Part of building ourselves as a winning nation is learning how to live with defeat. Whether as an individual, a group or a nation, in the process of growth, you will go through ebbs and flows. One was reminded of this life lesson over the past two weekends of magnificent rugby and beautiful football.
Having grown up in a former sugar cane-plantation-turned-black labour reserve in the once English-governed Natal, rugby is not the kind of sport I historically followed closely. Where I’m from, sport meant football, boxing and maybe athletics. Nothing else.
After covering your new exercise books with brown paper, you decorated them with pictures of your favourite sporting stars. Mine were always Nelson “Teenage” Dladla, Jan “Malombo” Lechaba and Patrick “Ace” Ntsoelengoe, even though my father would have preferred I had Ephraim "Jomo" Sono and Mthofi “Zigidi” Khumalo – the greatest Buccaneer to ever come from KwaMashu – as my idols.
Pictures of boxers Elijah “Tap Tap” Makhathini, John “Big John” Tate and the marvellous Marvin Hagler also graced my exercise books along with those of Roberto Durán and Sugar Ray Leonard. But never a rugby player.
But in the 31 years that we have lived under democracy, I have come to appreciate just how important rugby is to our nation. For instance, I was in Mthatha on a family trip on October 21, 2023, when the Springboks took on England in the Rugby World Cup semifinal.
If you know Mthatha, everybody is black like Herman Mashaba, with hardly any Caucasians in town. Yet, Gen Bantu Holomisa’s former fiefdom had come to a complete standstill as the Springboks took on England.
When victory finally came, the town erupted in a way, I imagine, it would have erupted when its most famous son – Nelson Mandela – walked out of prison with Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela by his side.
That explosion of pure joy at the Springboks’ victory had the same effect on me as when I heard Die Stem, part of the national anthem, passionately sung in Galeshewe, Kimberley, some 20 years ago. They sang that part with the same gusto they sing the Morena boloka setjhaba sa se heso part.
Since 2023, I have made it a point to watch and support the Springboks with the same kind of passion I have for the national soccer teams.
Then two weekends ago, the Springboks lost a game against Australia that they should have won. They were leading comfortably at halftime, and the assumption was that they would dispense with Australia without much trouble.
But the Wallabies staged a magnificent comeback in the second half, winning 38-22. Shockwaves across the nation, the invincible Springboks had been defeated, at Ellis Park, nogal.
By the Monday, the blaming game had begun, with some commentators talking as if the reigning World Cup champions had collapsed.
Coach Rassie Erasmus and his technical team, fortunately, didn’t share in the panic. With an illustrious record, which includes two successive World Cup championships, their reaction left many believing that the defeat was, to borrow from one of Bra Jonas Gwangwa’s famous hits, a temporary inconvenience.
This past Saturday, the Springboks turned the tables on Australia, beating them 30-22.
Contrast the reaction to the Springboks’ defeat with what happened to Mamelodi Sundowns over the same two weekends. After playing to a 1-1 draw against Orlando Pirates in the first leg of the MTN8 semifinal, Sundowns was held to another 1-1 draw this past weekend. This forced the game into penalties, which Pirates won 4-1.
The defeat caused a huge meltdown among some Sundowns supporters who threw missiles at the pitch as the game ended and protested outside the stadium as the team bus was leaving.
Suddenly, Sundowns was the worst team in the league, and their coach deserved to be pelted with dangerous objects. Yet this is the same team and coach that has just won them yet another league title, went all the way to the finals of a continental club competition and represented SA and Africa well at the recent Club World Cup in the US.
We can blame the violent conduct on the actions of a few, but one’s biggest concern here is the apparent inability among our compatriots to take defeat and setbacks with equanimity whether in sports, politics, business or any other sphere.
Wallowing in pain and turning against your own because they have lost does not help you win future battles. It may make you even weaker than before.
If there are any lessons we should take from the two most prominent sporting games played over the last two weeks, it is the positives we learn from the Springboks and the need to avoid the kind of reaction we saw being displayed by some Sundowns fans.
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