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Daniel Dumile Qeqe (1929–2005), ‘Baas Dan’, ‘DDQ’. He was the
Port Elizabeth leader whose struggles and triumphs crisscrossed the
entire gamut of political, civic, entrepreneurial, sports and recreational
liberation activism in the Eastern Cape. Siwisa tells the story of Qeqe’s
life and times and at the same time has written a social and political
biography of Port Elizabeth – a people’s history of Port Elizabeth.
As much as Qeqe was a local legend, his achievements had national
repercussions and, indeed, continue to this day.
Central to the transformation of sports towards non-racialism, Qeqe

paved the way for the mainstreaming and liberation of black rugby
and cricket players in South Africa. He co-engineered the birth of the
KwaZakhele Rugby Union (Kwaru), a pioneering non-racial rugby union
that was more of a political and social movement. Kwaru was a vehicle for
political dialogues and banned meetings, providing resources for political
campaigns and orchestrations for moving activists into exile.
This story is an attempt at understanding a man of contradictions.

In one breath, he was generous and kind to a fault. And yet he was
the indlovu, an imposing authoritarian elephant, decisively brutal and
aggressive. Then there was Qeqe, the man whose actions were not in
keeping with the struggle. This story narrates his role in ‘collaborationist’
civic institutions and in courting reactionary homeland structures, yet
through all that he was the signal actor in the emancipation of rugby in
South Africa.
Rugby, Resistance
and Politics
How Dan Qeqe helped shape
the history of Port Elizabeth
Buntu Siwisa
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 Buntu Siwisa
The right of Buntu Siwisa to be identiﬁed as author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Print edition not for sale in Sub-Saharan Africa
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032535326 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032535333 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003412519 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003412519
Typeset in Ehrhardt MT Std
Contents
Abbreviations and acronyms ix

Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
PART ONE (1820–1971)

Chapter 1: The History of Black Rugby (1820–1955): The Age
of Innocence 17
Chapter 2: The History of Black Rugby (1956–1971): The Age
of Politics 37
PART TWO (1929–1971)

Chapter 3: Qeqe Begins (1929–1950s): The Roots 51
Chapter 4: Qeqe in Port Elizabeth (1950s–1971) 67
PART THREE (1971–2005)

Chapter 5: The Accidental Birth of the KwaZakhele Rugby
Union (1950s–1971) 85
Chapter 6: ‘Up Kwaru!’ 101
Chapter 7: Building eDan Qeqe 119
Chapter 8: The First Implosion (1977) … 137
Chapter 9: … and the Second Implosion (1982) 149
Chapter 10: Qeqe and Port Elizabeth in the 1970s 171
Chapter 11: Qeqe and Port Elizabeth in the 1980s 197
Chapter 12: Qeqe Rests: The Legacy 213
Notes 237
Index 289
To all the people of Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth
Abbreviations and acronyms
AAM Anti-Apartheid Movement

ANC African National Congress
AZAPO Azanian People’s Organisation
BAAB Bantu Affairs Administration Board
BAB Bantu Administration Board
BCM Black Consciousness Movement
BERBOC Bethelsdorp Rugby Board of Control
CCIRS Coordinating Committee for International
Recognition of Sport
CEDF Cape Economic Development Forum
CIR Committee for International Recognition
CNETU Council for Non-European Trade Unions
COSAS Congress of South African Students
COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions
DPSC Detained Parent Support Committee
ECAB East Cape Administration Board
EPRU Eastern Province Rugby Union
FNQ Frans, Ngwendu, Qeqe
ICU Industrial Commercial Union
IDAMASA Inter-denominational Ministers Association
of South Africa
IRB International Rugby Board
KADRU King William’s Town African District Union
KWARU KwaZakhele Rugby Union
MACWUSA Motor and Components Workers Union of
South Africa
ix
Rugby, Resistance and Politics
NAHECS National Heritage and Cultural Studies

NMBMM Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan
Municipality
NSC National Sports Council
PAC Pan Africanist Congress
PEARB Port Elizabeth African Rugby Board
PEBCA Port Elizabeth Black Civic Association
PEBCO Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation
PEUTOF Port Elizabeth/Uitenhage Taxi Owners’
Forum
PEYCO Port Elizabeth Youth Congress
SAARB South African African Rugby Board
SACOS South African Congress on Sport
SACRFB South African Coloured Rugby Football
Board
SACU South African Cricket Union
SAIC South African Indian Council
SANCO South African National Civic Organisation
SAN-ROC South African Non-Racial and Olympic
Committee
SAP South African Police
SARB South African Rugby Board
SARU South African Rugby Union
SASA South African Sports Association
SASF South African Soccer Federation
SASSA South African Schools Sports Association
SEDRU South Eastern District Rugby Union
TCB Transvaal Cricket Board
TCU Transvaal Cricket Union
TLC Transitional Local Council
TYRU Tygerberg Rugby Union
UBCO Uitenhage Black Civic Organisation
UDF United Democratic Front
UK United Kingdom
UWC University of the Western Cape
VERU Victoria East Rugby Union
WASA Writers’ Association of South Africa
ZWIRU Zwide Rugby Union
x
Acknowledgements
T
his book is the result of forces unseen and seen. At the beginning
of 2020, begrudgingly and with my feet itching, COVID-19 hard
lockdown sat me down to solely focus on writing this book. With
the world shut at my face, confused and angry, I sat down and began
one of the most enjoyable and satisfying journeys of writing this book.
Were it not for hard lockdown, I doubt I would have written this book
when I had. And I doubt I would have written such a fine, cohesive work
were it not for the strength, resilience, clarity of mind and purpose I
received from God.
But there were also earthly and seen entities who immensely
contributed to the conception, shape and direction of this book. Perhaps
let us start from the beginning. It all started with an unexpected phone
call in August 2018 from an old friend, Dr Bongani Ngqulunga, the
Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) at
the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He briefed me on the institute’s
and the university’s flagship project he was coordinating, the ‘African
Biographies Project’. He had recruited a corps of South African
scholars to research and write biographies of South Africans who
have contributed significantly to our current dispensation of freedom
and democracy from various fronts. In a way of recruiting me, he
had proposed that I write a biography of a well-known ANC activist.
Wetting my lips with enthusiasm, he had quickly interjected, ‘But wait.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Dan Qeqe from Port Elizabeth?
What fascinates me about him is how a living black man had a stadium
xi
named after him at the height of apartheid.’ And that was my entry
point.
An old friend in Oxford during my student days once told me that a
book is as good, and as bad, as its editor. I wish to extend here this saying
to its publisher and staff. Bridget Impey of Jacana Media was eager
about the book from the beginning. She gave me so much confidence
in my own writing, validating me in areas I never thought I was good at.
From the time she showed interest to now, it took over a year to turn the
first draft into this book. There was a gruelling review process, wherein
I took the book apart and put it together again; various editing phases
that focused on granular aspects of the book. And through it all, and
particularly through the editing prowess of Sean Fraser, I disentangled
writings I never thought I could. And through the work, efforts and
insights of Megan Mance, Kelly Ann Mawa, Shay Heydenrych and
Kiara Myburgh, the book turned out this way.
I understood two fieldwork research trips to the Eastern Cape in
March – April and October–November 2019. These were generously
funded by JIAS and administered by the superbly able and efficient
administrative staff there. I venture to single out Ms Emelia Kamena,
who explained, assisted administratively and with the finances, and
trouble-shot at snags during my fieldwork research trips.
Arriving in my hometown, Port Elizabeth / Gqeberha, I found a
coterie of old family friends and acquaintances who were only too eager
to help me. Mr Vuyisile (Ngconde / Togu) Kosana, an old family friend,
made the grand introductions that opened gates to networks of people
and institutions. But, most importantly, it was Mrs Pinky Nkanunu who
introduced me, directed me, briefed me on opportunities and dangers
to almost all the interviewees I interacted with in Port Elizabeth. Right
to the most minute details of the contacts, she choir-mastered my
interviews in Port Elizabeth. But it was mainly her enthusiasm for the
project that kept me going. If it was not for her, this book would not
have come out as lively as it is, at this time, without her.
I thank all the interviewees who gave of their time and energy to this
book. I thank Crosby ‘Winky’ Ximiya; Mveleli Ncula; McKenzie Sloti;
Thozamile Botha; Alan Zinn; Janet Cherry; Mkhuseli Jack; Lucky
‘Coach’ Mange; Mpumelelo ‘Sbhidla’ Majola; Silas Nkanunu; Phumla
xii
Acknowledgements
Qeqe; Mpumelelo Qeqe; Sinazo Vabaza; Thembela Vabaza; Thando

