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A couple of years ago, I was stopped by a security guard while roaming a stadium perimeter somewhere in Cape Town with a white colleague.
The security guard wanted to see my accreditation, but did not ask to see my associate’s.
When said colleague asked why he hadn’t been asked for his credentials, the guard was stumped because his assumption was that he was exactly where he should have been, whereas there was a need to check if I was.
After 18 years of writing about rugby, I’ve made peace with the thinking within the game that whites belong and blacks need more verification to crack that nod.
Looking at the Lions’ announcement of Malcolm Marx to replace Warren Whiteley as their captain in his injury-enforced absence, I couldn’t help but think back to that day at the stadium.
The Lions’ official vice-captain is Elton Jantjies, but when the captain went down, he was passed over for Marx.
Before many take umbrage at that, let me declare that the choice of captain between Marx and Jantjies is actually much of a muchness for me.
Both are Springboks, the team’s most influential players and two of the leaders in the group.
The redoubtable Marx is a former South African player of the year and a nominee for world rugby player of the year, while the indefatigable Jantjies is vastly experienced (124 Super Rugby appearances) and was also four points shy of becoming only the fifth player in the history of the competition to score 1 000 points going into the game against the Bulls yesterday.
Long story short, their track records suggested they both have legitimate claims to the captaincy.
If anything, there was something in the last match they played – against the Stormers – that also hinted they may not necessarily be full-time captaincy material.
Early in the game, Marx had a conversation with referee Egon Seconds along the lines of the next Stormers player to gratuitously clip him around the ear in a ruck would get what was coming to him, while Jantjies’ bedside manner – a torrent of squeaky backchat to every decision against the Lions – only served to antagonise the official.
But one still has to ask why Jantjies was installed as the team’s official vice-captain if he wasn’t deemed the right fit for the job once the actual captain was no longer able to carry out his duties.
Lions coach Swys de Bruin is privy to what the rest of us don’t see every week in training and in the general team environment, so he probably had good reason to joke that, looking at Marx’s muscles, he had no choice but to go with him, a decision even Jantjies had no issue with.
Yet for all the “all’s well that ends well” feel to the story, I can’t help but wonder what stopped the Lions brains trust from making a straight swap as per their captaincy hierarchy and simply making Marx the vice-captain.
What rankles me is how nary an eyebrow was raised at the decision being made, as if it was logical that the white guy would make a better fist of the responsibility than the black guy.
This was a bit like when Eben Etzebeth was elevated to Springbok captain in 2017 at his franchise captain Siya Kolisi’s expense despite having not led a team before that.
Allister Coetzee gave the uninspired explanation that Etzebeth had more caps as a Springbok, before later admitting that he was wary of putting Kolisi under the intense spotlight that came with the Bok captaincy.
While the latter part of the explanation sounded sensible, you have to worry when a black coach is confronted with making history and shows doubt in a black player by visiting his own insecurities on the younger man.
That’s how prevalent the culture of mistrust in black players is in the system – even the black people in it buy into the idea that they’re not quite worthy.
In contrast, nobody bats an eyelid when Robert du Preez opts to contract all three of his sons at the Sharks as if he’s immune to a bout of nepotism.
There was nothing wrong with Marx’s appointment as Lions captain, per se, it’s just that it again exposed the fact that players aren’t held to the same standard.
. Follow me on Twitter @Simxabanisa
