Desmond Tutu

Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu says South Africa deserves to have a Springbok team representative of its rainbow nation, The Star reported on Friday.

“Now, nearly 20 years later, I lament the tortoise pace at which transformation at the highest level is being effected,” he said in a letter to The Star’s sister paper, The Cape Times.

Tutu criticised the SA Rugby Union (SARU) for the pace of transformation in the team, and said it was “particularly hurtful” to see the selection of black players as “peripheral squad members never given the chance to settle down and earn their spurs.”

Sport24

He said the country deserved a team that represented the “full spectrum of the rainbow that defines us”.

“Surely, by the 20th anniversary of our freedom from enforced separateness, there are a couple of dark horses out there to run with the browns and the chestnuts in feature races?”

On Saturday, the Springboks take on Argentina in Salta in the Rugby Championship.

Their starting 15 will include four coloured players (Cornal Hendricks, Damian de Allende, Bryan Habana and Gurthrö Steenkamp), and the remaining 11 are white. Two (Tendai Mtawarira and Lwazi Mvovo) of the eight players on the bench are black.

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With the eye on next year’s Rugby World Cup, former Springbok captain John Smit says it is important for the Boks to beat the All Blacks in this year’s Rugby Championship.

Under the guidance of Heyneke Meyer, the Springboks have lost four Tests on the trot against the All Blacks.

Their last win came in Port Elizabeth in 2011, when Peter de Villiers was still the coach.

The Boks are scheduled to meet the All Blacks at the semi-final stage at next year’s World Cup in England, and Smit feels they must beat them now in order to go into the event confident.

“You don’t want to enter a World Cup tournament without beating New Zealand. Now is the time,” Smit said.

Before the semi-finals of next year’s showpiece event, South Africa could face either Australia, Wales or England in the quarter-finals.

In this year’s Rugby Championship, the Boks tackle the Kiwis on 13 September (Wellington) and 4 October (Johannesburg).