Manana; Gerald Majola; Jumartha Milase Majola; Kolekile Kwatsha;
Keke Pemba; Ngconde Balfour; Mncedi Mali; Weaver Qeqe; Nqaba
Mali; Ray Mali; Vusi & Nozuko Pikoli; Mthobi Tyamzashe; Lex Mpati;
Stone Sizani; Joe Maboyisi Mahala Mbiza; Sipho Tanana; Thami
Songongo; Themba Ludwaba; Amon Nyondo; Moki Cekisani; Barry
Sinuka; Andile Nyembezi; Harold & Sheila Wilson; Dan Ngcaphe;
Valence Watson; Cecil ‘Doc’ Somyalo; and Archie Mkele. Sadly, some
of these wonderful people passed on during the write-up of this book –
Silas Nkanunu; Jumartha Milase Majola; Crosby ‘Winky’ Ximiya; and
Sipho Tanana. May their souls rest in peace.
Thembile and Vuyo Matomela, the uncle and nephew duo, provided
me with the right research perspectives and insights in the middle of
my fieldwork research. It was a turn the research needed to take, at the
right time that it needed to take. Thozamile Botha gave me his holds-
unbarred critique of the first draft of the manuscript.
At the research institutes and libraries I worked in, I received the
most enthusiastic help from staffers. At the offices of the Herald,
Evening Post and Weekend Post – Black Tiso, in Port Elizabeth, a Mr
Mabece helped me mine over 186 newspaper articles. At the National
Heritage and Cultural Studies (NAHECS) at the University of Fort
Hare in Alice, I am indebted to Dr Mike Maamoe, the senior archivist,
and Lunga. At the King William’s Town Archival Depot, a small corner
unrecognised for its very rich material, I received the most patient care
from its staffers. At the Port Elizabeth Archival Depot in Greenacres,
they went out of their way to find documents for me although they had
just relocated to their new offices.
I thank friends and my family in Port Elizabeth and Alice who went
out of their way to link me with research contacts. I am particularly
grateful to Didi Resha, Nambitha Stofile, Lukhanyo Ntuthu, Zukisani
Resha, Lulama Mphalala and others I may have forgotten to mention.
It was a whirlwind of research and writing, and I thank you all.
xiii
Introduction
E
arly on the evening of 8 September 1975, Dan Qeqe stared up at
the headlights of all his cars flooding back at him. He had fetched
them from his home in the upmarket suburb of Thembalethu in
New Brighton, and driven them to the makeshift stadium in Veeplaas.1
Much the same had been done by all the other car-owning officials,
players and supporters of the four-year-old KwaZakhele Rugby Union
(Kwaru). Their vehicles had joined Qeqe’s to line the perimeter of the
temporary stadium and light up the field with their headlights. The
alpine-bright deluge provided adequate light for this night of a historic
game of rugby.
The short and stocky 46-year-old Qeqe, commissioned by Kwaru’s
executive committee, had flattened the ground, planted the grass,
built the grandstand, and fenced the ground using corrugated-iron
sheets. Some of the panels were new, but many had been bought from
scrapyards in the Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage areas. The stadium had
turned out a seating capacity of 6000.2
But all the makeshift plans belied a soulful extravagance. The night’s
game had been preceded by a series of political and legal tussles that
threatened to overshadow what the black people of Port Elizabeth held
dear. This was set to be a feast of rugby, the significance of which reached
far beyond the clear-cut simplicity of a single game. The effects were
already finding expression in the brewing local and national politics
and sociologies never before generated in modern sport.
Reeling from a ban on using the Zwide Stadium, a municipal sports
1
ground, Kwaru had had to quickly find a new stadium for their game,3
its tussles with the Port Elizabeth municipality ending in a bruising
court loss for Kwaru. The ban had been instigated by Kwaru and
the non-racial stance of the South African Rugby Union (SARU) in
refusing to lend its players to the Leopards, the state-owned black
rugby team of the South African African Rugby Board (SAARB), to
play in the British Lions tour of 1974.4
The event of this night – a South Africa (SA) Cup Final match
between Kwaru and the Tygerberg Rugby Union (TYRU) of Cape
Town, simply known as Tygerberg – had special meaning, lending to a
new sense of people’s ownership, of community representation, black
pride, the defiance of an oppressive political authority, all for the love
of non-racial rugby. The SA Cup was sponsored by SARU. Having
changed its name from the Rhodes Cup in 1971, SARU’s premier SA
Cup was sponsored by Atkinson Motors in Cape Town.5
Shebeens, taverns, dancehalls and various other entertainment
centres in Veeplaas, New Brighton and other townships had closed
for the night. Many had clamoured to the makeshift stadium. Others
had turned on their radios in the comfort of their homes to listen to
the Radio Xhosa broadcast of the game.6 Rather than risk having to
settle for uncomfortable seating or standing spots at the ground, many
spectators had hurried to take their seats immediately after returning
from work. Some had arrived promptly after completing their chores
and other daily responsibilities.7
Mrs Jumartha Milase Majola, Qeqe’s long-time friend and
neighbour, and director of the Ivan Peter Youth Club in New Brighton,8
had, along with Mrs Rose Qeqe and friends, prepared hot meals for
the administrators and dignitaries. Abdul Abbas, president of the non
racial SARU, was in town, accompanied by senior SARU officials.
Other sports and political struggle dignitaries had come from even
further afield.
Methods of gate keeping and entrance-fee collection were as
improvised as the temporary grounds. Qeqe and Kwaru officials,
with hats in hand, made their way around the fence collecting money
and, despite no visible gate, spectators dutifully paid their gate fees.
Some of the money collected came in as donations from non-racial
2
Introduction
rugby lovers who had come from towns and cities of the Eastern Cape
to watch the game9 – all in support of continuing with the building
of the new stadium. For other non-racial sports liberation activists,
Qeqe’s erection of a stadium made a clear and profound statement:
‘that actually you don’t need to have everything before you do things.
Look at me, I’m doing it. I’m building a stadium’.10
The Kwaru executive committee, to be seated on the grandstand
with Qeqe, who was not in the executive committee, moved around,
finalising preparations for the game. Arthur Sipho ‘Mono’ Badela –
president of Kwaru, charismatic, politically active, and a ‘true blue
African National Congress (ANC) man’11 – turned up in a suit, as he
almost always did. As a journalist on Port Elizabeth’s Evening Post,
Mono Badela had defiantly defined Kwaru’s non-racial stand against
the local and national state onslaught over the past four years.11
Seated on the grandstand was the rest of the Kwaru executive:
vice-president Wilkinson M Maku, treasurer Newman Grawana,
secretary-general Samuel Nghona, assistant secretary Bruce Mahonga,
recording secretary Daliwonga Siwisa, match secretary Koks Mtwa,
chairman Lawrence Jack, trustees Thomas Sullo and Morris Peta,
senior selectors Sipho Nozewu (also coach) and Hamilton Madikane,
and junior selectors James Mtanga and Zweli Wabana.12
Despite the festive mood, Qeqe, Badela and the Kwaru executive
committee looked on pensively. This was going to be a record-setting
game in various ways: not only to clinch Kwaru’s playing prowess by
winning the SA Cup for the first time, but also to redeem itself from a
self-inflicted shame of the previous year’s SA Cup Final match against
Western Province. Perhaps as an act of desperation in a tough, neck
and-neck SA Cup Final in 1974 and in apparent protest at an award to
Western Province of an easy penalty point right in front of the posts,
Kwaru’s Themba ‘Sgabadula’13 Ludwaba, a scrumhalf and flanker,14
had sat on the ball mid play time, refusing to let Western Province kick
the penalty ball to the goal post.15 The 1974 final match produced no
winner, and the trophy was shelved. In all likelihood, Western Province,
which had had straight SA Cup wins since 1971,16 would have won.
Ludwaba, regarded as an ‘outstanding achiever,’17 was an amazingly
tall player, fiercely muscled, agile and a terror to any rival team.
3
Nonetheless, his mischievous antic on the field had cost Kwaru, ending
with disciplinary action at the table of SARU administrators.18 Qeqe
and the Kwaru executive committee, sitting on the grandstand on
match day in September 1975, were eager to redeem Kwaru’s standing.
The ground’s seating capacity of 6000 had swiftly swelled to about
20 000. Milling around the grandstand and all around the corrugated-
iron fence, spectators erupted in awe and excitement at the ‘Rolling
Maul.’19 This was the pinnacle of the Kwaru team’s showmanship – a
grand entrance akin to a long, fast-moving worm, with the ball moving
fast from one player to the next. It was also executed as a winning
movement towards scoring at a try line.20
Peter Mkata, part of the Rolling Maul, was Kwaru’s premium
favourite alongside Ludwaba. Mkata began playing for Kwaru in the
early 1970s as a centre and fullback, but proved to be a brilliant fly-
back. An elusive but direct runner, his excellence lay in tackling, well
supported by his nimbleness and a brilliant sense of participation.21
Also part of Kwaru’s force was A Lefume, a scrumhalf (known as
Zanemvula and nicknamed Kenya) from Ginsberg, King William’s
Town, and ‘his performance at scrumhalf was noteworthy’.22 Another
crowd favourite was Wilfred Khovu, Kwaru’s front-ranker.23
Qeqe himself – from New Brighton – had honed his rugby-
playing skills and fitness from 1961 when he joined the Spring Rose
Rugby Football Club. Welile Jeremiah ‘Bhomza’ Nkohla, another Port
Elizabethan in the team and another of Kwaru’s favourites, played club
rugby in the Kwaru-affiliated Orientals Rugby Football Club. His well-
rooted role in the team was as eighth man.24 Ntonga ‘Stix’ Singata,
Kwaru’s flyhalf, was another popular player from the Kwaru-affiliated
Walmer Wales Rugby Football Club.25
Tygerberg, of course, boasted its own star line-up. JP Jeposa was
a well-honed and experienced hooker,26 with Peter Jooste, one of the
most experienced Tygerberg players, coming in as a lock.27 Millen
Petersen was a strong scrumhalf who was considered ‘strong and
sure’,28 particularly in his long, accurate passes. Another prominent
Tygerberg lock who graced the field against Kwaru was Daniel ‘Spook’
September.29
As the game went on, at a neck-and-neck pace, Qeqe’s tough
4
Introduction
training and coaching regimen, placing a premium on physical fitness,

stamina and endurance, gave the Kwaru team an edge over Tygerberg.
However, in the second half of the game, it was Kwaru’s Ntonga ‘Stix’
Singata who secured Kwaru’s win with a final score of 15–9. Not
long after Singata’s winning try, the game was over. For the first time,
SARU’s youngest and first black affiliate had won the SA Cup. And,
with Singata’s score, Kwaru had redeemed itself.
The triumph of that night, however, huddled alongside the fear of
what might have happened. Qeqe or Badela or any of Kwaru’s executive
committee members and administrators could have been arrested and
thrown into jail for their defiance in playing non-racial rugby. Even
worse, their actions could have been seen as a dastardly and daring
appropriation of land in order to defy the laws of the state. Louis Koch,
chief director of the Cape Midlands Bantu Affairs Administration
Board, had already tried to sabotage the building of the stadium, but
had failed against the fury and determination of Qeqe.30
Fortunately, the Security Branch did not, however, swoop in on
them. Instead, the wild, uproarious cheers heralded an incredible feat,
an achievement that had never been seen before in South Africa. This
was a new phenomenon, the start of the journey of one community
stepping beyond the crosscurrents of the social, cultural, political and
sporting worlds. A new era of Kwaru rugby had been launched, one that
sought to consolidate the organisation’s iconic status as one of black
pride, a culture of political defiance, and an expression of community
cohesion. These attributes all coalesced around the amazingly selfless
acts of Dan Qeqe.
That night, Qeqe, Kwaru’s executive and all the players and
administrators moved on to David Mbane’s business premises,
Melisizwe Butchery, for celebrations. Mbane, Qeqe’s contemporary
on the rugby field, had played for Eastern Province in the 1950s and
1960s,31 as well as in the major African Cup competitions of that time.32
In his playing days, he was considered ‘the mobile and tough Eastern
Province forward’.33 But on that evening of Kwaru’s victory, he was one
of Spring Rose’s administrators, a prominent businessman, and served
with Qeqe on the Port Elizabeth Joint Bantu Advisory Board.34
Monumental gate takings of R11 578 had been further cause for
5
celebration.35 In the room above Melisizwe Butchery36, Abbas named

