‘Rugby helped Mandela unite South Africa’

Written by on January 16, 2025


Former South African rugby star Chester Williams smiles during an interview with The Korea Times at the Westin Choseon Hotel in Seoul last Monday. / Korea Times

Former South African rugby star Chester Williams smiles during an interview with The Korea Times at the Westin Choseon Hotel in Seoul last Monday. / Korea Times


By Kang Hyun-kyung

Former South African rugby star Chester Williams said that the late Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) healed and united his then-polarized nation through international sports events.

“Through the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela managed to unite the nation,” said Williams, then the star winger of the South African national Springbok team from 1993 to 2000, during a recent interview with The Korea Times.

“South Africa is a diverse country. But at that time, 20 years ago, there were quite a few obstacles for Africans. The Springbok emblem was in a danger of being replaced. Mandela decided that he was going to keep the emblem as he obviously knew that then he would get the support from the white people. And that’s exactly what happened in 1995.”

In South Africa at that time, the Springbok team, their green jerseys and emblems were portrayed as symbols of the white government’s racial segregation policy, widely known as apartheid.

Black people reportedly detested rugby because the sport was dominated by white people.

Williams, who visited Seoul last week as a South African tourism ambassador, was the first African player on the team since the early 1980s.

In his biography, the rugby star disclosed that he experienced slurs, racism and insults from his teammates while he was on the team.

Black people harboring discontent about the whites-dominated rugby team posed a grave challenge to Mandela as he strove to draw joint support from black and white people for the Springbok team so that they could be united through the World Cup.

Williams said that Mandela invited him to his residence before the Rugby World Cup.

“He told me that I was going to play a very important role for South Africa during the World Cup,” Williams said.

The invitation was part of Mandela’s effort to make the global sports event successful in uniting South Africa which was still divided by whites and the majority blacks.

The South African leader also invited Francois Piennaar, the Springbok captain, for tea at his office to ask for his support for the plan to reconcile the nation through the rugby event.

Initially black supporters remained skeptical about Mandela’s cause.

But they were exhilarated and gave their sweeping support for the Springbok team as soon as the World Cup began. The South African team won the World Cup against New Zealand and proved that Mandela’s idea was right.

Williams recalled the Rugby World Cup was one of the successful sport events through which South Africans proved that they could live in peace and harmony.

“In 1996, we won the African Cup and this also helped unite the nation,” he said. Following this, South Africa also hosted the Cricket World Cup in 2002 which was followed by the 2010 soccer World Cup.

Williams said all these sports events helped unite all South Africans.

The rugby star described Mandela as an amazing man. “He told us that the impossible is possible. He was a good friend of mine and we had lunch together several times. He even came to my wedding.”

As a sport ambassador for South African tourism, Williams made a four-day visit to Seoul to promote tourism to his country. He was part of the South African tourism delegation that visited for a tourism workshop with Korean tour agents at the Westin Choseon Hotel in Seoul on Monday.

! function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {
if (f.fbq) return;
n = f.fbq = function() {
n.callMethod ?
n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments)
};
if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;
n.push = n;
n.loaded = !0;
n.version = ‘2.0’;
n.queue = [];
t = b.createElement(e);
t.async = !0;
t.src = v;
s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s)
}(window, document, ‘script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘2240470362946308’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);



Source link


Reader's opinions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *



Current track

Title

Artist