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Soweto Rugby Club threatens to quit union over racism

The Soweto Rugby Club, which started Johannesburg’s first senior black rugby team, threatened to quit the main provincial union, saying its claims of racist abuse weren’t dealt with. The union denied the allegation.

The spat is the latest race-related dispute to hit South African rugby, seen as a bastion of white supremacy in the apartheid era that ended in 1994. Johannesburg’s Star newspaper yesterday led its front page with the headline “New Racism Row Rocks Rugby.”

On Aug. 30 a black female spectator was attacked by white supporters at a match between the Springboks and Australia. Last week, the country’s first black national coach, Peter De Villiers, threatened to quit over allegations of the existence of a sex tape involving him and an unidentified woman.

“We’ve lost complete faith in the union,” Asad Bhorat, the deputy chairman of Soweto Rugby Club, said in an interview yesterday. “When it comes to protecting players against racism, they don’t do it. There is no benefit to being part of the union.”

During club matches, black players are often called “kaffirs” — a highly derogatory term, Bhorat said, with the latest incident happening two weeks ago in front of a referee.

The union is opposed to racism and looks at all complaints in a “very serious light,” said Peet Buys, the union’s corporate director, adding the club had not lodged an official complaint.

“It does happen in the heat of the moment” that players use racist slurs, Buys said. “It doesn’t happen all the time. All complaints will be severely handled if they are reported through the normal channels. We don’t tolerate it.”

Soweto temporarily cut its affiliation with the union in 2006 after a white player was given a suspended sentence for calling a black player a “kaffir,” Bhorat said. It then asked the union to put in place processes to deal with racism, which, he said, hasn’t happened. The union denies this.

“We need a structure, an anti-racist committee, so that we can agree on the levels of punishment,” Bhorat said.

South Africa’s government has pushed for sport to be more representative of the population. South Africa’s 22-man rugby squad, which won the World Cup in France last year, included 20 white players. White South Africans account for about 9.1 percent of the country’s 48.5 million people.
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