Rugby union in South Africa

When Canon George Ogilvie became headmaster of Diocesan College in Cape Town in 1861, he introduced the game of Winchester College football. This version of football, which included handling of the ball, is seen as the beginnings of rugby in South Africa.[6][7][8] Soon, the young gentlemen of Cape Town joined in and the first match in South Africa took place between the "Officers of the Army" and the "Gentlemen of the Civil Service" at Green Point in Cape Town on 23 August 1862 and ended as a 0–0 draw. The local press reported a series of football matches between scratch sides "Town v Suburbs" or "Home v Colonial-born".

Around 1875, rugby began to be played in the Cape colony; the same year the first rugby (as opposed to Winchester football) club, Hamilton, was formed in Sea Point, Cape Town.[9] Former England international William Henry Milton arrived in Cape Town in 1878. He joined the Villagers club and started playing and preaching rugby. By the end of that year Cape Town had all but abandoned the Winchester game in favour of rugby.[8] British colonists helped spread the game through the Eastern Cape, Natal and along the gold and diamond routes to Kimberley and Johannesburg. British troops would also play a key role in spreading the game throughout the country.

Rugby union was introduced to South Africa by British colonists and began to be played in the Cape colony around 1875. In 1883, the Stellenbosch club was formed in the predominantly Boer farming district outside Cape Town and rugby was enthusiastically adopted by the young Boer farmers. As British and Boer migrated to the interior they helped spread the game from the Cape colony through the Eastern Cape, and Natal, and along the gold and diamond routes to Kimberley and Johannesburg.

The game was strong enough in the Western Cape for the Western Province Rugby Football Union to be formed that same year; Griqualand West followed in 1886; Eastern Province in 1888; Transvaal in 1889 and in 1889 the South African Rugby Board was founded. Kimberley was the founding city of the South Africa Rugby Football Board in 1889.

In 1889 the first nationwide tournament was held at Kimberley, with the Western Province (rugby team) prevailing over Griqualand West, Eastern Province and Transvaal.

British Isles v Cape Colony, the first match of the British Isles tour of South Africa in 1891

The first-ever tour of the British Isles by a team from Southern Africa (drawing on players from the then independent republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and the British colonies of the Cape and Natal) took place in 1891, with the trip financially underwritten by (the British arch imperialist) Cecil Rhodes of the Cape and (the resolutely Boer) President Kruger of the Transvaal Republic. Seven years later Britain was at war with the Boer republics, and during the Boer war British troops would play a key role in entrenching the game throughout the country, and games amongst the Boer population in prisoner of war camps popularised the game further.

The Pretoria RFC team of 1905

From the early years the game had been enthusiastically and passionately adopted by coloured and black populations in the Cape colony, and the Eastern Cape in particular, but rugby organisation (under the South Africa Coloured Rugby Board formed in 1896) and teams were kept segregated with discrimination against black and coloured players and little government funding.

Even before the 1948 elections in South Africa in which the apartheid government came to power and legislated systematically along racial lines, foreign sporting teams going to South Africa had felt it necessary to exclude non-white players. New Zealand rugby teams in particular had done this, and the exclusion of George Nepia and Jimmy Mill from the 1928 All Blacks tour, and the dropping of "Ranji" Wilson from the New Zealand Army team nine years before that, had attracted little comment at the time.

From 1960, international criticism of apartheid in particular grew in the wake of "The Wind of Change" speech by the British Prime Minister, Macmillan, and the Sharpeville massacre near Johannesburg in South Africa. From then onward, the Springboks, perceived as prominent representatives of apartheid South Africa, were increasingly isolated internationally.

Coming shortly after the Soweto riots as it did, the 1976 All Blacks tour of South Africa attracted international condemnation and 28 countries boycotted the 1976 Summer Olympics in protest. The next year, in 1977, the Commonwealth signed the Gleneagles Agreement, which discouraged any sporting contact with South Africa. A planned 1979 Springbok tour of France was stopped by the French government, which announced that it was inappropriate for South African teams to tour France, and after the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand went ahead in defiance of the Gleneagles Agreement, South Africa was banned by the International Rugby Board from international competition until such time as apartheid ended.

From 1990 to 1994 the legal apparatus of apartheid was abolished, and in 1992 the Springboks were readmitted to international rugby. On 23 March 1992 the non-racial South African Rugby Union and the South African Rugby Board were merged to form the South African Rugby Football Union. The unified body changed its name in 2005 to the current South African Rugby Union.

SA Rugby celebrated 100 years of test rugby in 2006 and unveiled a new logo at a function at ABSA Stadium in Durban. Celebrations continued later in the year, with two tests against England at Twickenham.

According to World Rugby, South Africa has 434,219 registered players broken down into: 157,980 pre-teen males; 121,879 teen males; 143,722 senior males (total male players 423,581); 1,653 pre-teen females; 5,504 teen females; 3,481 senior females (total female players 10,638).

There are 4,074 referees.

From 1990 to 1991 the legal apparatus of apartheid was abolished, and in 1992 the Springboks were readmitted to international rugby. The history of discrimination and the high-profile association of rugby union with the apartheid era could not, however, be dismissed at a stroke of a pen and the issue of race remains very sensitive post-apartheid in South African rugby. Somewhat ironically, racial classification has become an important part of the attempt to open up the sport and provide opportunities for the previously disadvantaged. Various rugby competitions are now required to operate racial quotas whereby a specified number of each team must be non-white. The Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill was tabled in Parliament in 2007 and provided that sports federations would be compelled to supply government with a racial demographic breakdown of their membership in order to qualify for state funding.

