Historic rugby match mends fences in South Africa (News Feature)

By Clare Byrne May 23, 2010, 13:00 GMT

Soweto, South Africa - It was hard to tell who was more delighted as buses filled with thousands of white South Africans rolled through the streets of Soweto on Saturday for the first major rugby game in one of the country's black townships.

Was it the black residents who lined the streets to cheer this strange invasion? Or maybe the numerous white rugby fans, who had never set foot in a township, and were experiencing that blacks bore them no ill will?

Soweto had even given itself a blue rinse in honour of the Blue Bulls, which, decamped for a day from its home in the conservative Afrikaner bastion of Pretoria to the township outside Johannesburg for a Super 14 semi-final game against New Zealand's Crusaders.

For many Bulls supporters, whose abiding images of Soweto date back 34 years when black youth in the township were squaring off against white police during an anti-apartheid uprising, the trip had required a leap of faith.

Although whites and blacks have nominally been reunited since the official end of apartheid in 1994, the road to reconciliation has been a rocky one.

In recent months, tensions had bubbled up again over the resurrection by a ruling party politician of an anti-apartheid song calling on blacks to 'shoot the Boer (white farmer)' and the murder of far-right white leader Eugene Terre'Blanche.

'It started to feel if everything was going to fall apart,' said Andre le Grange, a die-hard Bulls fan from Pretoria.

When he first heard the semi-final was being held in Soweto, because Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria has been sealed off for football in the run-up to the Football World Cup, le Grange admitted he was 'a bit disappointed.'

The 33-year-old engineer, who spoke English with a strong Afrikaans accent, said fear prevented him from ever visiting a township - the fear of being white in a black neighbourhood, the fear of being targeted by criminals.

By the end of the game, which ends in a rousing 39-24 win for the Bulls, his fears had melted away.

'It (Soweto) completely exceeded my expectations,' he said smiling broadly, vowing to return for the final the following week.

Inside the stadium, while the Bulls were goring their opponents, hundreds of such bridges were being built across the vast cultural gulf that still separates blacks and whites.

A young Soweto native, Sicelo Makhaula, had made a new friend in a moustachioed white police officer sitting in the row behind him, Warrant Officer Johan de Klerk.

Makhaula and his friend had had tickets for a big football game down the road in Soccer City stadium, where two first-division teams were inaugurating the pitch that will host the World Cup opening game and final.

But the pair chose rugby, 'because this is more historic,' Makhaula, who wore a yellow football jersey, explained.

'I thought it was going to be very intimidating,' he said, looking around at the sea of nearly 40,000 fanatical supporters, many of whom have painted their faces blue. 'But actually they've been very friendly.'

By virtue of being the favourite sport of Afrikaners, the national rugby team, the Springboks, was a hated symbol of repression during apartheid.

Some older fans at Saturday's game recalled how, during that time, when South Africa played New Zealand, black South Africans would cheer for the All Blacks.

Since then, many blacks have adopted the game.

One of the defining moments in South Africa's post-apartheid history took place when blacks joined whites in wild celebrations of the Springboks home win in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, a year into democracy.

Many are hoping that the football World Cup, which South Africa is the first African country to host, will rekindle that sense of unity after a period of rollback in race relations.

The signs Saturday were auspicious: In a first for rugby, thousands of fans blew vuvuzelas - the plastic trumpets that are synonymous with black football fans.

'That was - apart from the 1995 World Cup in terms of history - the most significant game we've ever had,' David O' Sullivan, a rugby commentator with Johannesburg radio station 702, said.

Thousands of people had realized: 'We don't all hate each other as much as we thought.'