the makeshift stadium ground the Dan Qeqe Stadium. Standing to
address the crowd, he said, ‘I want you to adopt that name and leave it to
the authorities to remove it even if by forcing us to play in the streets.’37
And so, inadvertently, Qeqe had lived up to the meaning of his middle
name, ‘Dumile’, meaning, ‘famous’. At the height of apartheid, this
black man had come to have an entire stadium, built on land literally
appropriated by the people, named after him. This was the beginning
of a journey of challenges, joys, fears, loss, pain and history-making for
Dan Qeqe and the people of Port Elizabeth.
Early onE morning in 1989, slightly after 1 am, I sat hunched over a
typewriter at the dining table. My face was already stinging from my
grandfather’s imminent hot slap.
‘Kunini?’ asked my grandfather in his trademark clipped, staccato
voice, piercing anger glistening in his eyes. Love and wrath lived not
in his mouth, but in his eyes. His kunini meant, in this case, ‘how
many times?’ rather than the direct isiXhosa–English translation
of ‘how long?’ I had no room to lie, nor to run. And my saviour, my
grandmother, was fast asleep at the far end of the long passage.
I had been completely unaware of his presence, and by the time I
caught sight of him hovering over me across the table it was too late.
Caught up in the frenzy of the clacking, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap of the
typewriter, I hadn’t realised he had been there all along. Only when I
pushed the carriage return lever, rattling on, to begin typing a new line,
did I realise I had been caught red-handed. He had been waiting for
me to spot him, for me to realise I had been caught in an act of theft. I
was cornered in a nasty jive, with no room to spin a lie. The beast was
right there in front of me, nestled in the embrace of my arms, and the
imposing dining table blocked any swift exit.
‘Kunini?’ Leaning against the wall in his navy-blue bathrobe, his
arms folded over his chest, he stared at me.
‘Many times, tata. Many times,’ I said.
‘How many times have I told you not to touch this typewriter?’ his
voice rose.
‘Many times, tata.’
6
Introduction
My answer sought to placate, concerned only with how to save

myself from the slap that was bound to follow. I gasped, the heat
rising to my face in the knowledge that I had been bust. It had never
entered my mind that my trysts with the typewriter would ever be
found out. It had been close to a month since I had first embarked
on these stolen moments. And I had grown too comfortable. I had
mastered the safety drills: wait until everyone had gone to sleep, then
close the door separating the living area from the master bedroom and
the other rooms, aided by a door shutting off the long passage and
separating myself from them. But I did not take into account that the
loud typewriter, clacking and squelching, would bring him to attention
on his way to take a leak at 1 in the morning.
‘I told you many times, this typewriter is not mine. It belongs to
Kwaru. It has been entrusted to me as the secretary of Kwaru. If it
breaks in your hands, I will be responsible for its repairs. And the repairs
will be expensive. Are you going to pay for them? No.’ His voice had
reached a distinctive bark. I was not yet out of the woods. This was only
the beginning. My nabbed thief ’s play at appearing remorseful, coy,
and responsibly attentive all in one breath was a delicate balancing act.
It was in how I had to angle my eyes, dip and raise my head, and what
– and how – I said in response that would count. And an indication of
the outcome lay in measuring the cadence of his voice. At the height
of his screech, I rested. I was still safe. But at the incline of his voice,
teetering towards silence, and the shuffle of his feet, it was game over.
This was not the time to remind him I had told him that I wanted to
be a writer, which was why he had caught me mindlessly typing out an
extract from Upbeat, my favourite youth magazine, that of the United
Democratic Front (UDF). I had resorted to theft simply because of his
notoriety for saying ‘no’ to 99.9 per cent of my requests.
But those other requests were always momentary desires, hazy
wants spurred on by fleeting triggers – of whole pork sausages all to
myself, taking his car for a spin, travelling to see my biological father
in exile in Zimbabwe. But writing, and writing on that typewriter, was
something else altogether. It was a fixed, constant, unyielding need. I
had seen him tapping away on it, his tongue clipped sideways between
his teeth, clucking on the keys with two pointed index fingers. It had
7
been a one … one, two … one, two, three … three, four … one … one
… clack and tap.
He worked on it against the background of his personal library: At
the End of the Day (a volume of Harold Macmillan’s memoirs at No.
10 Downing Street), Working for Boroko, Communism Today magazines,
an essay collection on pan-Africanism, a collection of interviews with
African writers edited by Lewis Nkosi and published by Voice of
America, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Matigari, a host of other titles in the
African Writers Series, numerous Shakespeare volumes, some Charles
Dickens, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, a DH Lawrence, Geoffrey
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a scholarly biography of Julius Caesar,
textbooks on English grammar, journalism and economics, a freshly
printed and unbound draft copy of Benjamin Pogrund’s How Can Man
Die Better, a thick directory of African universities, and a slew of copies
of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
I had marvelled at the spell his sentences had over me: relaxed, full-
bodied, luxurious and languid in their completeness. My sentences
were hurried, staggering, out of breath, panicky and, at times,
incomplete. And, on that morning of the imminent hot slap, I did not
tell him that that image had stuck with me. So, in the insistent presence
of his notorious ‘no’, I decided to steal Kwaru’s typewriter.
My resolve to be a writer had that year been further firmed up.
Astonished, I came across my own name printed on the spine of a book.
I saw it again capitalised and typed in bold in the top left corner of my
isiXhosa Literature examination paper. My other elder grandfather,
LK Siwisa (in isiXhosa, there is no ‘grand-uncle’ or ‘great-uncle’)
from Ngqushwa/Peddie, had written Ndibuzen’ Amathongo (Ask Me
of Dreams), a collection of short stories. First published in 1950, its
10th edition of 1985 was that year one of the prescribed fiction texts
for Standard Six (Grade Eight) in our region. And from then, I knew
that my hope of making this writing enterprise work for me was a
reachable dream.
‘Put that thing away and go to bed!’ It was over. That was the end
of it. The hot slap had been withdrawn. I swiftly packed the typewriter
back into its hard black plastic casing and tucked it away where I had
found it, under a chair in the dining room. I went to bed, mighty glad
8
Introduction
that I had narrowly avoided a hot slap. That night, I firmly resolved that
I would never touch that typewriter again, nor ever write again.
As I tucked myself into bed, I was less concerned about Kwaru. I
didn’t think about Kwaru simply because there was nothing to think
about. Kwaru was part of the community furniture. Everyone talked
about it. It was everywhere. For a long time, it never occurred to me
that Kwaru was not a real word, but rather an acronym. It was a name I
saw beneath an insignia of a lively and rather cheeky rhinoceros on my
grandfather’s green blazer. It was a name I associated with Dan Qeqe, a
friend and associate of my grandfather’s who came over to our house to
engage him on adult business I couldn’t care less about.
I never thought that the friendly, loud, talkative Dan Qeqe – the
old man who dressed rather dourly, like a nondescript door-to-door
insurance salesman on a lunch break, without a tie and jacket – was
one of the wealthiest and most popular men in Port Elizabeth. I didn’t
associate him with the people’s struggles. It never entered my mind
that those adult talks had been shaping the political, cultural and sports
liberation of the peoples of Port Elizabeth in profound ways.
It is my hope that this book will illuminate, in far-reaching ways,
those conversations, those engagements on the journeys of Dan Qeqe
and the struggles, joys and achievements of the people of Port Elizabeth.
In whichever ways one views Qeqe’s biography, it is a reflection of a
social, political and sporting history of the people of Port Elizabeth, the
Eastern Cape and South Africa. It is a reflection of the life and times
of a man, with all the histories and contradictions that come with any
individual and his community.
And it is now, in something of a gaping irony, that I return to an
entity I swore to never have anything to do with 32 years ago. Now
I find myself committed to a biography of Dan Qeqe – a history of
resistance against the injustices of apartheid, and the road to triumph
of non-racial rugby embedded in the struggles of Kwaru. This was a
struggle only yielding to us now, following the spectacular success of
Siya Kolisi, Solly Tyibilika and Mzwandile Stick (Stokololo). Back
then, it was an impossible dream bulldozed into reality by Dan Qeqe
and his associates in Kwaru.
Dan Qeqe is a living history. His life story stands on its own, but it
9
is also a living history of Port Elizabeth and the Eastern Cape. His story
has gone largely unnoticed, chronicled in scattered titbits of writings
on the history of black rugby and the liberation of sport. Qeqe’s story
reflects the social and political history of Port Elizabeth and the region
in a far more impactful and intimate manner than that of the city’s
political luminaries Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. His life and
times are embedded in the city’s landscape, in popular memory of local
anti-apartheid struggles.
The story of his life is a work of creativity – how he wrestled with
the institutions he largely inherited in order to mould his destiny and
that of his community. In many ways, he would not stand out as anyone
of real biographical interest were it not for the embeddedness of the
city and the region in him. The inverse equally holds true: the histories
of the city and the region would not have come to pass as they have
had it not been for his own contributions and sacrifices. He carried the
multiple identities of various black social groups. His is the life story of
what these social groups forged in him.
Despite the abundance of primary texts, oral histories and memories,
Dan Qeqe’s story remains untold in any cohesive published form. In
writing his biography, I have come across staggering historical accounts
within a vast array of sources. I recorded 36 in-depth interviews with his
family, extended family, former associates in sports liberation, politics,
and civic organisations in Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, Fort Beaufort,
Alice, East London and Pretoria, and even in Berlin, Germany. I could
have effortlessly doubled the number of interviews had I not reached
the opimum utility value.
From various archival depots in Port Elizabeth, King William’s
Town, Pretoria, Cape Town and Alice, I collected material on the
history of sports liberation, of the politics of Port Elizabeth and the
broader region, and of Qeqe’s background in Fort Beaufort. The
sources ranged from the National Archives of South Africa in Pretoria,
the Mayibuye Archives at the University of the Western Cape (UWC)
in Cape Town, the National Heritage and Cultural Studies (NAHECS)
archives at the University of Fort Hare in Alice, the King William’s
Town Archival Depot and the Port Elizabeth Archives. I collected no
fewer than 186 newspaper articles in Port Elizabeth and East London.
10
Introduction
The conceptual framework for this biography demanded some

sense of scholarly rigour, resting as it does between the socio-historical
and humanistic tradition of biography writing. As a historical–
sociological biography it seeks to conceptualise Qeqe as an individual,
as well as a social and political being. It explores the significance of
his subjective experiences through an analytic interpretation of his
past through primary texts, secondary texts, oral testimonies and
memories.
The humanistic tradition seeks to activate the reader’s imagination,
as they begin to better understand the multilayered depictions of
Qeqe. It draws the reader into the text in an interactive manner. They
unpack Qeqe’s heroisms, the falsities, victories, setbacks, sacrifices,
idiosyncrasies, limitations and inaccuracies. In that way, Dan Qeqe is
inevitably revealed in many ways.
This work on DaniEl Dumile Qeqe (1929–2005) is divided into

