In March, I was assigned to the Four Nations Challenge, a basketball tournament at the Wembley Sports Arena, Johannesburg, South Africa. Winter had started early, so I wore my favorite Springbok rugby jacket. Back home, in the Eastern Cape, we wore scarves and jackets to rugby stadiums on rainy winter days. Rugby is in our blood. I passed my first rugby ball at the age of five.
At the Wembley Arena, I met Carey Odhiambo, the coach of Kenya’s basketball team. Odhiambo liked my green and gold jacket; he spoke of Springbok success and doing Africa proud. At the time, South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks, were ranked second in the world , but are now fifth – an all-time low.
My acquaintance from East Africa, where rugby is still amateur, couldn’t care less about how many black and white players were in the team, until I raised the point. The Springboks are a far cry from representing the demographics of our population. But, Odhiambo didn’t mind, as long as the team was winning. Interestingly, Odhiambo’s basketball team was the antithesis of the Springboks: all his players were black. On the other hand, the Boks seem like a European team dotted with one or two African expatriates.
<div id="attachment_4128" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4128" class="size-medium wp-image-4128" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-473610208-300x239.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="239" />JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; MAY 16: Elton Jantjies of the Lions converts a penalty during the Super Rugby match between Emirates Lions and Brumbies at Emirates Airline Park on May 16, 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Duif du Toit/Gallo Images/Getty Images)</div>
Odhiambo was unaware that millions of blacks, like me, reluctantly support the Springboks because of this. But we smoked a peace pipe and exchanged jackets. Would that happen with a white South African compatriot?
South Africa has suffered from 500 years of colonialism, and apartheid, where opportunities were governed by racial privilege. Because of this history, almost everything in South Africa is a racial issue.
Let’s touch on where the Nelson Mandela Rainbow Nation farce began. In 1995, a year after the country’s first democratic elections, South Africa hosted its first Rugby World Cup and won it. On the day of the final, blacks and whites were behind the Springboks, that was all white save for one player, Chester Williams. We won the World Cup and hoped that talent from the townships would be nurtured.
A year after the World Cup, a new and unapologetically racist coach, Andre Markgraaff, was appointed and went on to win eight and lose five test matches before resigning. Markgraaff was taped referring to black rugby officials as kaffirs, a gaffe he profusely apologized for. He did not select a single black player in his year as coach. In 1997, an inexperienced Carel du Plessis took over. Of his eight matches, Du Plessis won three. Not a single black player was involved in that mediocre record, resulting in Du Plessis getting the boot.
It took a third coach, Nick Mallet, to at least select six black players in three years. Mallet, who took the team to the World Cup in 1999, won 27 and lost 11; between 1997 and 2000. Between 2000 and 2003, little happened under Harry Viljoen and Rudolph Straeuli.
<div id="attachment_4126" style="width: 221px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4126" class="size-medium wp-image-4126" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_APP1999100536076-211x300.jpg" alt="" width="211" height="300" />South African centre Kaya Malotana runs with the ball during a training session at the Goldenacre rugby stadium in Edinburgh, 05 October 1999. (ELECTRONIC IMAGE)</div>
The Springboks won a second World Cup under Jake White in 2007. Under White, they won 36 of their 54 matches and 23 black players were selected in four years. The transformation work done by White, and his successor Peter de Villiers, who saw 21 black players earning Bok caps between 2008 and 2011, was commendable. Sadly, the incumbent Heyneke Meyer is undoing this.
Meyer has been the coach since 2012 and is in charge of the Springboks at the World Cup in England this year. It’s not guaranteed he will win, or even reach the quarterfinals, at the World Cup based on the recent lacklustre performances. In the five games leading up to the World Cup, Meyer lost to Argentina for the first time in the country’s history in August. The team’s world ranking is its lowest since 1996.
Meyer is spoilt for choice when it comes to talented black players. Yet he chose to overlook them and picked white players who are older than 30 instead.
A case in point is Jean de Villiers, the captain who has served the Springboks well since 2012. But, the 34-year-old center is laden with injuries and has lost his pace. Meyer’s patience with De Villiers cannot be justified on the grounds that there’s a dearth of capable centers. This is one in the eye for the 26-year-old utility back, Lionel Mapoe, from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, who had a brilliant Super Rugby tournament with the Golden Lions. Despite coming through the ranks, he has played only one test, against New Zealand, in July.
Elton Jantjies is another case. He has played twice for Springboks and was the best South African flyhalf in Super Rugby. His sin is being black. Meyer has shown no interest in picking him, instead favoring the white players, Pat Lambie and Handre Pollard. Statistically, Jantjies had a better Super Rugby than them.
The South African Rugby Union (Saru), the toothless governing body, and the sport ministry, has given Meyer so much carte blanche that he thinks he is doing the right thing.
<div id="attachment_4127" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4127" class="size-medium wp-image-4127" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par8238225-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />South African Springboks center Lionel Mapoe stands during the National anthem ahead of a Rugby Championship Rugby union match against New Zealand All Blacks on July 25, 2015 in Johannesburg. AFP PHOTO / MUJAHID SAFODIEN</div>
To rub salt into the wound, Saru has extended the deadline for transformation. Saru’s target for 2019 is for a 50% white, 30% black and 20% colored representation of Springboks and domestic Currie Cup teams.
Kaya Malotana, selected by Mallett in 1999, was the first black African Springbok. The 38-year-old director of coaching at Alberton Rugby Club, near Johannesburg, bemoans a lack of will. The Eastern Cape winger, from the small town of Lady Frere, earned one cap for the Springboks.
“The problem with doing things when under pressure is that you set unrealistic targets. Fifty percent black and colored representation is setting everybody up for failure because not enough players of color are being selected in Super Rugby. People will turn around and say, ‘these black players have compromised the quality of the Springbok team,’” says Malotana.
I want to demystify the notion that people who question transformation in South African rugby are not supporters. This is not true. During the World Cup, black people will put their differences aside and don their green and gold regalia and support the Springboks. Dee

