These days the 75 year-old Joe Thloloe is the executive director of the Press Council overseeing the work that he has done for over half a century. Forty years ago he was a dashing young features writer on The World newspaper in Johannesburg. The only problem was the radical words he wrote upset the government of the day.
“From the time the National Party took over in 1948, they were determined to stamp down on the black population. The repression is much older than the 70s, the banning of publications, including books, had started by the 60s.  So what happened in the 70s was merely a continuation of what had been happening,” says Thloloe.
Long before Black Wednesday, police harassed and detained Thloloe for his social activism as a student.
“I was first arrested in 1960, on the day of the Sharpeville Massacre (March 21, 1960, where 69 died), as a student. I spent that whole year in jail. When The World was banned, I was a features writer for it. But, unfortunately for me, on the day the newspaper was banned I was already in jail,” says Thloloe.
<div id="attachment_33917" style="width: 311px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33917" class=" wp-image-33917" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Joe-Thloloe-083-copy-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="452" />Joe Thloloe (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
The founder and president of the defunct Union of Black Journalists (UBJ) says he was arrested for the second time, eight months before Black Wednesday, under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, which provided for detention without trial. Sathasivan ‘Saths’ Cooper was the secretary of the Black People’s Convention (BPC), which was among the black organizations banned in the build-up to Black Wednesday.
“It was an eerie period because a few weeks earlier Dullah Omar (a late African National Congress veteran) had brought the news that Steve Biko had been killed in detention,” Cooper told Radio702 in 2016.
Biko was the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) who died from his injuries after he was tortured in Port Elizabeth and then driven, naked in the back of a police Land Rover, to Pretoria. He died on September 12.
“I remember driving through the streets of Johannesburg that morning and the street posters said, ‘Government Bans The World’. Okay, the newspaper was called The World, but it meant the government was trying to shield South Africans from being part of the world, shield white South Africans from information. We expected a lot of bad things from the apartheid government, but I didn’t think they would be as stupid as trying to ban a newspaper. It was quite devastating at the time,” says Max du Preez, Thloloe’s contemporary at the Rand Daily Mail, in Johannesburg.
“If I remember correctly, that was one of moments in my life which fired me on to say ‘one of the things, Max du Preez, you have to do is in your own way fight for freedom of speech, for freedom of the media’.  Eventually, in 1988, I decided to launch an anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper which I think was a very stupid idea,’” adds Du Preez. The newspaper was Vrye Weekblad (The Free Weekly).
Du Preez hoped to educate his Afrikaner people about the evils of apartheid.
You could argue, The World, founded, in 1932 by mining companies in Johannesburg to entertain their employees, grew in the struggle.
“Over time it developed to become a newspaper with news and politics etc. But it was always under very tight white control, the likes of the Nhlapos and Moeranes were the black nominal editors, but above them there’s a person called editorial director, who was in fact the actual editor. He would be the one who would tone down stories making sure that a particular style was kept. Although it carried politics, it carried general news, it was not radical stuff. In fact our competition, The Golden City Post, was much more outspoken,” says Thloloe, a Nieman Fellow in 1988.
