WHEN the Springboks leap on to the Murrayfield grass this afternoon, look carefully at the green and gold jersey to see if the beautiful and graceful antelope which has been South African rugby's emblem for more than a century is still there.
If it is – and there is a possibility it will have been removed – it will almost certainly be the last time it appears on a South African rugby international team jersey at the home of Scottish rugby.
The harmless buck is at the centre of an exha
usting row concerning what for some powerful South Africans remains their favourite fixation – race. Just as South African rugby is beginning to get well beyond its all-white past – with such "men of colour," as the latest euphemism goes, in the team as the formidable 'Beast' Mtawarira at loosehead prop and the springbok-speedy Brian Habana on the wing – the politicians want to kill the Springbok.
Nelson Mandela skilfully used the emblem to unite a deeply racially divided country in 1995 when he wore the Springbok shirt and cap, given to him by a white rugby player at a training session, throughout the World Cup held that year in South Africa and which the host nation won with a last-minute drop-kick.
But now the ruling African National Congress, divided these days and facing disintegration, has relaunched an assault on rugby's Springbok because it is a "symbol of white racism." The wholehearted endorsement of the Springbok by Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu has not been able to stop ANC populists yearning for publicity from going on the attack.
In a country with 40 per cent unemployment and more than 1,000 people dying each day from AIDS, the Springbok debate has overridden a thousand more important issues. It began last December when the ANC, at its electoral conference, decreed that the Springbok must go from rugby jerseys. The ruling party said it should be replaced by the national flower, the protea, a local piece of flora as prickly as the thistle but less colourful.
The decision was put on hold as the ANC moved towards what proved to be its historic split in September, but was reignited last month when a South African loose forward, Luke Watson, said he wanted to "vomit on the bok jersey." Watson is a controversial figure whose father, Cheeky Watson, a prominent white player, became a legend among black South African rugby players by opting to play in a black team during the apartheid era when rugby was racially segregated. Former Springbok coach Jake White was forced last year to give Luke Watson a cap because ANC politicians insisted and said they regarded him as an "honorary black" because of his family's role in "the struggle."
Watson faced a South African Rugby Union (SARU) disciplinary hearing last Tuesday for his outburst. After his expressed desire to be sick on the jersey, Butana Komphela, parliament's sports committee chairman, said the Springbok emblem "also wants to make me puke." Sports minister Arnold Stofile described the antelope as the "opium that keeps whites in happy ignorance."
On a technicality, Watson's disciplinary hearing never got off the ground after his defence team successfully argued the hearing had not been properly constituted according to SARU rules. Watson, who earned nearly a million rand last year wearing the Springbok jersey, said he'd never pull it on again while the antelope featured on it.
SARU, dominated by non-white officials, has proposed a compromise – a large protea on the left breast and a tiny springbok on the right. Springbok legend Naas Botha does not want the Springbok symbol to go, but was tired of all the aggravation. "Shoot it now and get it over with," he said.
Amid the ill-tempers, there has been some humour. Suggestions for a truly representative symbol on the left breast include strips of biltong, the delicious dried meat made from slaughtered springboks. Or a plastic bag – satirically depicted as the true national flower, because billions litter the country.
Mandela, extremely frail at 90, has declined to become involved in the current Battle for the Bok.
