Sometimes sport is more than that

There were some brutish looking Bulls supporters, regaled in the unmistakeable light blue, standing somewhere between Hillcrest and Winston Park during Sunday’s down Comrades between Pietermaritzburg and Durban.

As they surveyed the passing show, proudly showing off their colours in the knowledge that their team remains the top rugby side in the southern hemisphere, a group of black runners ran up towards them.

“Ah weh Soweto Bulls, Ah weh Soweto Bulls,” they chanted as they reached out their fists to touch those of the burly, white Bulls fans.

If you didn’t believe the Bulls pulled off a coup by playing their Super 14 play-off games in Soweto, the proof was right there. They always claimed it, but we never had the evidence to believe them. Now we know the Bulls administration are right, they do have black supporters. And there are probably a lot more now than there were a few weeks ago.

There are many cynics about who view the claims of nation building and the outpouring of positivity towards the improvement of race relations with scepticism. Maybe to some degree I was one of those.

There was a lot of hype about it on the weekend of the Bulls’ semi-final against Crusaders, but watching from the vantage point of a television in the Newlands press box in distant Cape Town, there didn’t seem much evidence of the “new” market inside the Orlando Stadium.

But as I explained to someone who sent me an SMS on Saturday night making the same point, it really wasn’t what we saw inside the stadium that it was all about. Everyone struggled to get tickets for the final, just as they did in 2007 when the final was played in Durban. There is massive demand for such a game, and only limited availability.

What caused an upwelling of emotion, however, was the experience outside the stadium. It was the way the people of Soweto appeared to embrace the rugby fans – mostly Bulls, but not just Bulls – and vice-versa, that was so uplifting and encouraging.

I must admit it makes me uncomfortable when whites are interviewed about their experience and come up with answers that could be rewritten into the following and they would mean the same thing: “We went into the lion enclosure and the lions didn’t eat us. It was an eye opener!”

But that is maybe what we should expect given this country’s divided past. All those years of “swart gevaar” propaganda were never just going to be blown away by the wind and the racial mixing that happens in this country does tend to happen more in the areas previously considered white than it does in the townships.

There is a lot of talk about nation building at the moment, and even if it is exaggerated, which I am not saying it is, it is a positive that it is happening. And even if the Soweto experience changed the perceptions of just a few, that has to be a good thing.

Regardless of what impact it has, Soweto showed us and reminded us of the role that sport can play, and often does play, in bringing communities together and making us feel like one. There are times sport transcends sport. It happened after both Rugby World Cup victories, it happened at the Super 14 final, it has happened regularly on other occasions, such as the other big event I was present at this past weekend.

I trained for Comrades this year and entered it, but was unable to run it due to a combination of flu the week before and the fact that this year the Super 14 final ended up being played in Soweto the night before the race.

But I did go down to KZN on Sunday morning to support my club colleagues, and watching the day unfold was a reminder of what a special event it is.

Comrades day was the one day in the year in the old South Africa where racial and community divisions seemed to be put aside. The nature of the challenge has ensured that it remains a massive celebration of what this country could be like if everyone took into their everyday lives whatever passion or emotion enters our body and inspires us on the day of special sports events.

Far from being sorry that Soweto robbed me the chance of picking up another Comrades medal this year, I felt privileged that I was able to be an observer at both. There are times when sport goes beyond just being sport.