The Idler, Monday, Septemner 16, 2019

Time for a

response to

the haka

FIVE days to go before the resurgent Boks meet the All Blacks (with whom they tied in their last encounter) in the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Will this match turn out to be a preliminary to the final? Can the Boks wrest the crown from the current holders? The stakes could hardly be higher.

There's a parallel with the line-up in 1937, brilliantly captured by raconteur Michael Charton in a talk in Kloof last week titled "The First World Champions – the untold story of the 1937 Springboks in New Zealand". He was speaking to several hundred people at a function in aid of the Youth Education and Support Trust.

New Zealand and South Africa had emerged as the two powerhouses of world rugby. Yet when they met in 1921 and 1926, they tied the series. This was the Big 'Un in 1937. The world was watching.

Charton has delved into the dry records and newspaper reports, consulted elsewhere and produced a vibrant account of that tour, the agonies and indecisions, the characters involved.

There was skipper Philip Nel, the Greytown farmer who first played for Natal while still a schoolboy at Maritzburg College. There was Danie Craven, who played scrumhalf, flyhalf and eighth man on that tour; and later became a rugby administrator known world-wide as "Mr Rugby". There was the great Boy Louw, who mauled the English language as badly as he mauled the opposition. There was Ebbo Bastard, the wild man of East Griqualand … and plenty more of them.

There's great humour. The New Zealand ref who skipped for joy in a Test match when a Kiwi try was converted. The matches played on fields where islands of mud poked above the lakelike surface.

Then the final Test at Eden Park, Auckland, the decider. But star centre Louis Babrow was an orthodox Jew who said he couldn't play because it was Yom Kippur. But the team managed to persuade him that, as a South African Jew, he was entitled to observe Yom Kippur on the day it was celebrated in South Africa, the other side of the International Date Line.

Babrow played. The Higher Powers must have approved. He scored two tries and clinched the series.

Charton's account is threaded from the start by the Maori question and the colour bar in South Africa. I recall hearing Philip Nel describe how the Springboks would counter the All Blacks haka with a Zulu dance. I often wondered why this had ended.

Charton tells us. When the 1949 All Blacks toured South Africa, the Nats had just come to power with their apartheid policy. The Maoris were barred. So the All Blacks refused to perform the Maori haka. And there was no need for the Springboks to counter with a Zulu dance. What a fizzle.

Charton also describes how the 1937 Springboks were soon serving in World War II (and we hope this isn't part of the parallel). Many served with distinction, many did not return. There were unofficial Tests between the Springboks and the All Blacks in North Africa and even in POW camps.

Hey, apartheid is no more. Nelson Mandela wore Francois Pienaar's Springbok jersey. Why not a Zulu dance this World Cup in response to the haka?

 

Tailpiece

What's the difference between an onion and an accordion?

Nobody cries when you chop up an accordion.

Last word

Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso