On a cold and rainy morning, Springboks supremo Rassie Erasmus succeeded in getting 800 Capetonians out of bed and on time for a 7am breakfast for a worthy cause. Gasant Abarder was among that audience and reflects in this #SliceofGasant column on how we need some Rassie and Bok magic right now.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
Like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, Springbok director of rugby, Rassie Erasmus, was running his cordless microphone around his fingers on stage like a bottle of rum, threatening every now and then to toss it into the air. The poor sound guy must have had all his days!
Still later, as Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber fielded questions from astute broadcaster Matt Pearce on stage, Rassie looked to precariously balance the microphone on a finger.
It’s a restlessness that perhaps reveals Rassie’s chronic insomnia. Before this breakfast in front of 800 people, Matt told me later, Rassie went to bed at 4.30am – up all night, analysing and formulating plans for a Rugby World Cup that looms large. Always busy, always thinking, always trying to stay ahead.
I’ve wondered about the dynamic between Jacques and Rassie. But listening to them both on stage, they are the perfect foil for each other. Rassie the big show; Jacques the introvert.
Matt expertly knows which buttons to press to get the best out of Rassie.
‘(Jacques) kaks at the end and I get fired. But it’s an ‘our’ thing! We have guys in our management team who just work and work and who deserve a lot of gratitude,’ says Rassie.
‘There are two types of warriors on the team – the guys on the field and us who worry,’ Rassie adds, to rapturous laughter.
Last Thursday morning, Rassie managed to get 800 people packed into the imposing Century City Conference City before 7am on a rainy Cape Town morning for a breakfast for the Quadcare foundation. Anyone who knows Cape Town on a rainy morning knows that is quite something.
They knew Rassie will always be box office. Or is that Boks office? Sport needs Rassie. Rugby needs Rassie. And now, South Africa needs Rassie like never before. We’re in big trouble and it feels as if the final whistle is about to sound for Mzansi.
Rassie knows what a world cup triumph can do for us. His Boks have done it before – winning the whole damn thing in 2019 when in 2018 he took over and had set his sights on lifting the trophy only in 2023. Then the historic Lions Series win followed.
But the euphoria, even in 1995 and 2007, lasted only for a few weeks before we were back to earth with a bump. Rassie is chasing a longer-lasting hope.
‘You can make people happy for a few days until the team loses again and then people want to burn jerseys! Or you can turn that happiness into hope. Now, what is hope?’ asked Rassie, with everyone hanging onto his every word.
‘When you’re at the World Cup, you can give people hope. I didn’t know this in 2018. I was 46 and naïve, but then we saw what it did for us personally: The management and the players and their lives and what it did for a small while in South African people’s lives. The world saw that we might have close to the weakest currency but we can still beat teams whose value they put into the game was just massive.’
‘For this country in Africa, the hope the Springboks want to put out there is we can take the rich farm boy who went to a private school, the armgat laaitie from Despatch, the guy who walks the gravel roads and comes from a homeless background, the Muslim laaitie, the four women physiotherapists… they all bring something to the team.’
‘The hope part is when they are working together. Those four women are managing supreme athletes who will die for South Africa. The moment you get that mix right, then it’s lekker!’
Rassie was a huge drawcard to raise funds for quadriplegics and their families through the Quadcare Foundation. The NPO was established by Century City Conference Centre CEO, Gary Koetser.
When Gary was just nine, his father, then 35, was an HR manager at SA Breweries in Caledon. On 22 February 1990, he was asked to take a group of international investors on a tour of the facility.
During the tour, barley was brought in and the dust caused him to suffer a massive asthma attack, followed by three cardiac arrests over the next few hours. He suffered hypoxic brain damage.
Gary’s father needed 24-hour, seven-days-a-week nursing as he lay in a bed or sat in a wheelchair, unable to do what we take for granted every day. He remained in this condition for 22 years until he passed away in 2011.
‘Throughout my father’s journey, I witnessed first-hand the toll it took not only on him but also on our entire family. Over the past couple of years, I have become more and more aware of people in similar circumstances and have always wanted to do something which could assist and alleviate some of the struggles that both the individual and family endure on a daily basis,’ said Gary.
Quadcare raises funds to assist families with wheelchairs, commodes, toiletries, nursing services, and perhaps even home alterations to make it more wheelchair friendly.
Gary brings the kind of hope Rassie brings. And boy, don’t we both need a little of that Gary or Rassie hope in South Africa right now!
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Picture: Gasant Abarder