Errol Tobias: Pure Gold. Errol Tobias

we clinched the match with eight points in our favour.

      I completed my school career at Swartberg Secondary School. I joined the Progress Rugby Football Club, one of the three rugby clubs in Caledon affiliated with the (coloured) South African Rugby Football Federation (SARFF).

      It was the year 1968, I was 18 years old, and I played fullback for the C team.

      I made quick progress and thanks to the sharp eye of the chairman, David Habelgaarn, I took to the field that same year as fly-half for the B team of Progress RFC. The next year I qualified for the Hottentots-Holland Zone team, consisting of players from the Stellenbosch and Somerset West Union, as well as for the team of the Southern Union.

      Only during this time did I actually become aware of the political goals of the South African Rugby Union (SARU), one of our affiliate organisations (which shouldn’t be confused with the current SARU founded in 1992).

      Now, in 2015, the following short history lesson might sound too absurd to be the truth, but South African rugby was, in fact, for decades just as divided as the country …

      So, in brief: SARU’s predecessor, the South African Coloured Rugby Football Board (SACRFB), was formed under British rule in 1897 as the national governing body for coloured and black rugby players. In 1935, however, a group of black players broke away and formed the South African Bantu Rugby Board (SABRR) (the name was changed to the more acceptable South African Rugby Board in 1959).

      A group of coloured players in the Western Cape followed the same path in 1959 and broke away to form the South African Rugby Football Federation (SARFF), who joined the ranks of the white South African Rugby Football Board (SARFB). The black South African Rugby Association (SARA) (later called the South African Rugby Board) also affiliated themselves to SARFB in 1978. All three these race-based rugby governing bodies selected their own teams that competed internationally: The Springboks was the team of SARB (white), the team of SARA (black) was the Leopards who, for example, played against the British Lions in 1974 during their Southern African tour, while the national team of the Federation (coloured) was called the Proteas.

      After SARFF broke away, the remaining members of SACRFB renamed this organisation SARU in 1966. The (mainly black) Kwazakhele Rugby Union (KWARU) and other black clubs later also aligned themselves with SARU.

      In 1973, SARU was one of the founding members of the non-racial South African Council on Sport (SACOS), who supported the anti-apartheid movement. SARU was a supporter of non-racial, mixed rugby teams. Its slogan saying no normal sport can take place in an abnormal society was in direct opposition to the slogan of SARFF: ‘Where rugby is, we play’ …

      We largely turned our backs on politics and the apartheid laws, and were prepared to play rugby against anyone who challenged or invited us, as long as it was within the context of human dignity. In this way, everyone got the opportunity to get to know each other better, to lay their fears to rest and to break down the colour barrier – not only on the playing field, but also on a social level.

      Our position was that SARU and the politicians could concern themselves with politics and the struggle for ‘one man, one vote’ and see how far they get; we are going to focus on rugby.

      Today, I still believe that we were trailblazers on the rugby field and that we didn’t only help to open people’s eyes to the politics of the day, but encouraged parties from both sides of the political spectrum to have empathy for their fellow South Africans.

      In a heavily politicised society like the current South Africa, it is probably also difficult to understand why our family wasn’t involved at all with politics in those days. We didn’t have the right to vote, of course, but we were very involved with the Anglican Church that also had quite a few white church members. So if there were any political undercurrents within the church community in Caledon, we were totally oblivious.

      We lived in a house on Apostel Street, which was a ‘coloured street’, for example. While the next street, De Villiers Street, was again a street where only white people were allowed to stay. The Gericke family lived on De Villiers Street. They were very liberal white people and when they went out on a Friday or Saturday night, they usually dropped off their two young fair-haired daughters with my mother.

      Those white children slept over at our house until their parents came to fetch them, sometimes only in the early hours of the morning. Then Mrs Gericke would say, ‘Gosh, Emily, you really mustn’t let the neighbours see where my children sleep!’ This was just how we experienced society at the time.