My tribute to Sir Colin Meads

Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads. He is the first reason why I started watching the All Blacks – and why I am still a huge supporter 47 years on. The other (reason) is the 1976 All Blacks tour to South Africa. But legendary All Black Sir Colin Meads is the standout reason.

I am a 53-year-old non-white (as opposed to white) South African.

I hate labelling myself by means of race classification. Accept my apology for it. But I feel I have to use this profiling for the purposes of this article.

Many South Africans (predominantly non-white) pay their allegiance to the All Blacks. The reasons are varied – many of them steeped in apartheid history.

However, don’t underestimate this section of South Africa’s knowledge of the All Blacks’ history – or rugby in general. When I am asked by fanatical fellow Springbok supporters why I support the All Blacks (as if I shouldn’t), my response is: “Colin Meads and the 1976 All Blacks”.

The generation of the 1980s, 1990s and millenials, of course, have no grasp of that kind of a response. But there you have it! Still a die-hard All Black supporter.

I do not profess to know Colin Meads’ history inside out. But I have seen him, albeit for a few minutes in an airport building, and read a bit about him.

The year 1970 was a very turbulent time in South Africa. Swathes of our (non-white) population were marginalised – in fact, brutalised by an unjust regime. Apartheid was at its absolute height. And that, while the white population, the minority of our fellow South Africans, lived in luxury and were offered protection under apartheid’s status quo.

As a “non-white” kid, I sensed something wasn’t quite altogether in our community and country but, of course, many of my age were just too young and innocent to know exactly the what whys and hows as to why us, the majority of South Africa’s people, remained on the fringes of society back then.

I was seven at the time. My dad, who was in his mid-30s, had just recently retired from badminton, cricket and rugby. During – and after – his playing days, he had dragged me a fair amount of times along with him to various sports grounds to watch his favourite sporting teams.

Now, when I say during my dad’s playing days, it has to be remembered that my dad, a ‘non-white’ of excellent sporting pedigree, could not play his favourite sport with or against counterparts in the white communities. This practice was outlawed by the apartheid state.

So he, together with other luminaries in the disenfranchised communities, could only play what was termed ‘non-racial’ sport among and against people of his ‘ilk’ – in other words, ‘non-whites’. White members of society were playing among themselves, as an elite sporting community on the most pristine sportsfields, with the best clubhouses available.

Conversely, as far as ‘non-whites’ were concerned besides your different provincial teams, we had an African Board, a Coloured Board and yes, even an Indian Board. So ‘non-white’ sporting folk under the various sub-classifications above, could gain ‘national colours’ under those boards while whites who were deemed worthy could become fully-fledged ‘Springboks’ although the playing fields were definitely not level in the country, to include both sides of the divide.

‘Non-white’ players in their various sporting codes playing against fellow ‘non-whites’, for example, had to play on matting wickets not turf wickets (a very foreign aspect until the mid 1990s to us), dress themselves in the open (there were no or little clubhouses) and play their sport on dirt tracks or gravel pitches, where, when you got injured, you left the pitch in a bad way.

On a provincial level, the sporting rivalry among the ‘non-whites’ was intense but so unfair at the same time, because their prowess could not be tested in a harmonious, equal system where white and black could play together and/or against each other.

So after my dad’s playing days, I tagged along to watch cricketing great Graeme Pollock grace the St George’s turf with Eastern Province and the mighty PE City who campaigned in the National Soccer League, and who managed to lure a few past-their-prime English footballers to play for the club at the old Crusaders grounds (old St George’s Park-Crusaders), these just being two examples.

The problem at age five, six and seven, I often wondered in my own childhood why we had to sit upstairs when catching a bus to the venues. The downstairs section was reserved for whites only – and dare you as a ‘non-white’ take a seat in the whites only section, you’d be kicked off, arrested and probably thrown in jail and fined heavily.

When we arrived at the venue, we had to go through the turnstiles marked ‘non-whites’; we could only buy seats in the section of the ground marked ‘non-whites only’ while whites had the best view and the best facilities on the main grandstand – and access to the best foods etc.

And, yes, when you went to the venue’s ablutions you had to make sure you only use the ones marked ‘non-whites only’. So absurd was the policy of Separate Amenities [Act] that even park benches in South Africa were reserved for ‘whites only’ on the one side and ‘non-whites only’ on the other.

We as ‘non-whites’ were held not worthy enough to mix with the white fraternity – or so the ruling party, the National Party, reckoned at the time. It was the time of what was called the Separate Amenities Act and the Separate Development Act.

For ‘black Africans’, it was worse. They were barred from being in white suburbs – or any other public areas – (even our so-called ‘coloured’ areas ) after 5pm in the evening. If they did not have a permit on their person, they would be thrown into police vans and carted away to jail for trespassing and probably be on the receiving end of a right old royal beating.

