The coming of the Messiah Kolisi

ABOUT eight years ago, I was sitting and chatting with my friend Isabelle, a sophisticated person, finely intelligent, creative, interested in the world around her.

Not a rugby person – such unbridled violence and its mass celebration in large stadiums were beneath her elegance and station in life. You know, there are so many better things to occupy oneself with.

Sometimes, for the sake of her relationship with her husband, my good old pal, and the development of her ability as an international marketer to interact with mere mortals, she would join us bros for an All Blacks match or a World Cup knockout. Also to maintain the fun, humour, and spirit – she's a good person.

However, she is definitely not so involved that she would remember a casual encounter with a provincial rugby player at a busy work lunch. Not to the extent that she would later speak about it. In her line of work, such things happen daily.

But this time, she couldn't stop talking about the impressive rugby player-human who sat next to her at a corporate lunch. “Do you know him? Si ... ya Kolisa ... Kolise, or something like that."

As someone with more than a casual interest in rugby, I already knew who the new Stormers captain was, and the excitement around his progress and Springbok chances, even though I was a Bulls fan.

“This guy," she said, “is by far one of the nicest people I've ever met. Super-informed about anything, politics, business, matters of the day, and also one of those people who listen when you speak. Strong and also gentle. And incredibly attractive." You could have sworn she had met her saviour.

I remembered her anecdote because she's a fine observer and it's not in her nature to idolise people – there had be something special about this guy.

How does someone become so beloved?

It's difficult to say whether people like Siya Kolisi learn their charisma, develop it as a defence mechanism or method for survival in difficult times, or are born with it.

That it can be a decisive factor in a leader's toolkit is undeniable. Kolisi seems to have more than enough of it because there is no one in South Africa who is more admired by South Africans across the spectrum. Even by people who don't like rugby.

Okay, sure, a few of Rachel's friends, his wife in a crumbling marriage, won't send Kolisi a Christmas card this year, and a few bitter guys on the left side of the EFF believe he plays the colonialist's sport and has sold out to the white man's systems, and then there are those thin-lipped white ooms in Beeld's Facebook comments who truly still talk of Siya as a quota player.

Let's just pause over the latter for a moment. Every time I encounter one of them, I have to sit down and giggle in amazement, and then I often get struck all over again by how distasteful and blinding racial hatred can be (because truly, what else are we dealing with here?), but then I also have a moment of marvelling over the uncle's typically Afrikaans, hardheaded stubbornness that won't let facts get in the way of his “rugby knowledge".

“Are you telling me he's the best form flanker in the country?" oom Hendrik usually says when I make the incredibly stupid mistake of participating in the comments section of a Netwerk24 publication.

“Well, oom, I'm not sure if Kolisi might have fared one percentage point worse in last week's URC match compared to, for example, Jean-Luc du Preez or Phepsi Buthelezi, but the guy is a Springbok captain with two Rugby Championship trophies under his belt, a series victory over the British and Irish Lions, and two World Cups in a row. Not only is he by far the best Springbok captain in history, he might be the best international rugby captain in world history.

“Richie McCaw is his strongest competition in the professional era, but McCaw was not the captain of an All Blacks team that beat the British and Irish Lions, which should carry almost the same credits as a World Cup trophy, although he has many more Three Nations victories in his pocket."

And then oom Hendrik would probably say again: “But is he the best form flanker in the country? Was he chosen on merit, mmm? Tell me and be honest!" And then I would remember that I'd decided I would rather cut off my own nose without anaesthesia than interact in conversations on any of Media24's platforms again.

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Transformation makes sense at all levels

The reason I wanted to pause at oom Hendrik is because I think that Kolisi, in a Mandela-like way, has won over a large portion of these stubborn old fossils to the logic of transformation in South African rugby. It's actually astonishing that SA Rugby hasn't long ago used this logic but continued to hammer on about the morality of affirmative action. These are just two different ways of looking at the same thing.

All reasonable people know that overspending on development in rugby in poor black townships is the right thing to do, to compensate for the incredible disadvantage exacerbated by apartheid and further worsened by rugby administrators' segregation.

Everyone knows that when two players are knocking on the door of the Springbok team for the fullback position, and their talents are more or less the same, but one guy is a person of colour and the other is white, it is the ethical choice to choose the man of colour, to help make up just a little for the hundreds of black players who would have been chosen on merit during apartheid, but didn't get the chance. All reasonable people know that this is a small price to pay to regain trust, goodwill and loyalty, to try to heal the wound a little, for all of us to collectively own this wonderful sport.

Everyone knows this, except the stubborn oom Hendrik in Beeld's comments. I'm not saying we should go out of our way to enlighten such people, because maybe we're better off without them. I'm just saying there's another, irresistible argument for transformation that even guys like him can understand, and it's an argument that John Smit already made in 2012, during his brief adventure in rugby administration.

Smit said encouraging and developing rugby among black people in South Africa is to bring in the largest talent pool and most diverse skills in the game available in the world, because suddenly we're looking at a population of more than 50 million people instead of the declining group of about 4 million white people.

Masterclass in how to look like a leader

Twelve years later, and he's already been proven right by the generation of Kolisi, Lukhanyo Am, Mzwandile Stick, Makazole Mapimpi, Cheslin Kolbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Tendai Mtawarira, and Trevor Nyakane, all world-bests in their positions, and that's just from the 2019 team. In the meantime, others have been added like Ox Nche, Jaden Hendrikse, Grant Williams, Manie Libbok, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Marvin Orie, Canan Moodie, and so on.

