Rugby tournaments expose South Africa's deep divide over inclusion and belonging

South Africa’s rugby calendar this week offered two contrasting images of the country’s ongoing struggle with belonging, fairness, and cultural identity, and ordinary citizens are left to make sense of what each one means for the society they share.

The first was Bokkieweek, a tournament featuring rugby, hockey, and netball that draws teams from across the country. Held under the auspices of Afrikaner Volkseie Sport (AVS), a non-profit organisation, the event carries historical weight. AVS was founded in the mid-1980s partly as a response to the deracialisation of sport during that era. Daan Nolte, one of its founders, explained that one reason for establishing the organisation was the belief that “there will come a time where my people’s [Afrikaners’] children will not get any sporting opportunities.” The tournament uses colours and symbolism reminiscent of South Africa’s Springboks but operates independently of the South African Rugby Union.

The second event was the Springboks’ Test match against Scotland, in which the national team fielded an all-Afrikaner starting forward pack as part of a squad roughly half Afrikaans-speaking. The contrast between these two occurrences raises fundamental questions about how South Africa approaches discrimination, cultural identity, and the boundaries of acceptable association.

Bokkieweek has drawn criticism for being exclusionary. The tournament’s sporting regions follow boundaries that existed when AVS was established, including a Stellaland region named after a rugby union dissolved in 1995. The event was hosted at Hoërskool Hans Strijdom, where the Limpopo Department of Education noted that the school was not involved in the tournament’s substance but leased facilities as a crucial fundraising mechanism. More than half the school’s learners are exempt from paying fees, making this income vital to the institution’s sustainability. That financial reality matters: for a school serving a largely low-income community, the lease income is not incidental.

AVS frames its existence in cultural rather than racial terms. Its charter emphasises the Protestant, Christian character of the organisation and invokes Section 18 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of association. The organisation says it promotes a “kultuurgebonde sportbedeling” (culturally based sport system) in which teams are chosen on merit.

This framing opens a broader conversation about what constitutes fair discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa. The country’s Constitution does not provide a blanket prohibition of discrimination, only of “unfair” discrimination. The legal question becomes whether any group can justify restricting access based on cultural grounds.

South Africa has numerous precedents. Organisations such as the Black Management Forum, the Association for The Advancement of Black Accountants of South Africa, the Black Lawyers Association, the Native Club, the Forum of Black Journalists, and the Black Business Council were all founded on explicitly group-based premises. Some have received direct or implicit government support. Religious and cultural organisations, including the Muslim Judicial Council, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, and various churches, operate on similar principles of shared cultural experience.

Yet in practice, South Africa’s state institutions and elite culture have applied different standards. They have tended to accept “fair” discrimination when it advances the interests of groups classified as “disadvantaged” while showing particular sensitivity about discrimination exercised by groups perceived as possessing inherent “privilege.” This ideological foundation underpins South Africa’s system of racial preferences and shapes how institutions respond to discrimination claims. The South African Human Rights Commission has stated that it adopts different standards when evaluating alleged violations committed by different groups, accounting for historical context.

Sport in South Africa remains deeply political. Sports bodies have faced significant pressure to meet racial targets and, in recent years, to require players to make overtly political statements. The South African Rugby Union disinvited an Israeli team from a tournament in 2023. Cricket South Africa has demanded that players “take the knee” and effectively demoted David Teeger from his captaincy of the Under-19 national cricket team for his support of Israel.

Terence Corrigan of the South African Institute of Race Relations, who has written extensively on civic freedoms and civil society, offered perspective on the Bokkieweek controversy. He noted it was “hard to see why there was any excitement about a private sports contest, especially an amateur one.” A free society, he argued, had to accept that people could associate in any way they wished, even if unsettling to others. “Cultural groups will always in some way draw a distinction between themselves and others,” Corrigan said. “This is the nature of culture and pluralism. I don’t think a free society can prevent this, or should try. After all, South Africa accepts this in plenty of other contexts.”

Corrigan questioned whether the intense focus on Bokkieweek reflected consistent principle or selective application based on ideology. “Is this because it is an Afrikaner event?” he asked. “I don’t think we can rule this out. The reporting on this matter has tried to make apartheid comparisons. It seems to me that this is a hazardous basis to pass judgement. If we condemn behaviour not out of principle but because we don’t like the people or the ideology doing it, we abandon the logic of rights and rules; it becomes all about the politics of the prevailing sentiment.”

He acknowledged legitimate concerns about the broader social implications. “These groups have the good right, moral and legal, to hold something like this,” he said, “but South Africa is a diverse society. The upcoming generation needs to be able to navigate this reality. I don’t think that exclusive interactions like Bokkieweek are conducive to doing so. I also fear that cultural groups (or parts of cultural groups) that become too insular can cut themselves off from the understanding, friendship, and goodwill of others.”

Meanwhile, Marius Roodt, deputy editor at The Common Sense, offered context that complicates the narrative surrounding Bokkieweek. He described the event as a fringe occurrence, noting that the Paul Roos and Paarl Gim annual rugby derby, with more than 20,000 people in attendance and televised coverage, represents a far more significant event on the Afrikaans schools sports calendar. Crucially, that match includes English-speakers, coloured players, and black players in both sides, with people from all backgrounds interacting as spectators and players without any hint of exclusion.

“Bokkieweek is a sideshow,” Roodt said. “Paarl Gim and Paul Roos is a far better example of where school sport is in South Africa.” He noted that in the same week Bokkieweek took place, the Springboks fielded an all-Afrikaner starting forward pack as part of a team roughly half Afrikaans-speaking, a reality that would likely have astonished Nolte and other AVS founders decades earlier.

The question that lingers for citizens is not simply whether Bokkieweek is lawful, but whether South Africa can develop a consistent framework for evaluating cultural exclusivity, one that applies the same standard regardless of which community is doing the excluding.