So imagine ‘trespassing’ on your own home soil, where only some advantaged South Africans were free to roam. So you can imagine ‘black Africans’ who were just as interested in sport as other members of the population were too afraid to attend these Test matches outside what they called their ‘township’ confines, due to the suppressive State machinery.

Totally unfair, I thought. It didn’t make sense to me … I sensed something was amiss but in my own childhood innocence I said and asked nothing.

The sports boycott was in full swing in 1970 – South Africa cricket had been ostracised with the help of activists like Peter Hain. Others, like ‘non-white’ Basil D’Oliveira, armed with a tog bag full of cricketing skills and equipment left these shores to pursue his cricket in England and eventually play Tests for his new adopted country.

Not every non-white sportsman of D’Oliveira’s ilk had the good fortune that befell the cricketing legend. Some were just as talented – if not more – but thousands of excellent non-white sportsmen did not have the financial backing D’Oliveira did.

My dad at the time was a huge All Blacks fan. I say at the time, because no longer is he today 47 years on. He sees it fit to have made the transition with our country’s march to freedom with the release of Nelson Mandela in 1991.

“My blood is green”, he says.

And so it is today. Very Green, in fact. His All Blacks allegiance of years gone by relegated to the outer reaches of his memory.

Many of us, like me, still decide to pay allegiance to the black jersey, however.

So it was one warm day – I think it was in August 1970 – after following the routine of sitting on a segregated bus, passing through leafy whites-only suburbs (non-whites were not allowed to stay in the same suburbs as whites) I found myself sitting next to dad on my way to then-HF Verwoerd Airport.

Even the airport was named after apartheid’s founder and chief protagonist. I wasn’t even sure where we were headed. Now I know – the All Blacks were arriving in town for what I think was the third Test at Boet Erasmus Stadium, Port Elizabeth.

Upon our arrival, I remember many fans – including Springbok ones – milling around the arrivals hall. I had no clue what was happening. Then, I recall a posse of men walking into the arrivals. And I vividly remember in my mind’s eye my dad hoisting me up on his broad shoulders.

I try as a child to make sense of what’s going on, and there out of the corner of my eye I see this colossal figure and hear my dad calling out “Pinetree! Pinetree! Pinetree! Hey! Mr Meads!”

Hoisted high on my dad’s shoulders, I saw this man, Meads. He was smiling back. A huge engaging smile, back to my dad.

Then, many other blazers around him with the Silver Fern emblazoned on them, waiting for their baggage. I do not know if he answered, all I know is I saw this burly figure with the fern on his blazer right in front of me – and my dad and I amid a huge throng in the arrivals hall. There definitely was a buzz, a buzz that indicated something big was happening in the city.

I really cannot say what happened afterwards – I suppose we took the same segregated bus home and passed the same leafy suburbs reserved for whites only. The same segregated parks. The flashy white sporting venues.

But something stirred in me. Something moved in me. That moment on my dad’s shoulders was a seminal moment. I was never going to feel or be ignorant of my standing in this society again.

I only had the figure of Colin Meads in my sights, the fern swirling in my head on the trip home to my non-white community. The affable Mr Meads in my child-like vision. And my father’s voice ringing in my head. Little else do I remember, except Colin Meads in front of me and my dad’s final call – “Hey! Mr Meads!” – and that huge smile directed at us.

I recall my dad pinning his ears to the radio in later years. We could get some commentaries on Test matches (cricket and rugby) on Short Wave. I remember the voice “Ian Kirkpatrick lining up the ball to kick”. Okay, so there’s another name that sticks. Ian Kirkpatrick.

My father is an avid newspaper man – reads them all. I would pick up after him and read the sports pages. In later years into my teens, I learnt of Colin Meads and now it all adds up.

Now I start seeing the Herculean figure with his troops coming to break down apartheid’s walls – starting with the ‘apartheid’ Bok, backed by the Broederbond (brotherly bond of conservatives), vanquishing the rulers of the unjust regime. Beating the Boks into submission.

I fall in love with the All Blacks – I am head over heels. “Beat them, my dear All Blacks – and beat them good” was the refrain. Any victory over the Boks was a victory for us the marginalised, those sitting upstairs in segregated buses, those staying in enclaves on one side of the city, playing on gravel pitches, matted wickets, unable to play in ‘whites only’ parks, unable to attend ‘whites only’ schools, unable to sit on ‘whites only’ park benches, unable to swim at ‘whites only’ beaches, assaulted and derided and demeaned by a white bastion hellbent on disenfranchising non-white sectors of our community – South Africans themselves.