three parts, the sense and logic of which are foregrounded in the
understanding that, as much as this is a biographical study, it is also
a stab at understanding the social and political history of the people
of Port Elizabeth. And so it should inevitably be, considering that the
sporting, civic, cultural and political obstacles Qeqe encountered in his
life encapsulated the struggles and hopes of ordinary black residents of
his community. Furthermore, the sequence of this book is chronological,
revolving around key years. These are theme-centralising years, critical
in the activities that shaped Dan Qeqe and those around him.
The partition, informing the separation of the different parts of
the book, illuminates the themes that principally revolve around
and thus shaped Qeqe’s life and his community. Part One covers the
history of black rugby in Port Elizabeth and the Eastern Cape, from
the arrival of the British settlers in 1820 to 1971, the year in which
the KwaZakhele Rugby Union (Kwaru) was founded. Chapter 1: The
History of Black Rugby (1820–1955): The Age of Innocence examines
the political, cultural and social forces that birthed and gave shape to
black rugby in Port Elizabeth and elsewhere in the Eastern Cape. The
years 1820 to 1955 cover what may be referred to as the ‘innocent age’
of the historical development of black rugby, before the politicisation
11
of sport from 1955. Recognising local black clubs as the sprouting force
of black rugby, this chapter examines the history of black rugby clubs
in Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and East London, and the cultural,
intellectual and social forces that gave them definition. Chapter 2: The
History of Black Rugby (1956–1971): The Age of Politics takes a closer
look at the development of rugby in Port Elizabeth, and how individuals
meandered through the harsh political and social environment facing
them in those developmental years. More importantly, it gives a
revisionist account that seeks to offer a sober assessment of how
apolitical forces shaped black rugby, when dominant historical accounts
tend to give too much credence to the overarching political influences
over rugby and sport in general.
Part Two of the book covers both the biographical narrative of Dan
Qeqe’s life from the time of his birth in 1929 to the formation of Kwaru
in 1971. Chapter 3: Qeqe Begins (1929–1950s): The Roots narrates
Qeqe’s personal history, from his formative years in Fort Beaufort, his
schooling and early sporting experiences there and in Port Elizabeth.
More importantly, it sheds light on some of the political contradictions
he came to inhabit: the politically conservative, ethno-nationalist,
black consciousness, and progressive community builder, and how
they balanced and unbalanced him. Chapter 4: Qeqe in Port Elizabeth
(1950s–1971) covers his teaching, his sport and his uneasy foray into
entrepreneurship. It searches for the enduring influences around him,
those that directed him toward political and social justice, and so helped
carve his civic, political and sporting ventures.
Part Three covers the rest of Qeqe’s adult life, from 1971 to 2006, the
year he passed away. Chapter 5: The Accidental Birth of the KwaZakhele
Rugby Union: (1950s–1971) gathers together scattered documented
material, analytical secondary material, and new oral accounts on the
formation of Kwaru. The founding of Kwaru exists only in widely
dispersed forms, scarcely documented and, in many instances, only as
oral accounts. The latter is perhaps most problematic in that it brings
out a populist Kwaru modern history based on loyalties, and often
incorrect understandings of the role and extent of political influences.
So this section attempts to correct that historical narratrive, and also
bring to the fore a more revisionist account of the role of Qeqe, his
12
Introduction
associates, both hostile and friendly, in the formation of Kwaru.

Chapter 6: ‘Up Kwaru!’ moves on to outline the far-reaching social,
cultural, sporting and political influences Kwaru brought to bear in
Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa and internationally.
Equally, it examines how these developments led to the building of the
Dan Qeqe Stadium by the people of Port Elizabeth, and named after a
living black man at the height of apartheid. More importantly, Chapter
7: Building eDan Qeqe offers a fresh, new and profound take on how the
stadium came to stand as a monument to defiance against apartheid, an
iconic symbol of black pride, and instrumental in carrying out practical
anti-apartheid struggle activities.
Kwaru collapsed from inside, and Chapter 8: The First Implosion
(1977) … examines just how Kwaru managed to self-destruct, and
the role Qeqe played in that. There is careful unpacking of the rather
divisive oral historical accounts and documented history in order to
make a sober assessment of the implosion of Kwaru. This chapter
covers the so-called coup d’état of Kwaru’s first executive committee,
the forces that had led to that, and the organisational and political
ambience that fostered this eruption from within. Chapter 9: …
and the Second Implosion (1982) examines how the final implosion
of Kwaru in 1982 stemmed directly from the remnants of that first
implosion of 1977. It also examines how the political turbulence of
the 1980s further cultivated the atmosphere of organisational chaos
that eventually killed Kwaru.
The following two chapters narrate the political influences of Qeqe
on the Port Elizabeth of the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter 10: Qeqe and
Port Elizabeth in the 1970s takes a hard look at the contribution Qeqe
made to the development of the education of the black child in the city,
completely revolutionising the educational system and infrastructure.
These were acts conceived through challenges and in isolation. The
chapter also narrates the political sacrifices he made in a turbulent Port
Elizabeth mired in the revolutionary upheavals of the Soweto of 16 June
1976, and the aftermath of the murder of Steve Biko. Similarly, Chapter
11: Qeqe and Port Elizabeth in the 1980s examines the contributions
Qeqe made to the changing Port Elizabeth of the 1980s. The concluding
chapter, Chapter 12: Qeqe Rests: The Legacy examines the last years of
13
Qeqe’s life in the 1990s, his final contributions to the construction of a

new, post-apartheid era, and the legacies he bequeathed Port Elizabeth,
the Eastern Cape and South Africa in the arena of sport, civic life and
politics.
14
PART ONE
(1820–1971)
1
The History of Black Rugby
(1820–1955): The Age of
Innocence
‘T
ry me, says PE’s Dan’. So read the headline of the Herald of
13 January 1976.1 A beaming Dan Qeqe stooped beneath the
headline, complete in the white flannels of cricket wear, and a
black cap. Posing with a cricket bat, the shadow of his home silhouetting
his batting pose, the smile he wore belied his anger. ‘Try me.’ As
reported by the Herald, Dan Qeqe had challenged Joe Pamensky:
A Port Elizabeth ex-provincial black cricket player, Mr Dan Qeqe,

has issued a single wicket cricket challenge to South African boss,
Mr Joe Pamensky, following Mr Pamensky’s remark on Tuesday
that blacks ‘don’t seem to have the aptitude and ability’ to become
good cricketers.2
In print, it was an annoyance only captured by the headline’s strapline:

‘Qeqe throws Pamensky cricket gauntlet.’ On that January morning of
1976, Mveleli Ncula, a former Eastern and Kwaru player, and former
CEO of SA Rugby,3 recalled in precise detail how Qeqe had hurriedly
17
put together arrangements for the picture to accompany the press

article. ‘I remember, he called a coloured guy who used to come and
take photos at Kwaru, to come and take that photo there … I mean, he
had stopped playing long ago. He put on his white flannels and also this
cap, and then, “Try me” … I remember that very well.’4
It was showmanship, a show of fury, responding to a racist remark
made by Joe Pamensky, the South African cricket boss, at a lunch-hour
talk to students at Rand Afrikaans University. To Pamensky, black
cricketers had inherently inferior cricket skills compared to white
cricketers, and there was nothing, he felt, that could be done about
it. Such remarks had left enduring imprints on the black cricketers’
socio-psychological perceptions of race and cricket. In 1978, a horde
of coloured and Indian cricketers had moved en masse from their non
racial fold, the Transvaal Cricket Board (TCB), to the white controlling
body, the Transvaal Cricket Union (TCU, all in the hope that they
would play alongside famous white cricketers, like Graeme Pollock.5
Qeqe, then treasurer of the United Cricket Club in Port Elizabeth,
had confidently continued that, ‘Mr Pamensky’s sweeping statement
is shocking. I would like to challenge him to play me in a single wicket
competition … He and I are the same age and even though I am at a
disadvantage – as a youngster, I had no coaches and no nets – through
inborn merit I will win.’6 He also bemoaned the inadequate sports
infrastructure in black township schools. At Newell, the oldest black
high school in New Brighton, which catered for nearly 2000 students,
there was a glaring absence of a cricket pitch.7
The racial segmentation – based on purportedly natural sporting
abilities ascribed to particular race groups – is well documented in the
proclamations of the apartheid government, and there were doggedly
consistent assertions seeking to legitimise the ideological and policy
bases for the existence of unequal sports platforms for South Africa’s
racial groups. For instance, the Official Year Book for South Africa in
1974 boldly maintained that:
… from time immemorial the Whites, the Coloureds, the Indian

community and the various Bantu peoples have administered
and practised their sports separated at all levels of competition.
18
The History of Black Rugby (1820–1955): The Age of Innocence
Moreover, it is only comparatively recently that the Bantu peoples

have shown marked interest in what may be called modern sporting
activities. For centuries they have found their recreation in tribal
activities, such as hunting, tribal dances – even faction fights.8
Douglas Booth and John Nauright further propounded on both

colonialism’s and apartheid’s effects on the racial segmentation of
sports abilities in South Africa:
Notwithstanding sports traditional association with merit and the

sports field as free from arbitrary social division, the apartheid
state, and indeed its predecessor, applied formulas to the sporting
realm and segregated blacks. Later, in propaganda, the apartheid
state justified discrimination on the grounds that modern sport was
alien to black culture.9
Pamensky’s nakedly racist remark was nurtured by apartheid, ‘a

system unlike any other in the world whose every function turns on the
pernicious factor of racism’.10 Apartheid ensured white supremacy in
sport through the overarching principle of separate development, best
encapsulating apartheid’s sports policy that ‘[the] first aim of the sports
policy is given as “the maintenance of the white population in South
Africa through and within the policy of separate development’’’.11
When it came to modern sports, apartheid had anchored its
discriminatory practices on three pieces of legislation: the Natives
Urban Areas Act of 1923, as amended in 1945; the Group Areas Act of
1950; and the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953.12 And it
was particularly the Donges13 policy proclamation in 1956 that began
the politicisation and official racism of sports policies in South Africa.14
The genesis of Pamensky’s racism, however, harkened way back to
the nineteenth century with the reach of the British Empire. As Philani
Nongogo noted, ‘Institutionalised racism in South Africa and the
country’s sport did not start in 1948. It was preceded by colonialism
and racism, which brought the colour bar policies,’15 latching on to
Victorian England’s project – as instrumental agents of public schools
and in church missions established in the colonies – of spreading the
control of the British Empire.
19
Racism in nineteenth-century South African sport was not driven

entirely by government, but rather by white colonial voluntary sports
organisations. Colin du Plessis delineated how, separately, colonialism,
imperialism and apartheid each outlined and established the framework
of racism in local sport. Each political era offloaded its own burdens of
racism on sport, with apartheid finally cementing the racist foundations
laid earlier. Du Plessis argued that:
Modern society has the inclination to credit Apartheid with the