Why I Support My Country With A Heavy Heart

Angry families and politicians are stepping up a nearly 30-year fight to bring back the head of a grandmother executed 117 years ago for standing up against colonialism. It is believed her head lies in one of Britain’s famous museums.
In 1898, Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, or Mbuya Nehanda as she was known, was a powerful spirit medium, a person who speaks to the gods, and heroine of the First Chimurenga, the revolt against the British South Africa Company in Matabeleland. She led the uprising by Zimbabweans against colonizers and was hanged and decapitated. It’s believed her head was shipped more than 12,000 kilometers to England.
“We cannot have other people keep the remains of our ancestors in a cardboard box elsewhere,” says Godfrey Mahachi, Director of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe.
Nehanda was not the only one. Her skull could be at the National History Museum in South Kensington, London, with the remains of the other executed leaders, Sekuru Kaguvi, Chingaira Makoni, Chinengundu Mashayamombe, Mapondera, Mashonganyika and Chitekedza Chiwashira.
“There are implications to do with how we treat the deceased; these implications have a bearing on the past, present and future,” says Mahachi.
Sixty-three-year-old Donald Kamba is a direct descendant of Chief Chingaira and an estate agent from Rusape, in eastern Zimbabwe. He says this is where the headless body of his ancestor is buried.
&#8220;Ever since Chingaira&#8217;s head disappeared, every subsequent Makoni chief, irrespective of their house, went blind,” says Kamba.
“The British have been called upon on a number of occasions over the last three decades or more for the return of the remains of Chingaira in particular. The party went to Britain in 1988 and they were advised that there were no such remains of Chingaira and that they were to try South Africa,” says Kamba.
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Jonathan Moyo, stirred emotions on Twitter.
“How can we focus on the economy when the skulls of Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi are displayed in a British museum? These barbarians have been displaying the skulls of our First Chimurenga heroes and heroines in their libraries!” says Moyo.
On Heroes Day in August, President Robert Mugabe claimed the British were performing “racist moral decadence, sadism and human insensitivity” in keeping the skulls as trophies.
“The formalities are being handled by the foreign affairs ministry in collaboration with the British government. It has always been our wish to have those remains back home but we have to proceed in this process with much caution,” says Mahachi.
“Proper identification and research needs to be conducted so as to ensure that whatever we bring back to Zimbabwe is ours.”
The British museum denies having displayed any of the remains. It says it is not clear if any of the remains are from the First Chimurenga and implied that repatriation could be a long process.
The descendants of Nehanda and her comrades hope it won’t take another 117 years.