I am sure my dad went to the 1970 Test loss by New Zealand in Port Elizabeth, where Meads played with a broken arm courtesy of a previous match against Eastern Transvaal – after some hulking ‘Afrikaans-speaking white player’ stomped on his arm. Legend has it that Dr Danie Craven said the sides in their weekday matches would “sort these All Blacks out” and soften them up for the Tets.

My dad did not want me as a seven-year-old to tag along in case there was trouble at the stadium – especially as the apartheid police were quick to goad and disrupt the non-white crowds before all hell broke loose.

Later, when the All Blacks become stuck to my psyche, I learnt about Brian Lochore, Bryan Williams, Syd Going, Cotterell, Alex Wyllie and more. I read about them in the papers I picked up behind my dad.

I just know that my interest piqued then as a seven-year-old, and, as I grew older, I took more and more of an interest, listening to matches and news briefs of these great All Blacks on the radio with my dad.

1976 dawns – the era of television’s arrival in our country – and the All Blacks! Wow! I was six years older and a bit wiser now … and a little bit more entrenched in the All Black ‘fever’ that gripped the non-white community.

The past six years – after that brief Colin Meads meeting – had given me time to acquaint myself with the team with the black strip. We had not as yet acquired a television that year – all I remember is I used to scale a wall in the backyard and hop over to a good friend of mine, ‘Peter’, whose dad had acquired a TV set, on consecutive Saturdays to watch the Tests.

I was gobsmacked. My heroes were now on this little box. The matches were live. I could hardly believe it.

I was 13. It was 1976 – another turbulent year in South Africa’s history – but the All Blacks were in South Africa and I couldn’t care less. They would defeat apartheid’s symbols, I thought at the time. It was Andy Leslie’s side.

For every Saturday of the 1976 Tests, I sat hardly moving from my mate Peter’s couch, watching in absolute awe. I think my mate was in on it too, but did not have the same fervour; I had seen the All Blacks seven years before – a bit too young to understand, but images had been imprinted on my mind.

By the time the 1976 Tests were over, names such as Syd Going, Billy Bush, Grant Batty – oh my oh my – Bryan Williams, (darling of the non-white community) Andy Leslie, Ian Kirkpatrick, Doug Bruce, Frank Oliver, Kevin Everlie, Lawrie Knight andmore were entrenched on my mind and in my heart.

These icons to me were apartheid’s defeaters. Our heroes, our supermen who would beat the Boks every time, break down another brick in apartheid’s wall.

Then there was 1980 – the controversial Tests, the flour bomb Test. That Alan Hewson penalty! We jumped off our chairs in 1980 when he sunk that one to bury the Boks! Even though many thought the penalty was never deserved.

Then on television, we were getting live feeds or, if not, re-runs of All Blacks playing the likes of France. We got familiar with luminaries such as David Kirk, ‘Cowboy’ Shaw, Murray Mexted, John Kirwan, Grant Fox and more.

There was only one team in my sights. Then next generation unfolded… Zinzan, Ian Jones, Robin Brooke, Walter Little, Frank Bunce, Josh Kronfeld Michael Jones…

Fast forward to 2017 and institutionalised apartheid has been expunged off the statute books – but not without people’s blood, sweat, lives and tears! But challenges aplenty remain in South Africa.

Many of my contemporaries (non-whites) have now donned the green and gold. Many others still pay allegiance to the All Blacks and refuse to take on the mantle as a fan of the Springboks. People are still hurt, even so many years on.

Some say it’s time to forgive. Yes, but it’s probably hard to forget the unfairness and injustices a brutal system wrought on us.

We have had the Chester Williams, the Bryan Habanas, Tendai Mtwariras as ‘non-whites’ reach the top in the green and gold of the Boks. Now there is a new generation emerging among them, the Siya Kolisis, Courtnall Skosans, Raymond Rhules, Uzair Cassiems, showing what could have been if it were not for apartheid’s rule and divide. Players of colour are worth every bit of thread of that Boks jersey.

I don’t rubbish the Boks like I used to do anymore – only because up until the 2000s I saw them as a team representing everything there was about apartheid and anti-transformation tendencies.

I have learnt to respect the opposition; I see the good in the Boks and if it’s well-played, it’s well played.

However, so surreal is that moment on my dad’s shoulders 47 years ago, which stayed with me on the bus trip back home and that allowed the spirit of the All Blacks to flow through my veins – that it’s a case of All Black it is and All Black it will be.

The All Blacks have become entrenched in my aura – and it’s difficult to shake off.

Do I regret it as a South African? No, I don’t. Thanks to one Colin Meads. One final salute to you, Sir. You are the stuff of legend. I know what impact you have made in my life. Rest in Peace.