divisions of South African sport. Though the harsh policies and
legislation of Apartheid undoubtedly added to sporting division, it
was not solely responsible for segregating sport in South Africa –
this would be giving Apartheid too much credit.16
Sport, race and the spread of control by the British Empire in its
colonies were thus interrelated.17 The economic priorities of the
Victorian era, under the influence of both the French and the Industrial
revolutions, placed a premium on maximising productivity. To achieve
this, forms of social control and the regimentation of labour were
required. Industrial employers therefore encouraged participation in
organised team sports as a means of social control. It was thus a way of
keeping workers from drinking, gambling and enaging in other social
activities detrimental to maximising labour productivity.18
Through English public schools, the British Empire sought to
groom white bourgeois leadership among schoolboys, a leadership that
would be able to deal authoritatively with its working-class underlings.
This class-based form of social control of the ‘other’ – taught on
the sports fields – had, however, filtered through to the need for the
control of ‘other’ racial groups in the colonies. In the absence of the
class system to which they were accustomed in Britain, the mandate in
the colonies had metamorphosed from one of class to race. Du Plessis
remarked:
It is on the sports field where the young middle-class Briton learns

how to govern not only himself, but also those that were ‘destined’
to be under British rule. And the young middle-class imperialists
were taught these values and morals on the flowing green grass of
20
the English public school, which would be expanded to the colonies

of the Empire. This class-specific social indoctrination would
lead to the division of society along class lines and subsequently
along racial lines when applied to the colonial context and to the
interaction with the so-called ‘other.’19
And so it was that racism in nineteenth-century sport preceded state-

sanctioned racism. In this colonial setting, sports organisations found
expression in inter- and intra-ethnically divided groups.20 Sport
in colonial South Africa thus shaped formations of social identity,
imagined communities, invented traditions and cultural hegemony.21
These served to ‘create loyalties and social identities within different
classes and conflicts between them that would permeate and persist in
the decades that followed’.22
It was in the Port Elizabeth–Grahamstown districts of the 1800s
that the foundations of black rugby were laid. Between 1820 and the
1870s, particular political events – and the social permutations they
engineered – unwittingly forged the emergence of black rugby: the
arrival of British settlers in Grahamstown in 1820, and the conclusion
in 1879 of the Frontier Wars. All the while, the British were steadfast
in their determination to consolidate the control of the British Empire
in South Africa.
The end of the Frontier Wars in 1879 came with a devastating defeat
for amaXhosa. Confronted by loss of land and thus livelihood, many
amaXhosa families were compelled to seek livelihoods as labourers in
cities and towns in the Eastern Cape. This augured well for the grand
project of the British Empire of consolidating its control over the
Eastern Cape, and maximising economic benefits from the area and its
people. This form of control over the African population also meant
cultural assimilation into everything British, bringing with it not only
new urban settlement, but also cultural identity permutations for
Africans, which inevitably meant the passing of colonial institutional
values to new hybridised forms of urban black identities.
Team sports were a crucial element of the Empire’s assimilation
project. Wittingly or unwittingly, it gave rise to new urban black
identities in which black rugby sprouted. Attesting to the enduring
21
impact of colonial institutional values on modern sport in South Africa,

Tarminder Kaur and Gerard Akindes pointed out that:
Contemporary Africa and sports are tied to the colonial past of the
continent. Introduction of ‘modern’ sports in Africa is intrinsically
connected to Europe’s colonial project and the agents thereof,
including the army, the school system and the religious missions.
Regardless of governing ideologies, modern sports played an
important role in simultaneously separating and incorporating
the colonisers and the colonised into racial, social, material and
political folds.23
The arrival of the British settlers in Port Elizabeth in 1820 introduced

the game of rugby to Africans.24 Having, for the most part, settled in
and around Grahamstown, some of the settlers finally returned to Port
Elizabeth, with the mandate of constructing the city’s harbour. This
all formed part of the Empire’s trade mission to link South Africa to
its international trade routes. And so British engineers, technicians
and mechanics flooded into Port Elizabeth. During their lunch breaks,
they relieved the stress of work by means of informal games of social
rugby,25 and it was on these occasions that they requested their African
co-workers to join them.
These observer–participants quickly picked up the rudimentary
rules and regulations of the game, resulting in an unintentional pattern
of learning for Africans. This pattern subsequently spread among other
racial groups equally unfamiliar with the game of rugby. History would
repeat itself in a similar initiation experience later when, at the end of
the South African War (1899–1902), Afrikaners were first exposed to
rugby in prisoner of war (POW) camps on St Helena, and in Ceylon,
India and Bermuda. There, some 24 000 POW Afrikaners observed and
learnt the intricacies of rugby.26 Dean Allen explained:
At a time when the Empire advanced its interests under the

banner of development and civilization, the progress of indigenous
communities still lay in the assimilation and incorporation into
‘things’ British. Sport, and team games in particular, were an
integral part of this assimilation process.27
22
To the British, this was a gravely important element of social

development and cultural assimilation, laying the foundations of the
Empire’s control of its colonies. Officially, and among white people,
the first game of rugby was played in South Africa on 23 August 1862.
Chronicled in the Cape Argus, it had been organised by Bishop’s
College Canon George Ogilvie, and played between teams of officers
of the Eleventh Regiment and a Civil Service XV at Green Point in
Cape Town.28
By the mid-1870s, rugby union matches in the Cape Colony had
become commonplace.29 By then, however, rugby had also caught
on among the African population. By then, too, of course, the end
of the nine Frontier Wars in the Eastern Cape had had significant
ramifications for the new permutations of African urban resettlements.
The Mfengu, Gcaleka and other amaXhosa sub-ethnic groups carried
with them the inter-ethnic hostilities and subsequently transposed
them to their new urban settings, resulting in sporadic clashes in and
around Port Elizabeth.
And so it is in this milieu – the quest to end inter-ethnic clashes, the
burgeoning of a black intelligentsia and the proliferation of churches
and schools – that the first black rugby clubs were birthed. A buoyant
and politically conscious black middle class, fast becoming embedded
in the new urban communities,30 had been ‘[growing] in numbers,
confidence and assertiveness,’31 a new black elite hewn out of a layer of
teachers, ministers, law agents, clerks, interpreters, storemen, transport
riders, blacksmiths, telegraph operators and printers.32 And by the
end of the 1880s, the first black cricket clubs, benefit societies, mutual
improvement associations and templars organisations had emerged in
Port Elizabeth.
The formation of rugby clubs in the black communities of
Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown was premised on the cross
fertilising influences and values of public schools, the Church, the
black intelligentsia and the middle class. The need for Africans to
systematically control and come up with an organisational conduct
of their own thus became political. To do this they appropriated
organisational systems of sports control by utilising the educational
skills and values, and the influence of the Church, to take control of
23
them by their own means and for their own ends. This need became
even more apparent after the passing of the Natives Land Act of 1913,
as well as other disempowering legislative framework and policies.
With the advent of the Union Government of 1910, Africans felt
an even greater need to adopt new forms of resistance to colonial rule.
These included adopting Western education, instituting formal political
organisations, converting to Christianity, and adopting modern sports
in order to respond to repressive legislation and policies.33
awarE of ThE valuEs of reconciliation and camaraderie inculcated into

the game of rugby, stewards of black Wesleyan Methodist, Presbyterian
and Ethiopian apostolic churches were mandated by their superiors
to form the first black rugby club in Port Elizabeth. As suggested
earlier, this was geared at, among other factors at play, discouraging
inter-ethnic hostilities, mainly expressed through bloody stick fights.34
Port Elizabeth’s first black rugby club, the Union Rugby Football Club,
was thus formed in 1887 in what was then known as KwaMpundu,
currently the upmarket suburb of Mill Park. Having been founded by
Messrs Mjo and Magaba and others, Union’s first fields were located in
KwaMpundu, as well as Maxambeni, now Richmond.35 It is speculated
that Josepie Orie Cedrass from Uitenhage, a founder member of the
Eastern Province Rugby Union (EPRU) in 1886, might have played a
significant role in the formation of Union RFC.36
The black intelligentsia had a marked effect on the organisational
outlook of Union RFC, with professionalism filtering through to
formal, precise organisational forms and procedures set in place for
the club. These came in the form of formal meetings, minute-keeping,
official correspondence, and the training of coaches, captains, linesmen
and referees.37 Church stewards subsequently passed on the mandate to
form other black rugby clubs in the region.
Initially, Union adopted the red, white and blue of the Union Jack.38
Later, however, it changed the colour of its jersey to white only, on
account of public taunts that the prominent red on its jerseys bore a
striking resemblance to the red jerseys of the jailed convicts. As a result,
the club became popularly known as ‘Whites’, but retained Union as
its formal name.
24
Rugby’s rootedness in Port Elizabeth’s black communities was

further reinforced by the equally cemented Church, with the position
of Christianity in the townships feeding the sport’s immersion into
black communities, lending to rugby an animated black existence. The
public school system and church rooted rugby, lending it an organic
black existence in Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown. Rugby in Port
Elizabeth came to represent the community from which it came. Du
Plessis remarked that:
Although sport shares many of the characteristics of a culture or

society, it is important to know that it is not external and shares
these from within. It is not removed or independent of society; it
does not stand on its own at a distance. Sport is not like society; it
is society … It is a fundamentally ingrained part of societal context
and in the same breath it has an influence in the societal context in
which it finds itself.39
The Church did not, however, assume only a spiritual and character-
building role; it also acquired a symbolic role as a shaper of the
institution. All meetings and matches were opened and closed with
formal prayers, and there were no matches on Sundays because
members were expected to attend church services.40
And so it was that the Church carried with it the social, symbolic
and cultural associations of the new urban black identities into rugby.
It was particularly the links between black rugby and black church
leadership – often served by the same members in their executive
committees – that lay the foundation for community ties with black
rugby clubs. This often found expression in the colours and symbolism
churches used. Thami Songongo explained this rugby–church nexus
as follows:
But there around the time when Spring Rose was born; the
Easterns; St Cyprian’s; you know, the Green Bucks, you will
discover that those people were Christians … Out of that church,
let us produce this club. Hence, if you observe the … rugby clubs
of Port Elizabeth are aligned to church colours … The Easterns you
are talking about, that red and black, is from Wesleyan [Methodist
25
Church]. St Cyprian’s, that black and white, is of St Cyprian’s

[Church] in Korsten. Spring Rose is from the Ethiopian Church
[green and white]. In fact, even the co-founder, Skefile, is a member
of the Ethiopian Church.41
Some Union members then helped form, in 1890, the Winter Rose Rugby
Football Club in Grahamstown, under the leadership of black graduates
from St Philip’s Mission School and the Kaffir Institute. Popularly
known as Indlov’Enebatha – ‘an elephant with knock-on knees’, with an
elephant on its insignia – it had a reputation as a teachers’ rugby club,42
its two main founders being Fana ‘Bush’ Manana and Reverend Walter
Tsotsobe.43
By 1894, the mandate of spreading the formation of black rugby
clubs using the Union format had proved to be successful. The
Orientals Rugby Football Club was founded in 1894 in Port Elizabeth,
in the KwaMpundu area. It fell under the founding leadership of C
Masoka, C Ngesi, G Nyathi, P Zozi, T Gwele, M Dwui, Z Ngcakazi, P
Daniels, J Mavava and D Sesanti.44
in ThE samE yEar, a group of players who worked at St Andrew’s

