MANDY WIENER: We shouldn’t rely on sport alone to drive social cohesion

How did you feel in those moments after Faf de Klerk bullterierred the ball away from the French players in the final minutes of the Rugby World Cup quarter-final on Sunday night? I’m sure like me, you felt an effervescent release of pent-up stress and then a wonderful wash of national pride.

On Monday morning, the country was united by its lack of sleep and the sense of patriotism and pride at the Springbok victory.

The talisman captain Siya Kolisi and his team carry the weight of a nation. However, they also carry more than that. We know from the last World Cup and Rassie Erasmus’s philosophical and intuitive approach to unity within the team, that their mission is about more than rugby.

Siya and the team play for every South African when they are on the field. There is a sense of duty and obligation that they can bring joy and unity and that feeling of ubuntu to the country when they are victorious. It is what motivates them to fight harder, longer, and more passionately than other teams. Video footage of Bongi Mbonambi on the field just before Handre Pollard’s long-range penalty, shows the hooker shouting ‘For South Africa, For South Africa’.

If you have been following the SuperSport advertising campaign on television throughout the tournament, you will know this too. In the #StrongerTogether ads, the players movingly and evocatively describe who they are playing for. “For my country”, “For those who believed in us”, “For Zwide”, “For Eben’s father”. Those accounts are a testament to the impact the team winning can have on social cohesion in the country.

This team carries the responsibility of ending racism and bringing together a once divided nation and many would argue that they were able to do that on Sunday night.

But is that just the kind of open platitude that we write about in response to a historic and momentous rugby win? Is it an accurate statement or something we would like to believe to be true?

Sport can drive social cohesion in SA and so often we rely on sport alone to be the glue that unifies. Whether it is Desiree Ellis’s Banyana Banyana making it into the knockout rounds at the football World Cup or Wayde van Niekerk winning an Olympic gold medal, those are the moments that you would point to if asked to describe your proudest moment of being a South African.

“The Springboks represent the best of South Africa. They inspire national unity, and foster social cohesion and national identity,” Sports Minister Zizi Kodwa said at the start of this World Cup campaign. “This was captured by President Nelson Mandela during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, where the Springboks were a key ingredient to his message of national unity. The current Springboks represent this country's diversity and represent South African excellence with their performances.”

The Boks do represent all that is good about this country and what it looks and feels like to live in a cohesive, unified country where we are the very best and most efficient team on the globe.

But the ‘gees’ we all feel when our national team wins does begin to lose its glint over time.

It is like receiving a much-anticipated Shein order, reveling in that immediate sense of gratification and then having to go back to reality a week later when nothing washes properly and starts to unravel.

The glory of a sports victory soon retreats to the recesses of our memories as we must deal with the reality of a sluggish economy, high inflation, poor service delivery and an ineffective and bungling government that disappoints at every turn.

What happens after the World Cup when there is nothing left to celebrate?

We can’t rely on sport alone to drive social cohesion and national pride in South Africa.

Imagine a scenario where we feel proud of our political leaders and the efficiency of a government that provides basic services to the people. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where social cohesion is authentic and genuinely achieved by a respectable level of dignity, employment, and quality of life for all citizens. What would it feel like to be able to be patriotic beyond sport and feel proud of our government’s diplomatic stance on international affairs, instead of making us a global pariah through its hypocrisy? Or how it would feel to have a clean government, devoid of an entrenched culture of corruption, with citizens placed at the centre of decision-making instead of personal gain and enrichment?

Let’s ride the #StrongerTogether wave of Springbok victory and revel in the social cohesion that it brings us in the short term. That is the power and beauty of sport, and it should never be diminished or discounted.

But we also cannot allow politicians to fall back on PR campaigns like Bok Fridays and the successes of our national teams to unify us in a way that they should be doing.