OPINION: Wayde van Niekerk and Cheslin Kolbe are both products of champion parents
Look at this South African sports narrative: two young sportsmen, both from anti-apartheid sports communities who played their grassroots sport in the same hood, have gone on to not only win Olympic medals, but become world sports champions. They are athlete Wayde van Niekerk and rugby player Cheslin Kolbe. Both Wayde and Cheslin, related as family, in their growing-up years lived in Kraaifontein during the apartheid era. Both went to government primary schools.
Wayde went all the way to become Olympic and world champion. Cheslin got to play more rugby at high school and went all the way to winning an Olympic bronze medal and World Cup gold medal in rugby. Both Cheslin and Wayde’s parents also played sport - with scarce resources and facilities available in their disadvantaged schools and communities. They were sports champions in rugby and athletics and got selected into national teams, representing oppressed sports people who played non-racial sport, under the leadership of the SA Council on Sport .
This was also anti-apartheid sport whereby the choice was made not to support apartheid in sport, nor play with apartheid-supporting sports structures. Playing anti-apartheid, non-racial sport meant waiting for apartheid to be abolished and for a democratic South Africa to be birthed.
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