Siya Kolisi: The first Black captain of the Springboks, South Africa's national rugby team
You'd be hard pressed to find a sport where the captain matters more than it does in rugby. In these fierce, pitched matches, leadership is as critical as raw talent. What, after all, is a scrum, but a literal exercise in team bonding? Captaincy is more important still when your rugby team represents an entire country. So, when Siya Kolisi was named captain of the South African national team—the first Black player to hold that honor—it may as well have marked a political appointment. And Kolisi has responded with a singular approach, reconsidering a macho sport and recognizing how valuable rugby can be helping bind a country still riven by crime, corruption, and inequality.
You might think of rugby players as human bumper cars. Running forward, passing backward and obliterating everything in the way. This sport combines the collisions of football, minus pads, with the fluid continuity of basketball or hockey. It is, as the saying goes, a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.
Siya Kolisi: I always call it controlled violence, that's what happens here.
Jon Wertheim: Controlled violence of--
Siya Kolisi: Yeah, and it--
Jon Wertheim: That's rugby.
Siya Kolisi: And it's legal violence. Yeah, and it's legal. So we smash each other on the field and then it's done after that.
Siya Kolisi is the first Black player to be named captain of South Africa's national team—the Springboks—an international rugby powerhouse and national institution associated for more than a century with white Afrikaner rule and power. Today, in post-apartheid South Africa, Kolisi is keenly aware of the challenges of transforming the team.
Siya Kolisi: Well, we are human beings before we're sportsmen, you know? And the more we talk to another, the more we understand each other, the more we get to know each other, and the more we trust each other and open up to each other, the more you get that deeper sense of connection with your teammate.
Jon Wertheim: You're saying if—if--if I know your motivations, if I know your story, when we're covered in mud and we're at the end of game–
Siya Kolisi: You think of that. 'Cause I don't want to let you down. You know, when I'm-- when we're standing there and I'm tired, I don't give up because I know that you won't drop me, you know, and you know what I'm fighting for too.
We wanted to see this all for ourselves. But with Kolisi preoccupied with playing, we leaned on his friend and recently retired Springbok teammate. Tendai Mtawarira, AKA the Beast, accompanied us to an international match in Cape Town this past summer. He was our rugby guide as South Africa played Wales.
Jon Wertheim: They haven't forgotten you. I'll tell you that.
Tendai Mtawarira: No, they certainly haven't.
Lesson one: making your way to your seat with a rugby legend yields its own version of a scrum.
Lesson two: rugby demands a combination of speed, power, durability, and poise, and, of course, bone-rattling hits.
Jon Wertheim: Ooh.
Tendai Mtawarira: Now, he's gonna be sore tomorrow. That's for sure.
Jon Wertheim: Gonna feel that in the morning?
Tendai Mtawarira: Exactly.
Jon Wertheim: Another scrum? Man. I can only imagine what goes on in the bottom of a pile there.
Tendai Mtawarira: It's a dark place.
Captain Kolisi featured prominently, making runs, driving forward.
Tendai Mtawarira: Oh, oh man. That was a good possession--
Jon Wertheim: A lot of possession, right?
In the second half of that game Kolisi scored a try, rugby's equivalent of a touchdown.
A Black captain scoring in a stadium filled with South Africans of all colors. How things have changed.
Jon Wertheim: You grew up during apartheid. What role did rugby play in--in Afrikaner society?
Francois Pienaar: Massive. It was our holy grail. It was our opium.
When Former Springbok captain Francois Pienaar played, black South Africans often cheered the opposing team. But when Nelson Mandela became president in 1994, in an effort to unite the country he threw his support—and moral force—behind the Springboks when they hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. In a country where whites make up just 13 percent of the population, there was only one black player on the team.
The Springboks won the final match beating their rivals, New Zealand. The triumph was turned into the movie "Invictus," Mandela played by Morgan Freeman, Pienaar by Matt Damon.
Jon Wertheim: This idea of using sport to repair a society.
Francois Pienaar: I don't think it's an idea. I don't think it's a tool. It just does that.
Jon Wertheim: It just is?
Francois Pienaar: It's not something you-- let's-- let's use sport and we're gonna unite people. It doesn't happen that way. Then it's false. It's contrived. It's made up. Sports are not made up.
Jon Wertheim: Unscripted—
Francois Pienaar: Unscripted.
Jon Wertheim: Unchoreographed—
Francois Pienaar: Guts. Guts. Guts. You know, and then it just comes together, and everybody's there. Everybody's a shareholder. When a nation's team runs out, everybody's a shareholder in that team. Everybody.
Siya Kolisi was just four when South Africa won that 1995 World Cup. He grew up in the windswept streets of Zwide, a racially segregated area, a so-called township, outside the Indian Ocean city of Port Elizabeth.
Siya Kolisi: And this was my street I used to walk to the school.
Born to young, unmarried parents, he says he was lovingly raised by his grandmother. Money and food were scarce. Sometimes all he had before bed was a glass of water mixed with sugar.
Siya Kolisi: Welcome. This is where I grew up.
He and his grandmother lived in this home with cousins, uncles and aunts. Siya says he slept on the floor where rats ran over him.
Siya Kolisi: The only water source for the whole house.
Jon Wertheim: This is where you got your water, right here--
Siya Kolisi: Yeah. Yeah. Right here. And then this is the toilet. And it's working now, but it didn't work when I lived here.
Some of his earliest memories… his mother bruised and missing teeth at the hands of men. Both she and Siya's grandmother died before he graduated from high school. But he says, it wasn't an unhappy childhood. He made do with whatever he could.