Among them all, however, Siya Kolisi stands out as someone who could give a masterclass on how to look like a leader. Take the way Kolisi approaches singing the national anthem before the match. It touches even the hearts of hardened anti-nationalists who place little value on militaristic national symbols. When Siya sings the national anthem, all parts of it, he is clearly engaged in it with everything he has. His head bends so far back that a line could be drawn with a ruler from his chest to his chin. And then he belts out with eyes tightly shut: “Oor ons eeeewige gebeeeeergtes, waar die-ie kraaanse-ee aaantwooord geeee.” He's like a whirlpool that sucks you in.

I particularly mention Die Stem part of the national anthem, seeing that it has not yet been widely accepted as a good compromise among a large part of the post-struggle population, and one can understand this. Nkosi Sikelel' is a humble prayer to God, while Die Stem is a typical nationalist military march from which the “kreun van ossewa" (creak of the ox-wagon) has indeed been removed, but still clatters somewhere over the rocks.

Siya is a pragmatist

Siya Kolisi is a millennial. Someone who to some extent lives in a post-history, post-ideological world. For him, Die Stem is just another tool to achieve what he wants to achieve, and he has long ago, consciously or unconsciously, decided which attitude towards Die Stem will deliver the best outcome for him and the Springboks.

He's also a millennial in other respects. He's a hugger, a pleaser. He's not always an alpha male testosterone ball like his predecessors were. Especially before the 2019 World Cup, the oom Hendriks of the world would regularly point out that Kolisi is actually just captain in name, but that other guys lead when the going gets tough. “Just look who does the talking when they stand in a circle behind the poles. It's usually Duane, or Eben, even Willie." And that was indeed the case.

What guys like oom Hendrik didn't notice, but what Rassie Erasmus understood, was the almost spiritual and symbolic role that Kolisi played with his soft human skills to pull the team together and focus them. While Duane would talk intensely about strategy, Kolisi would walk around the circle and put his hand on each guy's shoulder and talk to him. I never thought I would see the day when a black guy in a Springbok team would have such a clear physical relationship with a bunch of men, who are not uncomfortable with or suspicious over it at all.

Kolisi was the true overarching leader of that group, and he was comfortable having three or four strong strategic leaders under him, who in the 2019 team were all white guys. They respected him. In fact, the most alpha testosterone monster of the lot, Eben Etzebeth, is his best mate.

What Siya and Rassie Erasmus understood very well is that the problems in South Africa, and the history of discrimination and conflict, are more of an asset than a burden for a team like the Springboks, because it has caused hope to be so much more of a commodity, a treasure, in an environment where people sometimes don't even know where the next meal will come from.

What they also understood very well is that someone with such powerful charismatic abilities as Kolisi is an excellent kind of vehicle to link the team and the country to this message of hope. It's a masterful move that has brought home two World Cups.

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How much of this is acting?

I must confess that I myself had doubted Kolisi. I never thought he wasn't the right guy for the job, but I sometimes wondered how much of his prominent empathetic gestures were genuine, and how much of it was a fine piece of acting.

Take the way he had the Welsh nation at his feet after his conversations with the media after the recently concluded test in Cardiff. Three commentators are doing the interview with him next to the field. The first thing he does is give each of them a hug, large rugby men like Jamie Roberts, which slightly embarrasses them.

And then he proceeds to encourage the Welsh team and the Welsh nation to a better future with heartwarming empathy.

Surely a part of this must be a calculated kind of strategy?

Well, the answer lies in an incident a year ago during the 2023 World Cup final, about eight minutes from the end, with South Africa one point ahead and the match still wholly undecided. Cheslin Kolbe is sent off with a yellow card for a deliberate knock-on, an action that probably disrupted an All Blacks try.

The eight minutes that followed must surely be the most intense eight minutes any leader could experience in any office, on any sports field, or even on a battlefield. A brutal few minutes.

Kolbe sits beside the field with his head under a towel – devastated. Has he just destroyed his incredible reputation as one of the world's best rugby players? Has he just thrown away the World Cup?

The Boks survive without conceding points. It is incredibly tense. The final whistle blows. South Africa has won. Players embrace each other, fall to the ground, cry. Siya Kolisi runs straight towards the tunnel to go look for Kolbe. To check if he's okay.

This is what went through Kolisi's mind in the most tense moments of his life. Is my little wing okay? This is not the kind of empathy you can fake.

As the legendary Xhosa commentator, Kaunda Ntunja, called out in a praise poem when Siya Kolisi first ran out as captain:

Siya is the first black captain in the Springbok team
To come through the trials in the new South Africa
Rise up Zwide! Rise up Motherwell! Rise up Walmer!
Rise up Kwazakhele, Kwamagxaki and New Brighton!
Because this boy who represents the black nation, represents all of us!
Siya is our grandson, our son, our nephew and our younger brother!
He is father of Nicholas, husband of Rachel!
He is Gwayi, Gqwashu, Gxiya, our leader!
A Cement truck with no reverse gear,
Rooster! Rooster! Gnashing!
(Let them battle each other)

♦ VWB ♦

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