Over A Century Later, Mbuya Nehanda Could Return Home

All of this shouting for the removal of the statue and bones of Cecil John Rhodes – the arch African colonist from England who thought, seriously, that America was a colony that should be returned to the empire – has been done before.
More than 16 years ago, I stood spellbound at Malindidzimu, the windswept outcrop of rock a short drive from Bulawayo in Zimbabwe where chiefs of the Mandebele have been laid to rest for centuries. It was a tranquil place that Rhodes used to go to stand and stare at the breathtaking view of the sweeping land of hills and valleys that disappear over the horizon. Rhodes used to call it the world’s end and chose to be buried there.
I was there, as a television journalist, to get the other side of the story that had been raging among the young radicals in Harare for weeks. A bunch of young Turks wanted to exhume and expel the remains of Rhodes to wipe the stain of colonialism from Zimbabwe forever.
I had interviewed their leader, the late Warlord Chakaredza, a polite man in his mid-twenties, in Harare a few days before. He was quite clear the bones of Rhodes needed to be exhumed and thrown into the sea.
“Why the sea?” I asked incredulously.
Chakaredza looked at me as if I was mad.
“That is the way he came to Africa and that is the way he will float back to England where he came from,” he replied.
As crude as it sounds, maybe there was a brutal and sublime logic.
I countered to Chakaredza about the beliefs in Africa about the sanctity of graves and the dead. He didn’t want to hear it. The bones of Rhodes must go and they were prepared to use their bare hands to get him out, if need be.
A story to be taken seriously, I thought. Maybe it was a way of pushing forward the debate over colonialism? Maybe Poland wouldn’t have been too keen to look after any graves, or statues, of German generals in Warsaw after World War Two?
We spoke to a historian who told us that the Mandebele loved Rhodes and lined up to salute him at his funeral by shouting: “Bayete!” – the salute reserved for chiefs. What the historian didn’t tell me, that I read only later, was that the black mourners were kept far from the graveside in a segregated funeral.
I also noticed that the Zimbabwe government, which wasn’t exactly head-over-heels when it came to colonialism, didn’t give much of a damn. They saw it as part of Zimbabwe’s heritage and a tourist attraction that brought in money. We also found out, when the statues of the past were ripped down in Harare, after independence in 1980, they weren’t crushed into rubble, they were put into an odd looking group, behind a fence, at the back of the National Museum in Harare.
Another discovery on the rock outside Bulawayo was that Rhodes was buried about 40 feet down in a shaft carved out of sheer rock. Furthermore, the coffin was encased in lead; it would take dynamite, rather than bare hands, to get the remains of the old man out. Maybe he feared someone may try to exhume him.
Nothing happened. The story faded into the ether – Rhodes slept on. No one gained anything from the story, except the newspapers and TV bulletins who garnered a few catchy headlines. I wondered at the time what the point was.
So it was with a roll of the eyes that I heard that students wanted to remove the Rhodes statue in Cape Town. You can call it a metaphor in righting the wrongs of a colonial past; you can call it tantamount to removing a statue of a German general from Poland.
For the second time in 20 years I wonder whether Rhodes and his statues and bones are worth the time and effort.
If I thought for one minute removing the statue of Rhodes would provide books, bursaries and accommodation for young people who wanted to learn, I would take a sledgehammer and knock the statue down myself and then throw it into the sea.

