Can we do more with our Rugby World Cup victory?
There has been a continuous outpouring of joyous pride at what the Springboks achieved on Saturday.
I don’t often write about sport because, truth be told, I don’t really hold it in very high regard personally.
But I have become acutely aware of its effect on people.
While I admit that I don’t understand it, I am fascinated by how personally fans can take a team’s defeat or its victory.
I also understand that some of the greatest men of our time, like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, appreciated the role that sport plays and used it to help us glue our society’s fractures.
It didn’t quite work in 1995 or 2007, but maybe we’ll be third time lucky.
So the question is, how do we capitalise on the euphoria of this phenomenal victory and use it to fulfil Madiba’s dream of a united South Africa?
It can’t just be momentary bliss!
How do we keep the hearty smiles going, the joyous hooting, the spontaneous happiness, the broad shoulders of pride prancing through the streets?
I have previously written of my admiration for Siya Kolisi, because of what he managed to achieve, despite the odds being stacked firmly against him.
Unfortunately, the occasion at the time was because of the terrible racist abuse he and his wife, Rachel, were being subjected to online.
Siya finds himself in more of a unique situation than the previous captains who led the Springboks to World Cup victory.
He is a young black man, married to a white woman, essentially making their two kids coloured.
He is a family man who is raising his siblings, but he’s also the most influential sports personality in the country at the moment.
That means, at the tender age of 28, Siya currently commands respect from the broadest cross section of South African society, from the elderly farmer in the Eastern Cape (where he grew up), to the bright-eyed township boy and the aspirant urban hipster searching for inspiration.
It may all have been written in the stars for Siya, as he was born in 1991 on Youth Day, which we commemorate as the day in 1976 when the Soweto Uprisings set our country on an irrevocable path of social change.
Siya is the epitomised product of that change. All of these supposed random facts is why I’m wondering whether there is more to this whole World Cup thing than just a mere victory that we may or may not retain in four years’ time.
Can we use this as a visual aid for those who are unable to see past their own prejudice?
Is this the catalyst we need to propel us forward as a nation and set us on another irrevocable path of change?
After all, the Springbok win with Siya at the helm is proof that we indeed are Stronger Together.