Springbok captain Siya Kolisi says rugby saved his life.
In an extract of his book Rise, published by the Sunday Times, Kolisi writes: “After my grandmother died my aunt raised me, and she did a great job. She didn’t take any attitude from me: if I didn’t do chores then I didn’t get fed, simple as that.
“But I still felt that the one person who’d loved me unconditionally had gone, and without her, Zwide could seem an even scarier place than before.
“It was at a time when I was starting to hang out with some kids a bit older than me and doing what they were doing: drinking, smoking weed, sniffing petrol.
“We’d squeeze five rands’ worth out of the pump, shake it up in a plastic bottle and inhale the fumes.
“I was only eight or nine, thinking I was tough and just wanting to fit in. If I’d gone much further down that path, I could have ended up a tsotsi and from there you only have two real options: jail or death. Or both.
“It was rugby that saved me.”
A World Cup-winning captain today , Kolisi recalls much tougher times.
He also writes: “When there was no food in our house, I would hang out at the neighbours’ places and ask for food.
“They’d give whatever they could, sometimes allowing me to keep my pride – and more importantly my family's – by getting me to fetch something from the store and then giving me food as a reward. But there were many times when even this wasn’t enough.
“It’s hard to explain hunger, proper hunger, to people who’ve never experienced it.
“Hunger is not just being hungry, the brief sensation of discomfort which lasts only a few hours until the next meal. Being hungry is easy and commonplace.
“Hunger is different. It’s all-consuming. It was all I could feel and all I could think about. My stomach seemed to twist in on itself, and the more I tried to ignore the pain there, the worse it got.”
Kolisi and his Boks are on their way back to South Africa after beating the All Blacks 31-29 in their final Rugby Championship match of the year on Saturday.