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Springbok and Stormer breakaway and No.8 Nizaam Carr is a fluid rugby player, with a big sculpted wingspan, ham-sized hands, and surprising speed for a forward. He’s not a massive man, but is by far the largest member of his family.
Except during Ramadan, when by the end he weighs in at 91-92 kilograms, he manages to keep his lean 1.84-metre frame at a 103-kilogram mass.
His role model coming up through schools rugby was Schalk Burger; a multi-skilled forward like Carr. Before he left for France, Duane Vermeulen was another mentor. Wouldn’t you love to learn the loose forward trade and mindset from Burger and Vermeulen?
Carr is a devoted husband, a dutiful son, a protective brother, and still a young man (24). He grew up in Mitchell’s Plain, a town created only in 1970 on the sand dunes in between Cape Town’s mountains and the Winelands of Stellenbosch. Nobody would’ve settled that part of the peninsula unless forced. Eons ago, the Cape Peninsula was an island; this windswept sand is not fertile or well-watered.
As the Cape’s white population grew up the slopes of Table Mountain, the traditionally coloured districts (including a small, but quite old and stable Muslim community) were moved and relocated to a new town: Mitchell’s Plain (established in 1970).
Carr was born there 21 years later. He lived near the biggest hospital, also the worst crime-ridden, gangster-run area.
I went to Mitchell’s Plain many times in the 1970s and 1980s with our maid and her family. When her house burned down, we took a load of bricks and rebuilt it with a group of smiling, toothless brick masons.
As a teenager, I went to a political gathering in the very area Carr grew up. I am the only white guy in the photo. Today, there are less than 600 white residents in Mitchell’s Plain.
Now, there are over 300,000 residents in Mitchell’s Plain. This translates to a density greater than Hong Kong’s. The policing and infrastructure available are not up to any standards – First, Second or Third World.
The demographics of Mitchell’s Plain are 90 per cent coloured – nine per cent black African, and one per cent lost. Drug kings run these streets. They know no shame. When I checked on a small home for disabled children (the children of addiction’s victims) recently in the heart of Mitchell’s Plain, I was angered to learn that the gangs are even targeting these brain-damaged children to serve as mules.
Every minute I am in Mitchell’s Plain, I am a target. Carr, too, for a different reason. He was recruited to be a gangland enforcer.
Carr turned to the strict dictates of Islam, as his family has for ages, and into the controlled violence of rugby, to escape the dangers of his town.
He is a serious athlete, explosive in the gym, smooth with ball in hand. He can palm a rugby ball easily, and combined with his long arms (1.9-metre wingspan) he can offload when he stands up in the tackle. On debut for the Boks, he created a try with that exact skill.
He was noticed early. He was given a rugby bursary to Bishops, a Diocesan high school on the leafy slopes near Newlands. It’s only 30 kilometres from Mitchell’s Plain (when the Cape Doctor – the Southeaster – blows the smoke away, a boy at Bishops hiking up the mountain could see Mitchell’s Plain), but everyone knows it’s a whole world away.
When he made it ‘big’ (the first Muslim Bok, a Stormer captain, with a tiny contract that can buy a whole street in Mitchell’s Plain), he took his fellow Stormer forward pack to his mosque in his hometown, to show them where he comes from, who he plays for, and who he gives back to. Imagine Eben Etzebeth, Burger and Steven Kitshoff in a Mitchell’s Plain mosque!
Carr could just stay in a Camps Bay condo with multiple levels of security, but he runs an academy in the same place he came up. He does not only teach rugby.
Carr has overcome the annual weight loss of Ramadan (he wakes at 3am to drink a protein shake), the mean streets of Mitchell’s Plain, his height, the suspicion of his faith, and maintains an easy-going, happy-go-lucky air. He fishes with his brother, is over the moon about his marriage, and travels the world in the new Super 18.
Watch him in Argentina: the Muslim Bok who is street tough and full of love.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.