I like rugby, no scratch that, I love rugby. I know football is meant to be our thing at the moment, but I really do love rugby. And I love Tendai Mtawarira. If I could adopt him as my brother, I would. I’m not too sure if adoption works that way, maybe I’d need to adopt him as my son? Ok, that’s a bit weird. But whatever, I dig him. And so do a bunch of other South Africans. And we want him to stay, permanently.
The Beast is one of the great icons of modern rugby. He has given us endless joy on the rugby pitch. No one inspires a crowd like him. To hear the roar when he touches the ball is a beautiful thing. It is the beauty of the beast, so to speak. He is a towering example of human potential, a role model and all those other fuzzy things we like to say about sport. And he lives in Durban, so clearly he must be a nice guy. I’m not joking, Durban people are the nicest people in South Africa. It is a scientifically proven fact.
Which obviously means our national sport administrators are NOT from Durban because they are a bunch of twats. The Beast has played 22 tests for South Africa without any problems. He has official sanction from the IRB to play for us. The country, the team, and the fans have adopted him like kin. But to our national sport dictators, he is an illegal, a kwerekwere in a Springbok jumper. Yes, they have been quite happy to rake in the millions of rands in ticket sales, TV rights and advertising revenue that he has brought in. Yes, they have been quite happy for him to fill the taxman’s coffers with loads of overseas moola for the last few years. But play for his new country? No, he can’t do that.
Their reason? They say he is not a South African citizen, even though he has been here for four years. (What the hell does that make me, a guy who has spent ten years overseas?). It is not like he is from France or Russia or some place that has no connection to South Africa. He is from Zimbabwe. Yes, I know, we are meant to be hating on Zimbabweans these days, because they come here and steal our jobs or some other such bunkum. But come on, really, this is a country we share so much common blood with. They could easily be our tenth province. Mzilikazi, Rhodes, the struggle days, the men who dig our mines, the crazy zimsoc kids who line every campus bar across SA, the ties are there to be seen. The Limpopo only exists in the minds of small people. People like our sport administrators. Zimbabweans are not foreigners, they’re our bros. The Beast is our bro. And we really should give him a bloody passport. Preferably by Saturday 2pm.
I agree.
that is all.
Big Up for a true role model!
I agree. We should not hate on Zimbabweans, we should comfort those who escape the “retribution” since their daddy quite clearly is into favoritism and seriously final punishment for those he doesn’t like.
One thing, does he want to become a citizen and is just another victim of Home Affairs, or does he just like doing what he is good at and will go back to Zimbabwe as soon as he can?
Can’t wait to see who shouts (if at all) ‘That’s rascist!!’ because the Beast is not a ‘citizen’..hmmm
I wanna belong to a racial demarcation called ‘human’. In SA, Im not just African, but African-Black, or worse still Motswana specifically.
In the UK, I’m not just non-British, not just Black, but actually a Black resident of Afro-Carribean descent or in some instances African-Black!
When will it end??? Nit-picking’s all it is..
Ever had of the Zambezi Sables.
Representative sport in the form of national teams is about what a country can produce not what it can buy. If we suck we must do what we can to not suck but that does not include using our economic power to buy foreigners to play for us as it defeats the whole purpose of national team sport. Neither does the term previously disadvantaged mean black foreigners (more so well to do foreigners). If anything it points to lack of development of our own local talent. I will be stunned if Sharks show me Mtawarira as transformation of rugby like any other company importing blacks and calling it transformation
The Springboks despite the brand is still the South African national rugby team. It is representative sport for citizens of the country and this non-jingoistic nationalism has even greater significance for the previously excluded and economically disadvantaged black population whose dream it was during those dark years to don South African colours. (yes the economic class question holds so much in rugby).
Zimbabwe has a potentially very good rugby team, the Sables who while South Africa was banned were playing in the World Cups (I bemoaned the inclusion of Adrian Garvey another palooka in the Boks team). Mtawarira, Chivanga, Mujati are playing professional rugby for the Sharks as much as Pienaar is playing professional football for Everton of England.
Then there is also the question of the rule of law
Hey, weren;t you the David Smith who used to be in Amsterdam with the cats? You back in SA?
U have my VOTE!!!!
The South African black man is increasingly wrongly potrayed as xenophobic. I have always stressed that in no respectable discourse even in the west is the term xenophobia so bandied about like we do against own people. I hear of immigration issues something that in the politically correct discourse of SA is rarely talked about. Besides show me an African country that is not xenophobic (going by the wanton use of this term). Which other country in Africa has dealt with such redress and immigration problems SA is dealing with.No one is hating on Mtawarira. The fact is he is not a South African citizen by law. We can never fast track the citizenship of one person to satisfy a sporting organisation. Suppose Mtawarira was white and Australian or such other and we wanted him in the team would we have done this violation of our own laws. The IRB rules are secondary to our own laws. Even if by IRB rules he is a SA citizen but by our laws he is not and the jersey is .
As with regards to transformation I do not consider Mtawarira a transformation stat in so much as I laughed at an accounting house’s lauding itself for transformation and development when the majority of its black staff was foreign. There is a tendency among some sections of society both black and white elite to extol foreign blacks at the expense of the locals where stereotypes of ineptitude, laziness, entitlement are needlessly used.
Adrian Garvey, Gary Teichmann, Steve Elworthy, Bob Skinstad, Proteas off-spinner called paul Harris?
Not a peep from the sports minister about these guys! Makes you think.
bravo. i really do enjoy your stuff. write more. ta.
Dont be tjatjarag David, let Beast apply for SA citizenship first, and once he is a naturalised S African then he will be eligible to represent our country in international events.
It’s the rule of law boet…
Beeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssttttttt!!!
Couldn’t agree more.
Your argument is very shallow.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fact is that beast is not an “ethnic” black South African (circa Jake Whites “In Black & White) – soon the coach will be forced to narrow the “transformation” down to Zulu-blacks, Xhosa-blacks, Sotho-blacks…
And I thought we lived in a non-racist, non-tribalist society? Racial classification = apartheid!
Mmmm interesting….If the Beast was white I doubt he would be having any of these problems. These xenophobic tendencies seem to affect Black foreign nationals. However the law does stipulate that if one has worked in SA for 5 years the foreign national is eligible to apply for citizenship. I hope they will allow him to play for the Sharks while he is considered for Citizenship if he hasn’t already started the process. It will be such a waste seeing great talent go to waste.
I’m all for Tendai playing for RSA, but the issue is that of his legal status regarding our laws that govern citizenship. SARU should have done that as early as last year and try many other venues to fasttrack the process but they sat idle.
All in all I’m on Tendai’s side.
OK but what irritates me as a Zimbo is, if it is true as some columnist said somewhere that Tendai is saying he is proudly South African, pleeeease we know we came here for the money so lets not pretend to be more South African than the South Africans
Davhana, I’m shallow by nature. Can’t help it.
An African Union, like the European Union, could sort all this out.
It took Europe some 2000 years of wars, revolutions and other killing pastimes to get there.
Could Africa please learn from this history or will Africans have to wait another 2000 years before their leaders see the light.
YEAH!!
Give him a South African passport if he wants one!
And it’d be really nice if he were called by his actual first name as well