The appointment of editor Percy Qoboza, in 1975, saw a radical change in the paper’s editorial line. He accepted the editorship on condition that there would be no editorial director looking over his shoulder.
“Percy was a radically changed man and the texture of the publication changed, its tone changed, it became much more radical in its approach. Percy is credited to have exposed June 16, but that exposure was in fact the work of Joe Latakgomo who had been acting editor while Percy was abroad,” says Thloloe.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2017/09/12/steve-bikos-legacy-often-overlooked/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Why is Steve Biko&#8217;s legacy often overlooked?</a>
Qoboza, who died in 1988, returned to South Africa on June 1976, after his Nieman Fellowship in the US, and threw himself into black activism. Thloloe says under the stewardship of Latakgomo, The World was already covering stories about students’ political events leading to the uprising of June 16. Qoboza landed on the day it happened.
In those days, several black journalists were embedded in students’ activities in the townships, he says.
“They were the ones saying tomorrow we need to be in such and such place because they knew what was going to happen, where and at what time. That was the way in which journalists worked with the community,” says Thloloe.
Thloloe founded the Union of Black Journalists in 1972.
“We felt we were not given a space in the newsroom to write the way we wanted to write as blacks. Our slogan used to be: ‘We are black before we are journalists’. So, our writing should reflect our blackness and our thoughts as black people and our lives as black people,” says Thloloe.
“There was a very close relationship between the Black Consciousness Movement and the Union of Black Journalists. That was the ideology that was driving our society at that time; that we blacks had to fight the shackles around us.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/07/07/painful-price-courage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Painful Price Of Courage</a>
Du Preez and other white journalists were not directly threatened by the draconian press laws until things got worse in the 1980s.
“That came a little later in the 80s, when the political temperature was higher. The government resorted to closing down more newspapers, like the New Nation and the Weekly Mail, and arresting journalists, like I was, and people like Zwelakhe Sisulu and others,” says Du Preez, a multiple award winner and prolific author.
Du Preez and Thloloe agree that the South African media landscape has changed for the better since democracy in 1994.
“The atmosphere in the country is far more open. What we have experienced in the last 23 years was a Constitution where freedom of speech was guaranteed and also we have the dealings of social media. That all contributed to the atmosphere where rigid censorship will be unthinkable in South Africa&#8230; We are a truly open society,” says Du Preez.
“There’s no danger that a newspaper can be closed at the whim of a minister, in the same way The World was. There’s no chance that anybody can get detained in the way we were. Freedom of expression is now guaranteed in the Constitution. On the surface we should be able to practice the best journalism we are capable of,” says Thloloe.
But Thloloe thinks the technological revolution is hindering the standard of journalism, as advertising has dwindled and the profession is losing quality journalists.
“Every person with a cellphone can become a reporter, editor, sub-editor, distributor. That has led to a number of things; newspaper readership has gone down very sharply, advertising has gone down, newspapers no longer make profits. Now you find drastic cost-cutting in newsrooms. Newsrooms are juniorized and the quality of journalism suffers,” says Thloloe.
At least, for now, for most newsrooms, the biggest threat is economic depression rather than ruthless authorities.

