By Jon Herskovitz
JOHANNESBURG, June 8 (Reuters) – South Africa start a home
series against England on the weekend with a new coach, new
captain and old questions about not doing enough to address the
politically sensitive issue of the racial composition of the
team.
Former President Nelson Mandela helped turn the Springboks –
once the sporting symbols of the white-minority apartheid regime
– into models of racial reconciliation when South Africa hosted,
and won, the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
Since then, the governing body of South African rugby has
made the transformation of the racial composition of its teams a
top priority but the overwhelming majority of the Springbok
squad new coach Heyneke Meyer named for the England series is
white.
His predecessor, Peter de Villiers, said it should not be
this way.
“There are more black players who are capable of playing for
South Africa than most people think,” former Springbok coach De
Villiers said in a book released in the past few weeks.
“But before then, many talented young players have fallen
through the cracks in the system.”
South Africans often speak of a racial divide in sports,
with whites playing rugby and blacks playing soccer. But that
breaks down in the southern part of the country where blacks
have played rugby for decades and outnumber whites in organised
rugby by more than a five to one margin.
Black players from the region face numerous hurdles in
climbing the ranks due to a lack of sponsorship for
black-majority clubs, white coaches who favour white players and
resistance from upper levels of rugby for putting blacks on the
field, critics said.
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