South Africa is home to a bunch of winners. Listen, we’ve been killing it in sports for a while now. Don’t believe me? Yesterday morning, our cricket team, the Proteas, came home to much fanfare after winning the World Test Championship. That’s not the only thing we’ve won this week. Far from it: The Springbok Women won the Rugby Africa Women’s Cup, beating Madagascar, Kenya and Uganda and defending their title. This is the fifth time they’ve won this, starting in 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and now in 2025.
Meanwhile, the Pretoria-based team Mamelodi Sundowns is representing Mzansi at the FIFA Club World Cup, which is currently being held in the US. On Wednesday morning, they beat the Korean club, Ulsan HD FC, 1-0. In May, the national under-20 team, Amajita, made history after they won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time.
I could list all our sporting achievements, but that would take up almost the entire article. My editor has restricted me to 1500 words maximum as I’m known to ramble sometimes. I haven’t even touched on how Akani Simbine single-handedly carries athletics in this country. I say that sports, particularly in South Africa, could form one of the pillars of nation-building if wielded well.
Now, before you click away because this sounds too much like a Grade 11 history essay (seriously, as I was researching this, I came across so many “sports as a nation builder” essay-type questions), consider this: A study released by Eighty20 in 2024 found that 75% of South Africans have expressed an interest in sports. For context, that is more South Africans than turned out to vote in the 2024 General Elections (58.6%). So, more South Africans are into sports than voting. This is why I argue that sports can be the unifier that Mzansi needs.
Sport has unified the country since democracy began
In June 1995, the world watched as then-president Nelson Mandela, wearing a Boks shirt, walked up to then Springboks captain Francois Pienaar and handed him the Rugby World Cup trophy after the Boks had beaten New Zealand 15 -12 at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. The picture from that day is as iconic as what the moment meant: It was sport being used as a bridge to unify a divided country.
The 1995 Rugby World Cup was the first major sporting event to be held here at home following the end of apartheid.
This would be continued in 1996 when Bafana Bafana amazed the world by winning the African Cup of Nations hosted in Johannesburg.
Since then, we’ve seen sports unify us as a country, even for fleeting moments. We saw this in the lead-up to the FIFA World Cup, which we hosted in 2010, or even the many times we’ve celebrated the Boks for getting close to or winning rugby matches.
We now even have a slogan: “No DNA, Just RSA”, which I’m told means that we don’t need special DNA, just being South African is enough to justify our wins. I like that. But it isn’t without its critics.
But is sports unity a myth?
Head of the Business School at Stellenbosch University, Dr Armand Bam, argues that it is. According to him, “No DNA, Just RSA” is rooted in erasure. He wrote that while the slogan might seem harmless, it “dangerously ignores the realities of who we are as South Africans. It dismisses the significance of our histories, cultures, and lived experiences that shape our identity beyond a state-issued identity number.”
Dr Bam isn’t the only one who has questioned the sports unity myth. Political analyst and author Kim Heller says that the moments of rugby unity are a “fleeting embrace.” She goes on to say that the images of white and black South Africans in “such extravaganzas of unity, sends misleading and false images to the world on the true state of race relations and reconciliation in South Africa.”
Both Bam and Heller are right. South African sports and the people enjoying them don’t paint an accurate picture of the state of sports, especially for black and brown communities in the country.
I went to a former Model C school, and we had a wide assortment of sporting codes available, from Netball to even target shooting. I also grew up in a township, and my friends who went to school in those areas tell me that no other sports were offered except netball and soccer. In an interview with IOL, Vee Gani of the KwaZulu-Natal School Governing Body Association expressed concern that black children from financially deprived schools have almost zero chance of growing up to become professional sportsmen and women, as the government does not allocate a budget to schools for this programme.
The state is failing black and brown children by not creating or even funding programmes for sports. Sometimes, they don’t even fund the sporting codes in these schools with teachers, who often double as coaches, sometimes using their own money to fund uniforms and transport to tournaments.
It’s a dire state of affairs in our schools. But that’s not the only problem with Mzansi sport.
Transformation is often a sore point whenever mentioned by those wanting real change. Take Cricket South Africa, for example. There have been numerous squabbles about transformation within the organisation, and it even spilt over into the open when a cricketer took the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020
What’s the end goal?
As someone who only watches sport because someone else has it on, I will admit to having felt the immense joy and spirit of unity it brings. But we cannot shy away from some of its uglier parts. South Africans want to feel good about themselves and win simultaneously. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sports give us that, more often than not. But we must be honest about the challenges, from underfunded school sports to very slow transformation within major sports governing bodies. We cannot leave politics out of sports if we genuinely want to enjoy our wins. We need to start talking before playing, now more than ever.
Tshego is a writer and law student from Pretoria. A keen follower of social media trends, his interests include high fantasy media, politics, science, talk radio, reading and listening to music.
He is also probably one of the only people left who still play Pokemon Go.