The Day The World Turned Black

While Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Desmond Tutu are rightly venerated for their role in opposing and ending white minority rule in South Africa, another leader of the liberation years has been remarkably overlooked: Bantu Steven Biko, who led the enormously influential <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sanov75.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Black Consciousness Movement</a>. Four decades after his death in police custody on September 12 1977, he deserves to be recognised as one of the towering heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle.
Black Consciousness re-energised black opposition to apartheid and helped draw the world’s attention to the brutality of South Africa’s white minority rule. It began after the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sharpeville Massacre</a> in 1960, when established liberation movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were banned by the South African government and forced into exile. With the organised opposition apparently moribund, the South African state presided over an economic boom for the white minority and created the conditions for apartheid’s so-called <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/road_democracy_vol1.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">golden age</a>.
In 1969, with overt political activism and leadership largely dormant, Black Consciousness emerged from the South African Students’ Organisation to fill the void. Biko advocated that black liberation would only follow once psychological liberation from the internalised acceptance of racial oppression was achieved, <a href="http://www.sbf.org.za/home/index.php/steve-biko-quotes/">arguing</a> that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”.
At its heart, Black Consciousness demanded pride, self-assertion, and self-confidence. Biko’s idea was that this would in turn stimulate a “revolution of the mind”, allowing oppressed peoples to overcome the racial inferiority <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sasep71.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">and fear</a> propagated by white racism so they could appreciate that they were not just “appendages to the white society”. This relatively simple idea radically changed perceptions of the struggle. It helped instill a new cultural and psychological outlook among the black population, and thereby renewed the challenge to the apartheid system.
Biko turned ideas into a potent new weapon, and the white minority state was slow to appreciate that the spread of ideas could not be contained by physical force alone. As a consequence, Biko was given a banning order in 1973, which confined him to King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, and prevented him from speaking in public.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2016/12/01/steve-biko-still-alive/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">If Steve Biko Were Still Alive&#8230;</a>
In fact, as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2253092.stm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nelson Mandela</a> put it, the apartheid state was so fearful of Biko’s influence that “they had to kill him to prolong the life of apartheid”.
In 1977, Biko was killed in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5Zjt2SE28" target="_blank" rel="noopener">police custody</a> after brutal interrogation and torture. Despite a subsequent political <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/11/18/lawyer-alleges-coverup-on-biko-death/ee85b03e-b0de-4a17-ba4c-d68e0d0f6634/?utm_term=.c578f80a0310" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cover up</a>, the circumstances of his death were exposed, laying bare the violence of the apartheid state. His death led to greater international pressure against white minority rule, particularly via the global <a href="http://www.aamarchives.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> and influential people such as white journalist and activist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/world/donald-woods-67-editor-and-apartheid-foe.html?mcubz=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Woods</a>, whose friendship with Biko was the subject of the 1987 film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq4VjE0_AVQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cry Freedom</a>.
<h2>Squeezed out</h2>
So why hasn’t Black Consciousness left as deep an institutional footprint as the ANC and its like? Part of the answer is that as a movement, it was relatively weak organisationally.
Beyond its activists’ community projects, Black Consciousness was never an effective or broad-based organisation; with most of its leaders imprisoned or banned by the mid-1970s, it was predominantly an intellectual movement confined to South Africa’s urban areas. As newly politicised South Africans variously joined and formed alternative organisations, it fragmented and began to lose influence. By 1977, it was deemed illegal under the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/apartheid-government-declares-19-organisations-unlawful" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Internal Security Act</a>, and Biko’s murder robbed it of its intellectual and political leader.
But the movement was long outlived by its ideology. Ideas are very difficult to extinguish, and they don’t necessarily need an institutional home to flourish. The “revolutionary consciousness” Biko called for enabled people to appreciate their subjugation, and to take action. It inspired the children of Soweto to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans in schools in 1976, resulting in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an uprising</a> that caught the world’s attention and put the regime under more pressure than ever.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2012/08/01/the-struggle-continues/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Struggle Continues</a>
In fact, Black Consciousness was a more powerful catalyst than the established liberation movements. It “freed” minds, revived and mobilised political opposition, and re-energised the declining ANC as militant young activists joined the exiled armed struggle.
Yet since the end of apartheid in 1994, the governing ANC has worked hard to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-07-20-the-anc-has-captured-the-countrys-history/#.WZ2eGD6GOpo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">monopolise</a> the history of liberation. A plethora of groups including Black Consciousness, the <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/udf/origins.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">United Democratic Front</a>, the <a href="http://newafricanmagazine.com/sobukwes-unremembering/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PAC</a>, and student organisations were all involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, yet the ANC has worked to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/31/anc-centenary-airbrushing-history" target="_blank" rel="noopener">disregard</a> the efforts of alternative actors. To fully recognise the power and influence of Biko’s ideas would disrupt the ANC’s preferred version of history.
So even though Biko became a martyr for the anti-apartheid struggle in his day, he is too often left out of the story. The same goes for other figures who helped topple the system, especially those who worked outside the ANC. It’s long past time to properly celebrate these other elements of the struggle – of whom Steve Biko was surely among the strongest. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/matthew-graham-405047" target="_blank" rel="author noopener">Matthew Graham</a>, Lecturer in History, University of Dundee
Originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82952/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />

Why is Steve Biko’s legacy often overlooked?