College in Grahamstown, mainly as waiters, were inspired by watching
the school’s white first team rugby matches and consequently formed
their own rugby team. Reverend White, a prominent staff member at
St Andrew’s, was moved enough to help them in their organisational
efforts. They named their club Lily White, after the reverend’s
daughter.45
Some players who had formed Lily White had come from Winter
Rose. This was to be the beginning of an enduring feature of black
rugby clubs – splits and breakaways. Nine years down the line, in
Grahamstown in 1903, a group of players formed the Wanderers Rugby
Football Club. And then, in 1905, another group broke away from
Winter Rose to reconstitute themselves as the Eastern Rugby Football
Club in Grahamstown.46 When a group of players were confined to the
second team of Winter Rose, they rebelled, convinced that they were
better than the first team. Disgruntled, they then challenged the first
team to a rugby match. On defeating the first team 3–0, they formed
26
their own rugby club, the Eastern Rugby Football Club.47 The new club
adopted a rhino as their insignia, an indication of their former link to
Winter Rose, whose insignia was an elephant.48
The first president of Eastern RFC was Mr Mjakamu, and it was in
his house in Grahamstown that the first club meeting was convened.
Mr Dumo became its first captain, and was also selected to play for
Eastern Province. In 1907, Easterns won the Chithumzi trophy against
Wanderers. Another championship trophy game against Winter Rose
held in Port Elizabeth ended in a draw.
By the end of the nineteenth century and into the first quarter of
the twentieth in the Eastern Cape, rugby had rooted itself in urban
black communities. ‘By the late nineteenth-century some Blacks had
adopted rugby as an element of their identity.’49 It had become a way of
life for communities. Dr Manona, one of the pioneers of black rugby
in Grahamstown, commented that rugby ‘humanised people’s lives,
making life in the township worth living’.50 Black communities had in
fact come to embrace rugby, owning it, taking care of their own ground
facilities. Milton Roxo, one of the founder members of the Eastern
RFC in Grahamstown, commented:
Clubs struggled to generate enough funds to buy balls and jerseys.

Facilities were also a problem, the fields were in poor condition …
and one field, the eGazini field, sloped so badly that when players
were tackled to the ground, they often rolled down the slope.
Cleaning the fields of the stones and gravel was a community effort
and they would clear them with their own farming equipment.51
In Grahamstown, rugby clubs had become a community’s pride, both

in the uniform and colours of club identities. Curnick Mdyesha, Milton
Roxo’s cousin, a president of Wanderers in 1945 and later a prominent
executive member of SAARB, noted: ‘Women wore headgears, blouses
and skirts … the colour of their clubs. For men, blazers, ties and shirts
showed colours of their clubs. The general public would parade their
best clothes in the colours of their clubs. Ordinary citizens would put
on their best clothes for the day.’52
In Port Elizabeth, the Morning Star and Park Rovers clubs were
27
formed closely on the heels of the Orientals.53 In 1907, the Spring

Grove Rugby Football Club was formed in Bedford under the initial
leadership of W Notyoba, A Koboka, S Sitoto, H Koka and William
Xhayimpi Tube. Named after an area of Bedford, this was where most
of its players hailed from.54 In 1908, the club was registered as a second-
league team, and the following year, W Gelo, C Lamani and Charles Z
Futshane in Grahamstown decided to change the name to Spring Rose
Rugby Football Club.
Box 1: List and Founding Dates of Early Black Rugby

Clubs and Unions (1886–1954)
• Western Province Coloured Rugby Football Board – Cape
Town – 1886
• Union Rugby Football Club – Port Elizabeth – 1887
• Winter Rose Rugby Football Club – Grahamstown – 1890
• Orientals Rugby Football Club – Port Elizabeth – 1890
• Lily White Rugby Football Club – Grahamstown – 1894
• South African Coloured Rugby Football Board – Cape
Town – 1897
• City & Suburban Rugby Union – Cape Town – 1898
• Wanderers Rugby Football Club – Grahamstown – 1903
• Eastern Rugby Football Club – Grahamstown – 1904
• Spring Rose Rugby Football Club – Port Elizabeth – 1907
• Swallows Rugby Football Club – East London – 1911
• Early Rose Rugby Football Club – East London – c. 1912
• Walmer Wales Rugby Football Club – Port Elizabeth –
1928
• African Bombers Rugby Football Club – Port Elizabeth –
1954
The trend caught on, particularly in East London, with the city
founding Swallows Rugby Football Club,55 its first black rugby club,
in 1911, when AS Magalela, M Kotobe, J Dweru and WB Rigala got
28
together after playing an informal rugby match to form Swallows.

Following Union’s crusade to spread the formation of black rugby
clubs in the Eastern Cape and beyond, between 1900 and the 1920s,
black rugby clubs mushroomed. One of the founders of Winter Rose,
Fana ‘Bush’ Manana, subsequently took rugby to the Transvaal, and
by 1924, when he had become a Johannesburg resident, he formed the
Occidental Rugby Football Club in Orlando East. In 1927, the club was
renamed the Olympics Rugby Football Club.56
Dr WB Rubusana was consulted on the drawing up of a constitution
and the new Swallows fielded players who were mostly domestic, hotel
and city workers. Soon after, Dr Rubusana played a central role in the
founding of Swallows’ sister club, Early Rose Rugby Football Club. It
wasn’t long, however, before more black rugby clubs emerged in the
East London area, among them Home Sweepers, Tembu, Bush Bucks,
Black Lion and the Young Wonders. Affiliated to the East London
Native Rugby Union, later renamed the Gompo Rugby Union, they
played their matches at Rubusana Park, a closed field fenced with zinc.57
Between the 1920s and 1950s, the black intelligentsia of New
Brighton further advanced the indigenisation of rugby in Port
Elizabeth, at the same time shaping new black identities in townships,
as well as political agendas and mobilisation. For instance, SM Bennett
Ncwana – who in the 1920s was editor of the Industrial Commercial
Union’s (ICU) newspaper, The Black Man, and in the late 1930s
published African Continent – lived in New Brighton for many years.
AZ Tshiwula, organiser of the Council for Non-European Trade
Unions (CNETU), and considered a rabble-rouser member of the New
Brighton Native Advisory Board, edited Ndavela for railway workers in
1948. He, along with Jimmy Pemba, WW Mabija and G Soya Mama,
who all lived in New Brighton, provided regular coverage for Imvo
Zabantsundu. Also, the lesser-known son of DDT Jabavu, Wilson Weir
Jabavu, who also lived in New Brighton, was a full-time journalist and
press photographer, and was an elected member of the New Brighton
Native Advisory Board.58
The proliferation of black rugby clubs continued under these
influences from the 1920s to the 1950s. In 1928, the Walmer Wales
Rugby Football Club was established in Port Elizabeth, its name
29
inspired by the visit of the Princess of Wales to the city in 1925.59 By