Quotas have not however officially been applied to the national Springbok team, but there has been increasing frustration at the lack of elite black players resulting in growing political pressure. A number of MPs of the African National Congress (the governing party), including the influential Parliamentary Sports Committee chairman Butana Khompela, have called for powers for the government to influence the selection of national teams. In July 2006, Springbok coach Jake White told the press he had been unable to pick certain white players for his squad "because of transformation" – a reference to the ANC government’s policies of requiring racial selection in attempting to redress the racial imbalances in national sport. Prior to the 2007 World Cup, Butana Komphela gave an interview in which he suggested that passports would be confiscated if the Springbok team was not "representative" i.e. did not have a racial make up representative of the demographics of South Africa (the white part of the South African population amounts to approximately 8% (4 million) of the national population but dominated the 2007 World Cup winning squad).

Minister of Sport Makhenkesi Stofile has been a vocal critic of the Springboks lack of "representivity" and the slow rate of "transformation", and was widely expected to be the driving force behind the campaign to appoint a black coach for the 2008 season who would be expected to give preference to black players. Jake White's contract as the coach of the Springboks expires at the end of December 2007.

The presence of only two coloured players in the winning team's starting line-up, 13 years after the end of white minority rule, has led to a new bout of soul-searching about how to ensure the progress of more black players. However, the debate may however be moving away from quotas and transformation. The failure to develop sport at school level is one of the country's biggest mistakes, President Thabo Mbeki said in Pretoria where he was handed the Webb Ellis Cup by the Springboks following their World Cup victory against England. "We don't put sufficient development in sports and we haven't committed resources needed and this is one of our biggest mistakes". He said development needed to be built from below. Sports and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile recently emphasised the development of talent, ruled out racial quotas for national teams pointing out that this resulted merely in window dressing for international consumption, as a failed experiment in South African rugby showed a few years ago.

However the issue remains politically fraught. Although a survey by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has showed that only a slim majority of the population favoured racial quotas in national sports teams, there were still strong racial disparities in the level of support for quotas. The survey found that black South Africans were more than four times as supportive of quotas compared to the white population.

From 1990 to 1991 the legal apparatus of apartheid was abolished, and in 1992 the Springboks were readmitted to international rugby. On 23 March 1992 the non-racial South African Rugby Union and the South African Rugby Board (the government-approved white-only governing body) were merged to form the South African Rugby Football Union. The unified body changed its name in 2005 to the current South African Rugby Union.

The national team are known as the Springboks. The jersey is a dark myrtle green with a gold collar and a logo of a leaping springbuck and a protea.

The "Springbok" nickname and logo dates from the 1906/7 tour of Britain. The logo was not restricted to the white team alone, the first coloured national team used the springbok in 1939 and the first black team in 1950.

South Africa also occupies an important place in the sevens version of the sport. The country hosts one of the 10 events in the annual Sevens World Series. From 2001 through 2010, it was held at Outeniqua Park in George, a community along the Garden Route in the Western Cape. Starting in 2011, the tournament moved to the Eastern Cape and the much larger Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, and moved again in 2015 to Cape Town and Cape Town Stadium. The Cape Town Sevens has since become one of the biggest annual events on the South African sporting calendar, attracting numerous local and international visitors over the course of the weekend on which it is held. South Africa's national team, known as Springbok Sevens, and also nicknamed "Blitzbokke", have become one of the sport's top national sides, as evidenced by their victory in the 2008–09 IRB Sevens World Series and recently in both 2016-2017 and 2017-18. In November 2019 it was announced that Cape Town will also host the 2022 Rugby World Cup Sevens.

Since the readmission of South Africa to international rugby, its rugby talent has migrated across the world. There are many high-profile South Africans who, through residence or ancestry, are representing or have previously represented other countries. Players of note are:

• Hendre Fourie, Matt Stevens, Stuart Abbott, Nick Abendanon, Brad Barritt[15] Mouritz Botha and Mike Catt for England
• Clyde Rathbone, Daniel Vickerman, Tiaan Strauss, Dane Haylett-Petty for Australia
• Scott Spedding, Rory Kockott, Antonie Claassen, Brian Liebenberg, Pieter de Villiers, Bernard le Roux, Paul Willemse, Andries van Heerden, Eric Melville, Daniel Kötze[16] for France
• Dries van Schalkwyk, Tobias Botes, Carlo Del Fava, Quintin Geldenhuys, Corniel van Zyl, Dario Chistolini, Braam Steyn for Italy
• D.T.H. van der Merwe for Canada
• Andries Pretorius, Rhys Thomas and Ian Evans for Wales
• Andrew Mehrtens[17] and Greg Rawlinson for New Zealand
• Richardt Strauss, Robbie Diack, CJ Stander, Quinn Roux, Jean Kleyn for Ireland
• Josh Strauss, Greig Tonks, W. P. Nel, Allan Dell for Scotland
• Hanco Germishuys, Ruben de Haas, Shaun Davies, Chad Erskine for USA
• Kotaro Matsushima, Lappies Labuschagne, Wimpie van der Walt for Japan

• Bath, Richard (ed.) The Complete Book of Rugby (Seven Oaks Ltd, 1997 ISBN 1-86200-013-1)
• Richards, Huw A Game for Hooligans: The History of Rugby Union (Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84596-255-5)

• SA Rugby Homepage
• South African rugby union news from Planet Rugby
• IRB pages for South Africa
• 100 years of South African rugby: Part one
• 100 years of South African rugby: Part two
• 100 years of South African rugby (part three) – IRB