Rugby struggles to live up to ideals of post-apartheid South Africa

It was appropriate there should be a media scum outside the High Court in Pretoria this morning.

At its centre, an activist barely anyone had heard of until this past week.

Now, Edward Mokhoanatse, president of a fringe political party, Agency for a New Agenda, has made a name for himself; attempting to scupper South Africa’s hopes of winning the rugby World Cup.

His attempt to have the team grounded, on the basis that it has fielded too few black players, failed; but not before sympathetic words from judge Ntendeya Mavundla.

‘’Transformation wheels are grinding very slowly,’’ he told the court.

He spoke for the many critics of the sport – and even a fair few of its defenders.

In the flashy promo shown on TV here, the South African team is portrayed in every muscled inch as representative of the Rainbow Nation.

In fact, of the 31 players in the squad, nine are non-white.

That two decades on from apartheid’s end there should now be many more is a charge that has been led by Peter De Villiers, the only non-white to coach the Spingboks.

He told us today that a tremendous opportunity to unite the country behind the team had been squandered.

Rugby is by no means the only South African institution to have struggled to live up to the ideals of the new era. But it bears the burden more heavily than many.

To understand why, go back to that June day in 1995, when the Springboks lifted the World Cup and even more famously, Nelson Mandela put on the green and gold jersey.

It was a powerful act of reconciliation. The Springboks had been seen by black South Africa as a symbol of white domination.

Since that day, rightly or wrongly, the sport has been a symbol for the wider successes and many failures of post apartheid.

The man who kicked the winning points back in 1995, Joel Stransky, told me that tremendous strides are being made in changing the complexion of the game, especially at youth level.

‘’We’re definitely not racist,’’ he insisted.

Still, as the old controversy has dragged on, its clear South Africa is some way from not caring what colour skin pulls on the green and gold.