The Springboks, I keep hearing, represent the best of us. I’m not so sure about that.
To be clear, I have great admiration for the national men’s rugby team as players and as generators of cash for SA cardiologists.
I hope they make short, brutal, spectacular work of New Zealand this weekend so they can come home and carefully peel the tape off their bodies, ideally under the watchful eye of a physician in case any of their limbs come away with the tape.
Yes, the last thing I want to do is take anything away from the Springboks, mainly because Ox Nche would immediately take it back, along with my pride and most of my spine, which he would remove orally and wear around his neck like a string of pearls.
I also understand the potent symbolism that shines around this team. In a country trying to feel its way out of its racist past it provides a potent vision of multiracial, multicultural unity. The more we are starved of anything resembling skill and dedication in the public service, the more soothing it is to see it on the sports field.
We also know that theft has become a national pastime, which made Saturday’s burglary against England feel very on brand.
Of course, the metaphor isn’t always inspiring. I’m not sure, for example, that we should strive to be a country that keeps its people in a constant state of anxiety, looking increasingly dysfunctional before it scrambles to an unlikely win thanks to the unpredictable heroics of a few individuals.
All in all, however, I can see why the Bok team conjures these sorts of ideas. I also see nothing wrong with the euphoria prompted by a Bok win. I’ve read a few people suggesting that World Cup victories are crude, palliative things; fleeting emotional tourniquets we wrap around the various wounds that continue to gape in this country.
Certainly, when I’ve been confronted by the front pages of our Sunday newspapers, I’ve wondered what it must be like to live in a country where politics and economics, rather than sport, foster social cohesion, and in which one can feel proud of things such as cheap and excellent public transport or booming creative industries as well as the odd World Cup win.
(Now and then I am told that our banking sector is way ahead of those in other countries, but I can’t help feeling that asking me to be proud of our banks is like asking a cow to be proud of the suction pipes attached to its udders.)
Still, at this point we’ll take happiness wherever we can find it. If it comes from robbing the Poms or (Ox willing) thumping the All Blacks, then I say three cheers for World Cup euphoria.
Where I start departing from the national scripts is where I encounter the view I mentioned at the start — this idea that the Springboks represent the best of us — because I think it robs us of a chance to see something about ourselves that we don’t often get a chance to see.
Of course, I understand what they mean when they say it. They’re talking about resilience, belief in each other, a never-say-die attitude, and that aforementioned genius we seem to have for falling backwards and upside down into clover.
But I wonder, given this understandable focus on heroism and spectacle and individual excellence, if it sometimes becomes too easy to gaze at these stars and forget that they stand on the shoulders not of giants like themselves but of South Africans who will never be on television: the parents, or grandparents, or teachers; each making a plan, making do, finding money, finding time, finding patience, or simply spending hours sitting in a car; carving out of this hard, relentless country a space in which a child can play, and eat, and keep eating, becoming strong and confident; finding a way to turn disappointment and failure into fuel rather than apathy or despair.
This week, as we are charmed by the myths and spectacle of elite sport, I wonder if instead of trying to stand in the reflected glory of our stars we might try to see the dusty, golden sunshine of SA shining weakly on them, reminding us that the best of us are not always big, strong winners.
Sometimes, the best of us are simply those who — to extend the sporting analogy — put in tackle after tackle knowing they’ll lose because they always lose, but who take the beating anyway because that’s what they need to do for their children or grandchildren.
Sometimes the best of us play in a game where the clock never stops and nobody gets to be substituted. Australian cricketing legend Keith Miller, who flew combat missions in World War 2, was once asked how he dealt with pressure on the cricket field. “Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse,” he replied. “Playing cricket is not.”
I have no doubt that scrumming down opposite Nche would feel like an awful lot of pressure to me. But there are other sorts of pressure in this world, and South Africans are taking it, and taking it. No wonder we cheer so loudly.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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