Naked, shackled and suffering from severe head injuries is how South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died in a prison cell. It was a death that changed South African politics forever.
The Steve Biko Foundation says it was at this moment, on that cold Sunday on September 12, 1977, the country was robbed of its “foremost political thinkers”.
Kwandiwe Kondlo, a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Johannesburg, says that South Africa would be a different place if Biko was still alive. He says Biko would have made President Nelson Mandela reconsider his approach to introducing democracy to South African.
“If Steve Biko did not die, there is a probability that he would have actually forced and influenced the African National Congress (ANC) to change their approach. He would have been a factor that compelled the ANC to rethink its strategy of national liberation,” says Kondlo.
“Biko was not ANC, he was not PAC (Pan Africanist Congress), but he was standing for a movement of black solidarity. He sought to make known the deliberateness of God’s plan of making black people black,” says Kondlo.
Biko was one of the founders of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), a body for black, Indian and colored students in the country. SASO evolved into the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in the early 1970s. Biko’s ideologies were instrumental in people rekindling their pride in being black, and culminated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976. The student riots against Bantu education led to other protests spreading across South Africa and greater pressure on the government to end apartheid.
Now, almost 40 years since Biko’s tragic death, his philosophies could be as important as they were then.
Strike Thokoane, Deputy President of the Azanian People’s Organization (Azapo) – a political party formed out of the ashes of the BCM – believes that if Biko was alive today, South Africa would not be struggling to curb racism.
“If Biko was alive today we would not have [Economic Freedom Front leader Julius] Malema saying black people must occupy land, instead we would have transformed the question of the country’s economy and not have the Ruperts and the Guptas running our country. We would definitely have a transformed society but more so, a transformed leadership,” says Thokoane.
Biko was often jailed and in 1973 he was forbidden from writing or speaking publicly because of his ideologies rejecting apartheid. He was also restricted to King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape. The arrest that led to his death came because he was stopped on his way to Cape Town. Despite this oppression, Biko continued to rally for black solidarity and a self-reliant black nation.
His son, 45-year-old Nkosinathi Biko, recalls a conversation he had with an elderly woman who described his father as a “warm feeling”. Nkosinathi says this is the most accurate way to describe not only what Biko means to him, but to others around the world.
He says that warm feeling is the core of Biko’s teachings; it is a strong sense of self.
“Once you have that, you have won 90 percent of the struggles that you face because hopefully with that sense of self you can then organize yourself as an agent of change,” he says.
Biko’s belief in black consciousness could be as important today as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I think the young people of today, particularly the university students, are now seeing the benefits of the philosophy of black consciousness because while those who went to what we’d call ‘black universities’ think that things are better, the ones who went to the lily-white universities of Cape Town and Wits, have come to realize that the teachings of [founder of PAC] Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko are actually needed,” says Thokoane.
“They are saying ‘I have access to Wits and UCT, but when I step outside and I go to my hostel room, I am in a room that is filled with the trappings of poverty, and when I go home I am immersed in poverty’,” adds Nkosinathi.
“No struggle in the world is not born out of people’s lived reality, and no struggle disappears unless those conditions are changed,” he says.
Biko’s rise to prominence started in student politics. What he fought for is being resurrected by South African university students today.
“Not so long ago, we were defining our young people as a lost generation; I guess we were saying they don’t care about anything of substance. Now the young people have woken up,” says Nkosinathi.
