By Maeder Osler
In the late 1970s, I played – ingloriously — for the Second Senior Noupoort Rugby Team against a team from Burgersdorp. Almost half a century later, I’m still haunted by this event – both on and off the field — and still can’t quite figure out what it meant.
I was still teaching at SACS in Cape Town, but had already joined a farming partnership in the Colesberg district, and was planning to move to Hanglip Farm, which I would inherit years later in terms of an old Van Zyl family will – reportedly to protect land against colonial purchase. Intending to become more closely involved with my new community, I had then applied for a teaching post at Noupoort, 50 kilometres south of Colesberg, among others a major SA Railways junction. (One of my farm venture partners, who played for the 1st XV, was asked at the time whether my application was serious.)
Two of my farmer partners kindly arranged for me to play for the Noupoort 2nd XV, at a time of intense rivalry against the apparently more flourishing town of Burgersdorp, some 192 kilometres east of Colesberg. This event remains engraved in my memory.
The matches were played in Noupoort, and Burgersdorp were the visitors. Amazingly, before the game, a club official came into our change room with two empty bank bags, and said: ‘Manne, hierdie sak is vir die tande, en hierdie een is vir die brille en horlosies’ (Men, this bag is for false teeth, and this one is for the spectacles and watches). This helped me to feel quite young again, as I still had all my own teeth, and wasn’t wearing glasses.
I looked at the rugby field with dread. There was grass on it, but not a blade was green. Like everything else, it was bleached white in the Karoo winter, and the ground was rock-hard. Not the sort of field where you wanted to be tackled – or tackle someone else, for that matter. ‘Roasties’ were clearly going to be on the menu.
In the event, we lost, rather miserably. Specifically, my performance at centre wasn’t much to write home about. In my defence, I have to say the ball was only passed to me twice – and I was also wearing borrowed boots.
There weren’t many spectators, but their arrangement nevertheless displayed a complicated social hierarchy (read race, class and culture). Wealthier supporters – mostly farmers and prominent townspeople – were drawn up in their vehicles on one side both sides of the field – Burgersdorpers mostly in cars on the one side, and the Noupoorters, mostly in bakkies, on the other.
A seeming underclass of poorer townsfolk who had neither bakkies nor saloons but at least had the right skin colour for the time were sitting on a stand with wooden benches on the town side of the field. Folk of other hues sat and stood in designated (segregated) areas behind the goalposts.
The Cape Town-Port Elizabeth Express being shunted in Noupoort, 30 December 1980. These two images have been drawn from a superb photo essay on Flickr about SA Railways in the last days of steam, taken by a Belgian enthusiast, Michael Huhardeaux, and his wife, Nicole Huhardeaux-Dufrasne, and uploaded in 2012.
Two SA Railways workers in a steam engine in Noupoort, 1980. They might well have been among the Noupoort townspeople people who attended our rugby match.
So all was as it should be – except that, at that time, President P.W. Botha was negotiating with neighbouring states about joining a constellation of southern African states, which seemed to acknowledge the ‘winds of change’ blowing in South and southern Africa.
Next up was the big game – the climax of the season — between the two first teams, for all sorts of Karoo trophies (I can remember which). Against all expectations, Noupoort won with a last-minute try in a corner.
The try and the win triggered a chaotic scene. The Burgersdorp saloons were silent, while the Noupoort bakkies hooted uproariously. Meanwhile, the folk from behind the posts where the try was scored ran on to the field to congratulate ‘their’ victors.
An overjoyed railway worker – wearing a suit, waistcoat and hat – ran on to the field to embrace his employer, who had played in the winning team. Incensed, members of the losing team crash-tackled him, sending his hat flying, and smearing his suit and waistcoat in the dust.
When some sort of order had been restored, the players left to change, and to either celebrate their victory or mourn their defeat. As far as I remember, the post-match gathering was held in a nearby church hall. Grim-faced Burgersdorp players huddled in a corner, clutching their drinks, and soon left.
Not so the Noupoort players. After numerous rounds of drinks, the first team captain stood up ceremoniously, thumped a quart bottle on a table, and pronounced in Afrikaans: ‘Men, in these times of dialogue and getting together, led by our leaders and the leaders of our neighbouring countries, this was outrageous behaviour towards our own people.’
And then it came, the sentence once heard, one could never forget: ‘Manne, dit was dan een van ons [swartes] …’
To this day, I’m haunted by this event, and unsure about what it really meant. On the one hand, one can look at it as an example of the crude racial paternalism which marked that ugly period in our history, vestiges of which still exist today.
On the other, one could argue that it contained the seeds of a recognition – in this unadorned, unforgiving setting – that there were common interests between people on the sides of the field and those behind the goalposts, and that things were going to have to change.
Which led, eventually, to the negotiated settlement … and, if one wants to pull this through further, the current national dialogue, aimed at subjecting post-apartheid governance to renewed popular input and criticism.
But that’s South Africa for you … it always keeps you guessing …
FEATURED IMAGE: The Eastern Cape town of Burgersdorp, source of the two teams that came to play in Noupoort. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Thank you for that excellent article! You describe the event and arrive at your conclusions in a way, so many years later, that we can all, of a certain age, understand and relate to. My rugby career was short and unpleasant as I was weedy and thin; totally unsuitable. The coach used to pick me up by my shorts and shirt and hur. me onto, or was it into, the scrum because I would not go anywhere near it on my own.
An excellent report from Maeder Osler. Well done indeed.
The Oslers, Stanley and brother Bennie, were some of our outstanding Springbok players.
All types of matches over the decades have been very successfully played and pleasant, and some awful. What with the naartjie throwing , refs been stabbed , and unruly behaviour by spectators all over the world. Games and matches are just games and should not be life threatening.
“Win humbly and loose gracefully,”