the mid-1950s, there were 11 black rugby clubs affiliated to the Port
Elizabeth African Rugby Board (PEARB).60 Others were to follow
over the years. African Bombers Rugby Football Club was founded in
1954.61 Fabs – an acronym for Fort Beaufort, Adelaide, Bedford and
Stutterheim – was a team of mostly migrant labourers, fielding players
from those areas. Butcher Birds Rugby Football Club was also formed
during this time.
A curious spin-off sprouted from the black intelligentsia’s initial
project of discouraging inter-ethnic conflict, with ethnic loyalties and
subsequent skirmishes giving way to the loyalty of prominent, middle-
class families to clubs. Thembile Matomela noted, ‘The fraternal
ministers’ association idea of starting a rugby league paid dividends, as
clubs were not formed around tribal lines, but interestingly had family
ties.’62 This soon translated into an enduring variable in the recruitment
system of rugby players.
In East London, for instance, the Makhwabe family was linked to
Black Lion. The Qinga family was associated with Winter Rose, while
the Mandleni family was linked to Swallows,63 and in Port Elizabeth,
the Matomela family was traditionally associated with Union.64 These
family-club links were part of an elaborate urban–rural divide and
work–housing recruitment system. In East London, how certain
families attached themselves to particular rugby clubs followed a
recruitment system based initially on drawing players from places
of rural origin, and subsequently placing them in employment at
particular places of work.
The chain of recruitment for East London-based players began
where workers were employed. The objective was to offer players from
neighbouring rural areas employment opportunities first, and then
housing in the townships. As Ntobeko Gaca noted, ‘The recruitment
strategy by most rugby clubs was to offer players with first employment
and then accommodation.’65 As a result, ‘a good player would arrive
in East London on Monday and by Friday he would [be] a Swallows
player’.66 And so, in East London, Swallows recruited players who
worked at Baker King, Moberg, Cyril Lord, Chloride and Five Roses,
for instance.67
30
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men whose work I inspect, thought Massy. If I approve it doesn't
mean anything, and if I protest, it's bad. He had always been lonely,
but it was a part of the job.
"I think," he said painstakingly, "that there ought to be a change in
maximum no-drain voltage. I'd like to check it."
The operator shrugged again. He pressed buttons under a phone-
plate.
"Shift to reserve power," he commanded, when a face appeared in
the plate. "Gotta check no-drain juice."
"What for?" demanded the face in the plate.
"You-know-who's got ideas," said the grid operator scornfully. "Maybe
we've been skimping something. Maybe there's some new
specification we didn't know about. Maybe anything! But shift to
reserve power."
The face in the screen grumbled. Massy swallowed. It was not a
Survey officer's privilege to maintain discipline. But there was no
particular virtue in discipline here and now. He watched the current-
demand dial. It stood a little above normal day-drain, which was
understandable. The outside temperature was down. There was more
power needed to keep the dwellings warm, and there was always a
lot of power needed in the mine the colony had been formed to
exploit. The mine had to be warmed for the men who worked to
develop it.
The demand-needle dropped abruptly, and hung steady, and dropped
again and again as additional parts of the colony's power-uses were
switched to reserve. The needle hit bottom. It stayed there.
Massy had to walk around the standby man to get at the voltmeter. It
was built around standard, old-fashioned vacuum tubes—standard for
generations, now. Massy patiently hooked it up and warmed the
tubes and tested it. He pushed in the contact-plugs. He read the no-
drain voltage. He licked his lips and made a note. He reversed the
leads, so it would read backward. He took another reading. He drew
in his breath very quietly.
"Now I want the power turned on in sections," he told the operator.
"The mine first, maybe. It doesn't matter. But I want to get voltage-
readings at different power take-offs."
The operator looked pained. He spoke with unnecessary elaboration
to the face in the phone-plate, and grudgingly went through with the
process by which Massy measured the successive drops in voltage
with power drawn from the ionosphere. The current available from a
layer of ionized gas is, in effect, the current-flow through a conductor
with marked resistance. It is possible to infer a gas' ionization from
the current it yields.
The cold-lock door opened. Riki Herndon came in, panting a little.
"There's another message from home," she said sharply. Her voice
seemed strained. "They picked up our answering-beam and are
giving the information you asked for."
"I'll be along," said Massy. "I just got some information here."
He got into his cold-garments again. He followed her out of the
control-hut.
"The figures from home aren't good," said Riki evenly, when
mountains visibly rose on every hand around them. "Ken says they're
much worse than he thought. The rate of decline in the solar
constant's worse than we figured or could believe."
"I see," said Massy, inadequately.
"It's absurd!" said Riki fiercely. "It's monstrous! There've been
sunspots and sunspot cycles all along! I learned about them in
school! I learned myself about a four-year and a seven-year cycle,
and that there were others! They should have known! They should
have calculated in advance! Now they talk about sixty-year cycles
coming in with a hundred-and-thirty-year cycle to pile up with all the
others—But what's the use of scientists if they don't do their work
right and twenty million people die because of it?"
Massy did not consider himself a scientist, but he winced. Riki raged
as they moved over the slippery ice. Her breath was an intermittent
cloud about her shoulders. There was white frost on the front of her
cold-garments.
He held out his hand quickly as she slipped, once.
"But they'll beat it!" said Riki in a sort of angry pride. "They're starting
to build more landing-grids, back home. Hundreds of them! Not for
ships to land by, but to draw power from the ionosphere! They figure
that one ship-size grid can keep nearly three square miles of ground
warm enough to live on! They'll roof over the streets of cities. Then
they'll plant food-crops in the streets and gardens, and do what
hydroponic growing they can. They are afraid they can't do it fast
enough to save everybody, but they'll try!"
Massy clenched his hands inside their bulky mittens.
"Well?" demanded Riki. "Won't that do the trick?"
Massy said: "No."
"Why not?" she demanded.
"I just took readings on the grid, here. The voltage and the
conductivity of the layer we draw power from, both depend on
ionization. When the intensity of sunlight drops, the voltage drops and
the conductivity drops, too. It's harder for less power to flow to the
area the grid can tap—and the voltage-pressure is lower to drive it."
"Don't say any more!" cried Riki. "Not another word!"
Massy was silent. They went down the last small slope. They passed
the opening of the mine—the great drift which bored straight into the
mountain. They could look into it. They saw the twin rows of brilliant
roof-lights going toward the heart of the stony monster.
They had almost reached the village when Riki said in a stifled voice:
"How bad is it?"
"Very," admitted Massy. "We have here the conditions the home
planet will have in two hundred days. Originally we could draw less
than a fifth the power they count on from a grid on Lani II."
Riki ground her teeth.
"Go on!" she said challengingly.
"Ionization here is down ten per cent," said Massy. "That means the
voltage is down—somewhat more. A great deal more. And the
resistance of the layer is greater. Very much greater. When they need
power most, on the home planet, they won't draw more from a grid
than we do now. It won't be enough."
They reached the village. There were steps to the cold-lock of
Herndon's office-hull. They were ice-free, because like the village
walkways they were warmed to keep frost from depositing on them.
Massy made a mental note.
In the cold-lock, the warm air pouring in was almost stifling. Riki said
defiantly:
"You might as well tell me now!"
"We could draw one-fifth as much power, here, as the same sized
grid would yield on your home world," he said grimly. "We are drawing
—call it sixty per cent of normal. A shade over one-tenth of what they
must expect to draw when the real cold hits them. But their estimates
are nine times too high." He said heavily, "One grid won't warm three
square miles of city. About a third of one is closer. But—"
"That won't be the worst!" said Riki in a choked voice. "Is that right?
How much good will a grid do?"
Massy did not answer.
The inner cold-lock door opened. Herndon sat at his desk, even paler
than before, listening to the hash of noises that came out of the
speaker. He tapped on the desktop, quite unconscious of the action.
He looked almost desperately at Massy.
"Did she ... tell you?" he asked in a numb voice. "They hope to save
maybe half the population. All the children anyhow—"
"They won't," said Riki bitterly.
"Better go transcribe the new stuff that's come in," said her brother
dully. "We might as well know what it says."
Riki went out of the office. Massy laboriously shed his cold-garments.
He said uncomfortably:
"The rest of the colony doesn't know what's up yet. The operator at
the grid didn't, certainly. But they have to know."
"We'll post the messages on the bulletin board," said Herndon
apathetically. "I wish I could keep it from them. It's not fun to live with.
I ... might as well not tell them just yet."
"To the contrary," insisted Massy. "They've got to know right away!
You're going to issue orders and they'll need to understand how
urgent they are!"
Herndon looked absolutely hopeless.
"What's the good of doing anything?" When Massy frowned, he
added as if exhausted: "Seriously, is there any use? You're all right. A
Survey ship's due to take you away. It's not coming because they
know there's something wrong, but because your job should be
finished about now. But it can't do any good! It would be insane for it
to land at home. It couldn't carry away more than a few dozen
refugees, and there are twenty million people who're going to die. It
might offer to take some of us. But ... I don't think many of us would
go. I wouldn't. I don't think Riki would."
"I don't see—"
"What we've got right here," said Herndon, "is what they're going to
have back home. And worse. But there's no chance for us to keep
alive here! You are the one who pointed it out! I've been figuring, and
the way the solar-constant curve is going—I plotted it from the figures
they gave us—it couldn't possibly level out until the oxygen, anyhow,
is frozen out of the atmosphere here. We aren't equipped to stand
anything like that, and we can't get equipped. There couldn't be
equipment to let us stand it indefinitely! Anyhow the maximum cold
conditions will last two thousand days back home—six Earth-years.
And there'll be storage of cold in frozen oceans and piled-up glaciers
—It'll be twenty years before home will be back to normal in
temperature, and the same here. Is there any point in trying to live—
just barely to survive—for twenty years before there'll be a habitable
planet to go back to?"
Massy said irritably:
"Don't be a fool! Doesn't it occur to you that this planet is a perfect
experiment-station, two hundred days ahead of the home world,
where ways to beat the whole business can be tried? If we can beat it
here, they can beat it there!"
Herndon said detachedly:
"Can you name one thing to try here?"
"Yes," snapped Massy. "I want the walk-heaters and the step-heaters
outside turned off. They use power to keep walkways clear of frost
and doorsteps not slippery. I want to save that heat!"
Herndon said without interest:
"And when you've saved it, what will you do with it?"
"Put it underground to be used as needed!" Massy said angrily. "Store
it in the mine! I want to put every heating-device we can contrive to
work in the mine! To heat the rock! I want to draw every watt the grid
will yield and warm up the inside of the mountain while we can draw
power to do it with! I want the deepest part of the mine too hot to
enter! We'll lose a lot of heat, of course. It's not like storing electric
power! But we can store heat now, and the more we store the more
will be left when we need it!"
Herndon thought heavily. Presently he stirred slightly.

"Do you know, that is an idea—" He looked up. "Back home there
was a shale-oil deposit up near the icecaps. It wasn't economical to
mine it. So they put heaters down in bore-holes and heated up the
whole shale deposit! Drill-holes let out the hot oil vapors to be
condensed. They got out every bit of oil without disturbing the shale!
And then ... why ... the shale stayed warm for years. Farmers
bulldozed soil over it and raised crops with glaciers all around them!
That could be done again. They could be storing up heat back home!"
Then he drooped.
"But they can't spare power to warm up the ground under cities. They
need all the power they've got to build roofs. And it takes time to build
grids."
Massy snapped:
"Yes, if they're building regulation ones! By the time they were
finished they'd be useless! The ionization here is dropping already.
But they don't need to build grids that will be useless later! They can
weave cables together on the ground and hang them in the air by
helicopters! They wouldn't hold up a landing ship for an instant, but
they'll draw power right away! They'll even power the helis that hold
them up! Of course they've defects! They'll have to come down in
high winds. They won't be dependable. But they can put heat in the
ground to come out under roofs, to grow food by, to save lives by.
What's the matter with them?"
Herndon stirred again. His eyes ceased to be dull and lifeless.
"I'll give the orders for turning off the sidewalks. And I'll send what you
just said back home. They ... should like it."
He looked very respectfully at Massy.
"I guess you know what I'm thinking right now," he said awkwardly.
Massy flushed. It was not dignified for a Colonial Survey officer to
show off. He felt that Herndon was unduly impressed. But Herndon
didn't see that the device wouldn't solve anything. It would merely
postpone the effects of a disaster. It could not possibly prevent them.
"It ought to be done," he said curtly. "There'll be other things to be
done, too."
"When you tell them to me," said Herndon warmly, "they'll get done!
I'll have Riki put this into that pulse-code you explained to us and
she'll get it off right away!"
He stood up.
"I didn't explain the code to her!" insisted Massy. "She was already
translating it when you gave her my suggestion!"
"All right," said Herndon. "I'll get this sent back at once!"
He hurried out of the office. This, thought Massy irritably, is how
reputations are made, I suppose. I'm getting one. But his own
reaction was extremely inappropriate. If the people of Lani II did
suspend helicopter-supported grids of wire in the atmosphere, they
could warm masses of underground rock and stone and earth. They
could establish what were practically reservoirs of life-giving heat
under their cities. They could contrive that the warmth from below
would rise only as it was needed. But—
Two hundred days to conditions corresponding to the colony-planet.