In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) led the #RhodesMustFall movement which campaigned for more transformation at the institution and for the removal of a statue of colonialist Cecil John Rhodes. That was followed by another nationwide student campaign, #FeesMustFall, where students are demanding free education.
The students at the frontline of the protests often wear Steve Biko and Robert Sobukwe t-shirts.
Kondlo says they connect with black consciousness after realizing the ideological bankruptcy of today’s politics.
“We say we are liberated but at the level of ideas, we are so bankrupt, much more bankrupt then before 1994,” he says.
Nkosinathi was six years old when his father died. He says he is inspired by his father’s legacy.
“It was most embodied in what would become known as the Black Community Programme, which was the community development arm of the Black Consciousness Movement. So he and his colleagues would take these ideas they were talking about and give them a practical expression, like with health and education projects, as a way of demonstrating it isn’t just pie-in-the-sky ideas,” he says.
Biko rallied to bring tangible change to black communities. Before his death, he was to meet with then ANC President Oliver Tambo to discuss uniting the ANC, the PAC and the BCM, to promote black South Africans without isolating white South Africans.
This was difficult as both the ANC and PAC were competing to be regarded as the voice of black people in the country.
“The problem they had is Biko never wanted to define himself as ANC or PAC, but he defined himself as ‘the people’ and was saying they want one united voice of the liberation struggle. Both parties actually had a lot of headaches over how to relate with Biko,” says Kondlo.
The police headquarters at the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, where the activist was assaulted before being transported to Pretoria where he died, is now called Steve Biko House. The abandoned and dilapidated building is a poor attempt to remember a man who gave his life trying to gain freedom for his people.
After a visit to the Sanlam Building, Professor Bill Rolston writes that “as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission confirmed, Biko’s head was rammed into the wall of the interrogation room by the security police who then manacled him to the metal grill of the door and left him there, unconscious and foaming at the mouth. They then tried to revive him by putting him in a bath of cold water…”
The government then lied to the world by saying Biko died from a self-imposed hunger strike. Helen Zille, the former leader of the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, exposed the truth while working as a journalist for the Rand Daily Mail.
“I just knew a very great injustice had been done and I shared my commitment with my editor, Allister Sparks, to get to the truth of the story and I was pretty much driven by that. There were moments of great trepidation when I would go and confront the doctors but I was determined to get the story,” says Zille.
Biko’s murder might have silenced him but it could not silence the world. English musician, Peter Gabriel, wrote the song Biko for his self-titled album in 1980.
“I think it’s a song that was able to capture the imagination of audiences that would have otherwise perhaps not been interested in the plight of the South Africa,” says Nkosinathi.
Thokoane believes that South Africa’s politicians should embrace black consciousness.
“Black consciousness is about a self-love towards a society of black people. As a leader, you won’t only bring those who are in the same political group as you, or who carry your surname, black consciousness would say, ‘let’s stand together and fix things’. They had an approach to reject the white man’s crumbs that are falling from his table,” he says.
There are some populist politicians emerging in South Africa that are influenced by Biko. The founder of Black First Land First, Andile Mngxitama, says the members of his movement call themselves Bikoists. During a lecture titled How Biko Helps Us To Think Black, member of Black First Land First movement Neo Mokatsanyane says, “Biko might have suffered a physical death but his spirit, through his liberating ideas, have become immortal.”
Kondlo says with poverty, unemployment and inequality rife in South Africa, black consciousness isn’t being fully realized.
“We still feel we need leaders who are not only politically bold but also theoretically and intellectually,” he says.
Almost 40 years since his death, it’s intriguing to imagine what South Africa would be like if Biko was still alive. Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