#RhodesMustFloat

It is 16 years since Nigeria drew back from the abyss in the former colonial town of Kaduna. In February 1999, 5,000 Christians took to the streets in an anti-Sharia march to protest the introduction of the strict Islamic penal code. Their contention was that Nigeria’s constitution did not allow federation, or state, to adopt any religion.
The march sparked a deadly confrontation between Christians and Muslims. Three days of street fighting left at least 2,000 dead. President Olusegun Obasanjo dispatched troops as conflict threatened to spread. He managed to head off more fighting, but the rumpus around Sharia law did not go away.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3458" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Aisha-Ibrahim-300x250.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="250" />
Obasanjo tried to persuade northern governors to hold off on Sharia law; days before, Kano in the north west, signed a Sharia bill. Weeks later, Zamfara State amputated the right hand of Buba Jangebe after a Sharia court convicted him of stealing a cow. Four northern states: Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi and Kano have adopted Sharia law since 1999 and Obasanjo’s negotiations.
Many northern politicians felt marginalized by the new republic under Obasanjo. They complained of a southern and Christian bias and latched onto the rigors of Sharia law to boost waning support.
Fast forward to 2015, as the six-year Boko Haram insurgency rages. Boko Haram has condemned northern governors who have adopted Sharia law. The militants believe the brand of Sharia law practiced in the country is not true Islam and have vowed to wage war until the entire country falls under their brand of Sharia. In this struggle, Boko Haram has captured around 20 small towns along Nigeria’s border with Chad and Cameroon. Militants have also taken larger towns like Mubi in the north eastern state of Adamawa.
Boko Haram renamed Mubi ‘Madinatul Islam’ or the City of Islam. Tens of thousands fled as the invaders hoisted their flag in the deserted emir’s palace and warned that ‘true’ Sharia law was now in force. A market thief was convicted by a Sharia court and his hand amputated to make the point.
Seventeen-year-old Aisha Ibrahim recalls the day Boko Haram rolled into town in with armored cars, trucks and motorcycles. She was still in school when the town reverberated to the sound of gunfire. She ran home to find her parents had fled, leaving her grandmother behind. In the fraught weeks that followed, she says, her best friend, Umma, was forced into marriage with one of the militants. She feared the same fate and fled to Yola in the hope of finding her parents and four siblings. Her father has not been found. She is now back in Mubi after the Nigerian army took back the second-largest commercial center in Adamawa State, after Yola.
Mubi is also the largest cattle trading center in Nigeria. The cattle rearing northerners use the Mubi cattle market as an important trading post to sell to traders from as far as Lagos.
These days the southern businessmen fear the trip north and the insurgency appears to be killing the meat trade, which has yet to recover from a recent truck drivers’ strike.
On the other side of the city, Pastor Titi Adewumi, leader of one of the many churches that dot the landscape of the Adamawa State capital, says residents are depressed by all the security checks. All movement between 12AM and 5AM is prohibited as part of a state of emergency. Interestingly, worshippers are searched before they enter their local mosque or church. But while Yola residents complain, they know things could be worse; Boko Haram, at the time of writing, were engaged in a fight to the death for the control of the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, where a total ban on all movement has been imposed.
In Mubi, there is hope. Retired Colonel, Taboyi Elam Dong, says the recapture of Mubi shows that the Nigerian military is winning the war against Boko Haram. Other towns recaptured include Gwoza in Borno State and Potiskum in Yobe State.
Most people here feel the government is not doing enough as hell lurks around the corner.

Tag: Colonialism

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Why I Support My Country With A Heavy Heart

Over A Century Later, Mbuya Nehanda Could Return Home

#RhodesMustFloat

The People For Whom Hell Lurks Around The Corner