in 1989.
I guess my thinking was that if the people supporting the NP were also fans of the Boks, then I had to go the other way. I didn’t want to have common ground with the enablers of apartheid.
In the mid-1970s the then head of the white rugby union, Dr Danie Craven, said the springbok was reserved exclusively for whites, though he recanted in the early 1980s, bringing in Errol Tobias and Avril Williams.
Even since 1994 there have been problems with the national rugby team in terms of perceptions about racial equality, but Rassie Erasmus and Siya Kolisi have turned that around.
That squad has become a symbol of transformation and success — and the emblem means something so different to what it did during the height of apartheid.
It signifies unity. These days, the Springbok is something to aspire to.
Who wouldn’t want to be a Springbok now? Apart from Malema. If one conducted a poll asking people if they’d rather be the captain of the World Cup-winning Boks or the commander in chief of the EFF, I have little doubt who would win.
If such a ballot were a boxing fight, I have no doubt Kolisi would beat Malema on a first-round KO.
There was a time when all sport codes, during apartheid, wore the Springbok emblem, from cricket to swimming, gymnastics to athletics.
Amateur boxing did fantastically well under the Springbok emblem, winning 19 Olympic medals until Rome 1960, South Africa’s richest haul by any code at the time.
Wearing the King Protea on their vests, no local boxer has won more than one fight at a single Olympics.
To date Bongani Mwelase is the only fighter to have won a Commonwealth Games gold, a common occurrence in the ring up until 1958.
That’s a poor record for the Protea boxers.
I’m not suggesting that they would have done better had they fought as Springboks, because their code was still run by Protea administrators.
The telling thing for me is that those who have worn Protea blazers have not identified with it like rugby players and fans have done with the springbok.
The exceptions, to some extent, are the national teams of cricket and netball which are both called the Proteas, but even then the Proteas, in their case, refer to their given names, not their emblems.
When it comes to the Protea I don’t detect the same reverence that the Springbok enjoys.
I’ve never heard a national sports person, black or white, talk about being a King Protea.
A national football player says they played for Bafana Bafana and Olympians say they competed for South Africa. They will tell you they received national colours, but the poor old Protea doesn’t get a mention.
Yet I’ve interviewed old-timers who told me they were Springboks in their sports. It was their go-to line. Being a Springbok, linguistically, trumped everything for them.
The Protea is a stunning flower, but as a sporting emblem it just hasn’t resonated like the springbok.
Next year South Africa celebrates 30 years of democracy and perhaps it’s time to think about reincorporating the Springbok into all the other codes.
Maybe that’s the debate we should be having.
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