Steven Biko

If Steve Biko Were Still Alive…

It is noisy and crowded at the 155th birthday of Dale College in King William’s Town. Everyone, even people who never went to school here, are dressed in red and black school colours. The school army cadets march through the crowds with a clatter of boots. All, from toddlers to old men leaning on sticks, head for the CB Jennings rugby field; a sacred place at this school, affectionately known as ‘The Graveyard’ for it is where opposition teams are buried.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5582" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/13235694_1024381354304366_4024981304745766848_o-228x300.jpg" alt="" width="228" height="300" />
The noise around the field is deafening as the lean and lithe players jog slowly out onto the green grass. This weekend revolves around rugby and this pitch is a cradle of champions. Some of the biggest names in rugby cut their teeth – and probably a bit of flesh – on this ground: All Black Greg Somerville; Springbok wing Bjorn Basson; former Springbok and Blue Bulls hooker Bandise Maku; the first black captain of the Sharks Lubabalo Mtembu; former Proteas bowler Monde Zondeki; Sharks looseforward Keegan Daniel. Makhaya Ntini – the record holding South African test cricket player – also sprinted down the wing on this ground.
Steve Biko – the Black Consciousness Movement leader who grew up in Ginsberg a few kilometres down the road – would have been proud. Biko, who died in police custody just over 40 years ago, was also a rugby player as well as an idealist and activist.
It is likely even Biko would have been surprised by the slow, but sure transformation at this former whites-only elite school.
As the first team prepares for the kick off, Hennie Otto is the only white player. The other 14 are all black. Even the heaving stands that rise up around the pitch are a sign of the times. Each group of reunited former pupils sits together in the same row according to school year. The stands used to be all white. With every passing year a white row is replaced by a black one.
“Out of 550 odd learners, there are about 25 white, colored, Indian and other races. The rest of the learners are all African black, which is a fair representation of the town they come from and the country as a whole,” says Dale College Headmaster, Mike Eddy.
According to Eddy, Dale College took the lead in accepting black African learners in former Model C schools during the early 90s. While the school’s racial demographics may have changed over the years, the first team coach, Grant Griffiths, maintains that the school’s traditions and values have not.
“We’ve kept all our traditions when it comes to sports, especially rugby. The jersey hand out, the sing-songs, the slapping, initiation, and all those things. The learners and players want to keep it from A to Z,” says Griffiths.
Griffiths too was at Dale College. He captained the last unbeaten rugby team in 1993.
This year’s team has beaten all their rivals in the province, and is number one in the Eastern Cape and sixth in the country.
Dale’s coach says while not much has changed in the style of play, compared to the team he captained, the biggest challenge comes with culture.
As a predominantly Xhosa province, the boys have to undergo a month long initiation in the mountain, as part of their rite of passage to manhood.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5589" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/P1030405-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />
“It’s always difficult with the boys having to go to the mountain for initiation school but we’re working around that. The six weeks straight after coming back is the most important. Diet wise, nutrition, gym. We’re never going to be the biggest side in the world but as long as we’re strong and fit, we’ll be able to keep up with the big boys,” says Griffiths.
“People go, they come back and they change. For example, if you are a new cap, when you come back from the mountain you’ll have that mentality of ndingu bhuti ngoku [I’m a man now] so I can’t go around picking up cones. We always manage to work around that though,” says Kwanda Dimaza, who has also been to the mountain and is set to go to one of the country’s top rugby unions, the Sharks, next year. He made the SA Schools under-18 team last year when he was still in grade 11.
Another hindrance to Dale College’s abilities is students choosing more prestigious high schools after primary school. South Africa’s 200-meter national record holder and one of the fastest men in Africa, Anaso Jobodwana, is one of the many who left for the college’s fierce rival, Selborne College in East London. Stormers hooker, Siyabonga ‘Scarra’ Ntubeni, is another who left for King Edward VII School in Johannesburg.
“It’s been difficult over the years but we’ve managed to hold on to more now,” says Griffiths.
Dale Junior headmistress, Patricia Thatcher, the first woman to head Dale’s primary school, says the learners are taught to be the best.
“It is about the commitment and the passion of the staff first of all. With them on your side, you start instilling the discipline and commitment in the kids from grade ‘R’ and once they’ve got it, it’s there,” says Thatcher.
Interestingly, Thatcher doesn’t even know the racial demographics of Dale Junior.
“It’s not even an issue of transformation anymore, it just is. A lot of people ask ‘how do you get it right?’ It’s not a case of getting it right, it’s what comes natural to us,” says Thatcher.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5587" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/P1030446-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />
While transformation remains a thorn in the side of South African rugby, Dale’s first team coach says it has hampered the future of some players he has coached. Griffiths says rugby unions often take players from Dale College and those players, more often than not, spend their time at those unions on the bench.
“A player like Ace Joe for example got lost in the Blue Bulls set up for two years, which is a hell of an important two years for him. I think he got 20 minutes of game time that whole season which basically cost him his career,” says Griffiths.
He says the unions now guarantee the players game time when signing the youngsters.
He hopes to see players like Aphelele Fassi, who has already been offered a contract by the Sharks while in grade 11, Dimaza, who is also set to join the Sharks, and many others with offers at various unions, one day don the Springbok jersey.
“I’ve never seen that being hard. I think the players that come through, if they get looked after, after school like we do at Dale College, with the rugby and the players managed well, as well as given opportunities, I don’t see that ever being a problem.”
So while South African sport struggles against the twin problems of transformation and creating excellence, it could perhaps learn something from Dale College.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5585" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/SouthAfricanTestTeamHeadshotsOX_2SxQXqEXl-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />

Tag: Steve Biko

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Day The World Turned Black

Why is Steve Biko’s legacy often overlooked?

If Steve Biko Were Still Alive…

Red, Black And Covered In Glory