Siya Kolisi: I didn't have toys. I couldn't afford toys. But I had to have fun. I had to enjoy myself. What did I do? I found a brick. That was my car. I loved that brick with everything that I-
Jon Wertheim: The brick was your car?
Siya Kolisi: Yeah. I used to wash it, I would park it, wake up in the morning. This is all that I had.
Around the same time, he came to this field, littered with stones and thorns and picked up his first rugby ball. It was a refuge from the violence, drugs and chaos beyond the stadium walls.
Siya Kolisi: This place-- itself, if it wasn't around, if there wasn't a team, if there wasn't a sport and the community of sport, I don't know where I would've ended up. I was really happy. I enjoyed myself. It-- it inspired me. And it taught me who I am.
Then came a major plot point. At age 12, playing on those pocked fields, he was spotted by a coach and offered a scholarship to the elite, mostly White, Grey Junior School, just 15 miles away.
Siya Kolisi: And, you know, just the building, you know? But looking at it. I mean, everything I need is here. Compared to what I'm used to-
He says that, for the very first time, he was given socks, a toothbrush, three meals a day and his own bed.
Jon Wertheim: That must have been such a culture shock to you.
Siya Kolisi: Yeah, it was. But the toughest thing was when I had to go home on weekends, I would go back and sleep on the floor. And I told myself right then and there, "I'm not letting this go. I'm-- I will-- this-- I will not fail."
He added a carapace of muscle, trained hard and by the time he graduated from school, was drafted to play professional rugby.
Rachel Smith, a fan of the sport, met Siya when she was 21.
Rachel Kolisi: Siya was young, and he was trying to figure out a lot, I think, in his life. I've met a lot of rugby players before, and I know what they get up to.
Jon Wertheim: What are they like?
Rachel Kolisi: They're everything that you read and assume, it's true.
Still, they started dating and soon the country's racial divisions were laid bare. He was accused of selling out, she of, "contaminating her White bloodline." They married and have two children. They also adopted two of Siya's younger half-siblings. But Kolisi admits, he wasn't immune to the trappings of celebrity.
Siya Kolisi: My head got big at times. I spent the money buying sports cars, drinking every weekend, spending the money with friends, you know? And just getting involved in-- in-- in-- in-- in things that I would never be proud of.
Siya Kolisi: But I wanna be better and I wanna learn. I go to therapy. And-- and I get to talk to someone, you know?
Jon Wertheim: Can-- can I stop you? You-- you just very casually mentioned therapy. That-- that is not something a lot of 31-year-old men, much less professional athletes would just drop in a conversation.
Siya Kolisi: 'Cause it helps me heal. It helps me be better. If you're sick maybe mentally or emotionally, therapy's your medication. I wanna be the generation of Black men that are there for their children, you know? That are telling their woman that they love them, not only about words, by action too.
In 2018, with the Springboks mired in one of its worst-ever stretches, new coaches were appointed and Kolisi named captain.
Rachel Kolisi: He phoned me and he told me he'd been named this captain. And I was just like, "What? What? What?" And eventu-- I couldn't speak, so I ended up hanging up on him.
Jon Wertheim: And you were a rugby fan, you grasped the significance of this.
Rachel Kolisi: I mean, it was unbelievable, you know, just to see so many South Africans feel like they were finally being represented in this team.
Their team beginning to resemble the diversity of the country, the Springboks unexpectedly made the 2019 World Cup final held in Yokohama, Japan. The night before, the captain and wife discussed not the next day's big match but what would accompany victory.
Siya Kolisi: We all want these big moments. It can be just a big moment. That's it. Or you can use it for so much more. How can we use this opportunity not just-- to help us but to help others around us, you know-- you know, in our country?
Jon Wertheim: Biggest game of your career, night before the game, and you're thinking about what you're gonna do to enrich South Africa.
Siya Kolisi: This is why I'm here. That's my purpose.
The Springboks won that World Cup resoundingly.
Jon Wertheim: You said that victory in Yokohama in 2019 meant more to South Africa than yours. Why?
Francois Pienaar: We had a Black World Cup-winning captain. In South Africa and the townships across the land, everybody, again, was proud. They were world champions, and that is what sport does. Nothing else can do that.
Fulfilling their promise to use the moment, Rachel and Siya started the Kolisi Foundation. We accompanied them on a visit to a shanty town outside Cape Town. This feeding program provides healthy meals for thousands of kids a day.
Siya Kolisi: I can't give them food that I wouldn't put in my mouth.
Kolisi says the abuse his mother faced has always haunted him. The scourge of gender based violence is one of the pillars of the foundation's work. They hand out what they call "Power 2 You" packs: a whistle, pepper spray and emergency contacts.
Rachel Kolisi: We actually give it to young boys to give to women in their communities to tell them what it's about.
Jon Wertheim: It's intentional. You're not just gonna give these out to the girls and the women. You're gonna give these to the boys as well.
Rachel Kolisi: Yeah, absolutely.
For all Kolisi's social ambitions, his sights are fixed firmly on defending the rugby world cup next year. Today, affection for him and the team remains at fever pitch. Remember that game we attended against Wales this past summer? Siya Kolisi's try—his touchdown—held up as the decisive score, as South Africa won the series. The players were exuberant, if not a little bruised, and took a much-deserved victory lap. As for the fans—in suburbs, in townships, and in the stadium— they celebrated wildly. For those few hours on the pitch, the country's troubles and divisions faded. As is often the case with rugby in South Africa, it was much more than a game.
Produced by Michael H. Gavshon. Associate producer, Nadim Roberts. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Peter M. Berman.