COLUMN | No DNA, Just RSA? Only if you can afford to play
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South Africa is home to a bunch of winners. Listen, we’ve been killing it in sports for a while now. Don’t believe me? Yesterday morning, our cricket team, the Proteas, came home to much fanfare after winning the World Test Championship. That’s not the only thing we’ve won this week. Far from it: The Springbok Women won the Rugby Africa Women’s Cup, beating Madagascar, Kenya and Uganda and defending their title. This is the fifth time they’ve won this, starting in 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and now in 2025.
Meanwhile, the Pretoria-based team Mamelodi Sundowns is representing Mzansi at the FIFA Club World Cup, which is currently being held in the US. On Wednesday morning, they beat the Korean club, Ulsan HD FC, 1-0. In May, the national under-20 team, Amajita, made history after they won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time.
I could list all our sporting achievements, but that would take up almost the entire article. My editor has restricted me to 1500 words maximum as I’m known to ramble sometimes. I haven’t even touched on how Akani Simbine single-handedly carries athletics in this country. I say that sports, particularly in South Africa, could form one of the pillars of nation-building if wielded well.
Now, before you click away because this sounds too much like a Grade 11 history essay (seriously, as I was researching this, I came across so many “sports as a nation builder” essay-type questions), consider this: A study released by Eighty20 in 2024 found that 75% of South Africans have expressed an interest in sports. For context, that is more South Africans than turned out to vote in the 2024 General Elections (58.6%). So, more South Africans are into sports than voting. This is why I argue that sports can be the unifier that Mzansi needs.
Sport has unified the country since democracy began
In June 1995, the world watched as then-president Nelson Mandela, wearing a Boks shirt, walked up to then Springboks captain Francois Pienaar and handed him the Rugby World Cup trophy after the Boks had beaten New Zealand 15 -12 at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. The picture from that day is as iconic as what the moment meant: It was sport being used as a bridge to unify a divided country.
The 1995 Rugby World Cup was the first major sporting event to be held here at home following the end of apartheid.
This would be continued in 1996 when Bafana Bafana amazed the world by winning the African Cup of Nations hosted in Johannesburg.
Since then, we’ve seen sports unify us as a country, even for fleeting moments. We saw this in the lead-up to the FIFA World Cup, which we hosted in 2010, or even the many times we’ve celebrated the Boks for getting close to or winning rugby matches.
We now even have a slogan: “No DNA, Just RSA”, which I’m told means that we don’t need special DNA, just being South African is enough to justify our wins. I like that. But it isn’t without its critics.
But is sports unity a myth?
Head of the Business School at Stellenbosch University, Dr Armand Bam, argues that it is. According to him, “No DNA, Just RSA” is rooted in erasure. He wrote that while the slogan might seem harmless, it “dangerously ignores the realities of who we are as South Africans. It dismisses the significance of our histories, cultures, and lived experiences that shape our identity beyond a state-issued identity number.”
Dr Bam isn’t the only one who has questioned the sports unity myth. Political analyst and author Kim Heller says that the moments of rugby unity are a “fleeting embrace.” She goes on to say that the images of white and black South Africans in “such extravaganzas of unity, sends misleading and false images to the world on the true state of race relations and reconciliation in South Africa.”
Both Bam and Heller are right. South African sports and the people enjoying them don’t paint an accurate picture of the state of sports, especially for black and brown communities in the country.
I went to a former Model C school, and we had a wide assortment of sporting codes available, from Netball to even target shooting. I also grew up in a township, and my friends who went to school in those areas tell me that no other sports were offered except netball and soccer. In an interview with IOL, Vee Gani of the KwaZulu-Natal School Governing Body Association expressed concern that black children from financially deprived schools have almost zero chance of growing up to become professional sportsmen and women, as the government does not allocate a budget to schools for this programme.
The state is failing black and brown children by not creating or even funding programmes for sports. Sometimes, they don’t even fund the sporting codes in these schools with teachers, who often double as coaches, sometimes using their own money to fund uniforms and transport to tournaments.
It’s a dire state of affairs in our schools. But that’s not the only problem with Mzansi sport.
Transformation is often a sore point whenever mentioned by those wanting real change. Take Cricket South Africa, for example. There have been numerous squabbles about transformation within the organisation, and it even spilt over into the open when a cricketer took the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020
What’s the end goal?
As someone who only watches sport because someone else has it on, I will admit to having felt the immense joy and spirit of unity it brings. But we cannot shy away from some of its uglier parts. South Africans want to feel good about themselves and win simultaneously. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sports give us that, more often than not. But we must be honest about the challenges, from underfunded school sports to very slow transformation within major sports governing bodies. We cannot leave politics out of sports if we genuinely want to enjoy our wins. We need to start talking before playing, now more than ever.
Tshego Mphahlele
Tshego is a writer and law student from Pretoria. A keen follower of social media trends, his interests include high fantasy media, politics, science, talk radio, reading and listening to music.
He is also probably one of the only people left who still play Pokemon Go.
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