Then two thousand days of minimum-heat conditions. Then very, very
slow return to normal temperature, long after the sun was back to its
previous brilliance. They couldn't store enough heat for so long. It
couldn't be done. It was ironic that in the freezing of ice and the
making of glaciers the planet itself could store cold.
And there would be monstrous storms and blizzards on Lani II as it
cooled. As cold conditions got worse the wire grids could be held aloft
for shorter and shorter periods, and each time they would pull down
less power than before. Their effectiveness would diminish even
faster than the need for effectiveness increased.
Massy felt even deeper depression as he worked out the facts. His
proposal was essentially futile. It would be encouraging, and to a very
slight degree and for a certain short time it would palliate the situation
on the inner planet. But in the long run its effect would be zero.
He was embarrassed, too, that Herndon was so admiring. Herndon
would tell Riki that he was marvelous. She might—though cagily—be
inclined to agree. But he wasn't marvelous. This trick of a flier-
supported grid was not new. It had been used on Saril to supply
power for giant peristaltic pumps emptying a polder that had been
formed inside a ring of indifferently upraised islands.
All I know, thought Massy bitterly, is what somebody's showed me or
I've read in books. And nobody's showed or written how to handle a
thing like this!
He went to Herndon's desk. Herndon had made a new graph on the
solar-constant observations forwarded from home. It was a strictly
typical curve of the results of coinciding cyclic changes. It was the
curve of a series of frequencies at the moment when they were all
precisely in phase. From this much one could extrapolate and
compute—
Massy took a pencil, frowning unhappily. His fingers clumsily formed
equations and solved them. The result was just about as bad as it
could be. The change in brightness of the sun Lani would not be
enough to be observed on Kent IV—the nearest other inhabited world
—when the light reached there four years from now. Lani would never
be classed as a variable star, because the total change in light and
heat would be relatively minute. But the formula for computing
planetary temperatures is not simple. Among its factors are squares
and cubes of the variables. Worse, the heat radiated from a sun's
photosphere varies not as the square or cube, but as the fourth
power of its absolute temperature. A very small change in the sun's
effective temperature, producible by sunspots, could make an
altogether disproportionate difference in the warmth its worlds
received.
Massy's computations were not pure theory. The data came from Sol
itself, where alone in the galaxy there had been daily solar-constant
measurements for three hundred years. The rest of his deductions
were based ultimately on Earth observations, too. Most scientific data
had to refer back to Earth to get an adequate continuity. But there
was no possible doubt about the sunspot data, because Sol and Lani
were of the same type and nearly equal size.
Using the figures on the present situation, Massy reluctantly arrived
at the fact that here, on this already-frozen world, the temperature
would drop until CO2, froze out of the atmosphere. When that
happened, the temperature would plummet until there was no really
significant difference between it and that of empty space. It is carbon
dioxide which is responsible for the greenhouse effect, by which a
planet is in thermal equilibrium only at a temperature above its
surroundings—as a greenhouse in sunlight is warmer than the
outside air.
The greenhouse effect would vanish soon on the colony-world. When
it vanished on the mother planet—
Massy found himself thinking, If Riki won't leave when the Survey
ship comes, I'll resign from the Service. I'll have to if I'm to stay. And I
won't go unless she does.
III
"If you want to come, it's all right," said Massy ungraciously.
He waited while Riki slipped into the bulky cold-garments that were
needed out-of-doors in the daytime, and were doubly necessary at
night. There were heavy boots with inches-thick insulating soles,
made in one piece with the many-layered trousers. There was the air-
puffed, insulated over-tunic with its hood and mittens which were a
part of the sleeves.
"Nobody goes outside at night," she said when they stood together in
the cold-lock.
"I do," he told her. "I want to find out something."
The outer door opened and he stepped out. He held his arm for her,
because the steps and walkway were no longer heated. Now they
were covered with a filmy layer of something which was not frost, but
a faint, faint bloom of powder. It was the equivalent of dust, but it was
microscopic snow-crystals frozen out of the air by the unbearable chill
of night.
There was no moon, of course, yet the ice-clad mountains glowed
faintly. The drone-hulls arranged in such an orderly fashion were dark
against the frosted ground. There was silence: stillness: the feeling of
ancient quietude. No wind stirred anywhere. Nothing moved. Nothing
lived. The soundlessness was enough to crack the eardrums.
Massy threw back his head and gazed at the sky for a very long time.
Nothing. He looked down at Riki.
"Look at the sky," he commanded.
She raised her eyes. She had been watching him. But as she gazed
upward she almost cried out. The sky was filled with stars in
innumerable variety. But the brighter ones were as stars had never
been seen before. Just as the sun in daylight had been accompanied
by its sun-dogs—pale phantoms of itself ranged about it—so the
brighter distant suns now shone from the center of rings of their own
images. They no longer had the look of random placing. Those which
were most distinct were patterns in themselves, and one's eyes
strove instinctively to grasp the greater pattern in which such seeming
artifacts must belong.
"Oh ... beautiful!" cried Riki softly, yet almost afraid.
"Look!" he insisted. "Keep looking!"
She continued to gaze, moving her eyes about hopefully. It was such
a sight as no one could have imagined. Every tint and every color;
every possible degree of brightness appeared. And there were
groups of stars of the same brilliance which almost made triangles,
but not quite. There were rose-tinted stars which almost formed an
arc, but did not. And there were arrays which were almost lines and
nearly formed squares and polygons, but never actually achieved
them.
"It's ... beautiful!" said Riki breathlessly. "But what must I look for?"
"Look for what isn't there," he ordered.
She looked, and the stars were unwinking, but that was not
extraordinary. They filled all the firmament, without the least space in
which some tiny sparkle of light was not to be found. But that was not
remarkable, either. Then there was a vague flickering grayish glow
somewhere indefinite. It vanished. Then she realized.
"There's no aurora!" she exclaimed.
"That's it," said Massy. "There've always been auroras here. But no
longer. We may be responsible. I wish I thought it wise to turn
everything back to reserve power for a while. We could find out. But
we can't afford it. There was just the faintest possible gray flickering
just now. But there ought to be armies of light marching across the
sky. The aurora here—it was never missing! But it's gone now."
"I ... looked at it when we first landed," admitted Riki. "It was
unbelievable! But it was terribly cold, out of shelter. And it happened
every night, so I said to myself I'd look tomorrow, and then tomorrow
again. So it got so I never looked at all."
Massy kept his eyes where the faint gray flickering had been. And
once one realized, it was astonishing that the former nightly play of
ghostly colors should be absent.
"The aurora," he said dourly, "happens in the very upper limits of the
air ... fifty ... seventy ... ninety miles up, when God-knows-what
emitted particles from the sun come streaking in, drawn by the
planet's magnetic field. The aurora's a phenomenon of ions. We tap
the ionosphere a long way down from where it plays, but I'm
wondering if we stopped it."
"We?" said Riki, shocked. "We—humans?"
"We tap the ions of their charges," he said somberly, "that the sunlight
made by day. We're pulling in all the power we can. I wonder if we've
drained the aurora of its energy, too."
Riki was silent. Massy gazed, still searching. But he shook his head.
"It could be," he said in a carefully detached voice. "We didn't draw
much power by comparison with the amount that came. But the
ionization is an ultraviolet effect. Atmospheric gases don't ionize too
easily. After all, if the solar constant dropped a very little, it might
mean a terrific drop in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum—and that's
what makes ions of oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and such.
The ion-drop could easily be fifty times as great as the drop in the
solar constant. And we're drawing power from the little that's left."
Riki stood very still. The cold was horrible. Had there been a wind, it
could not have been endured for an instant. But the air was
motionless. Yet its coldness was so great that the inside of one's
nostrils ached, and the inside of one's chest was aware of chill. Even
through the cold-garments there was the feeling as of ice without.
"I'm beginning," said Massy, "to suspect that I'm a fool. Or maybe I'm
an optimist. It might be the same thing. I could have guessed that the
power we could draw would drop faster than our need for power
increased. If we've drained the aurora of its light, we're scraping the
bottom of the barrel. And it's a shallower barrel than one would
suspect."
There was stillness again. Riki stood mousy-quiet. When she realizes
what this means, thought Massy grimly, she won't admire me so
much. Her brother's built me up. But I've been a fool, figuring out
excuses to hope. She'll see it.
"I think," said Riki quietly, "that you're telling me that after all we can't
store up heat to live on, down in the mine."
"We can't," agreed Massy grimly. "Not much, nor long. Not enough to
matter."
"So we won't live as long as Ken expects?"
"Not nearly as long," said Massy evenly. "He's hoping we can find out
things to be useful back on Lani II. But we'll lose the power we can
get from our grid long before even their new grids are useless. We'll
have to start using our reserve power a lot sooner. It'll be gone—and
us with it—before they're really in straits for living-heat."
Riki's teeth began to chatter.
"This sounds like I'm scared," she said angrily, "but I'm not! I'm just
freezing! If you want to know, I'd a lot rather have it the way you say! I
won't have to grieve over anybody, and they'll be too busy to grieve
for me! Let's go inside while it's still warm!"
He helped her back into the cold-lock, and the outer door closed. She
was shivering uncontrollably when the warmth came pouring in.
They went into Herndon's office. He came in as Riki was peeling off
the top part of her cold-garments. She still shivered. He glanced at
her and said to Massy:
"There's been a call from the grid-control shack. It looks like there's
something wrong, but they can't find anything. The grid is set for
maximum power-collection, but it's bringing in only fifty thousand
kilowatts!"
"We're on our way back to savagery," said Massy, with an attempt at
irony.
It was true. A man can produce two hundred and fifty watts from his
muscles for a reasonable length of time. When he has no more
power, he is a savage. When he gains a kilowatt of energy from the
muscles of a horse, he is a barbarian—but the new power cannot be
directed wholly as he wills. When he can apply it to a plow he has
high barbarian culture, and when he adds still more he begins to be
civilized. Steam power put as much as four kilowatts to work for every
human being in the first industrialized countries, and in the mid-
twentieth century there was sixty kilowatts per person in the more
advanced nations. Nowadays, of course, a modern culture assumed
five hundred as a minimum. But there was less than half that in the
colony on Lani II. And its environment made its own demands.
"There can't be any more," said Riki, trying to control her shivering.
"We're even using the aurora and there isn't any more power. It's
running out. We'll go even before the people at home, Ken."
Herndon's features looked very pinched.
"But we can't! We mustn't!" He turned to Massy. "We do them good,
back home! There was panic. Our report about cable-grids has put
heart in people. They're setting to work—magnificently! So we're
some use! They know we're worse off than they are, and as long as
we hold on they'll be encouraged! We've got to keep going
somehow!"
Riki breathed deeply until her shivering stopped. Then she said
calmly:
"Haven't you noticed, Ken, that Mr. Massy has the viewpoint of his
profession? His business is finding things wrong with things. He was
deposited in our midst to detect defects in what we did and do. He
has the habit of looking for the worst. But I think he can turn the habit
to good use. He did turn up the idea of cable-grids."
"Which," said Massy, "turns out to be no good at all. They'd be some
good if they weren't needed, really. But the conditions that make them
necessary make them useless!"
Riki shook her head.
"They are useful!" she said firmly. "They're keeping people at home
from despairing. Now, though, you've got to think of something else. If
you think of enough things, one will do good the way you want—more
than making people feel better."
"What does it matter how people feel?" he demanded bitterly. "What
difference do feelings make? Facts are facts! One can't change
facts!"
Riki said with no less firmness:
"We humans are the only creatures in the universe who don't do
anything else! Every other creature accepts facts. It lives where it is
born, and it feeds on the food that is there for it, and it dies when the
facts of nature require it to. We humans don't. Especially we women!
We won't let men do it, either! When we don't like facts—mostly about
ourselves—we change them. But important facts we disapprove of—
we ask men to change for us. And they do!"
She faced Massy. Rather incredibly, she grinned at him.
"Will you please change the facts that look so annoying just now,
please? Please?" Then she elaborately pantomimed an over-feminine
girl's look of wide-eyed admiration. "You're so big and strong! I just
know you can do it—for me!"
She abruptly dropped the pretense and moved toward the door. She
half-turned then, and said detachedly:
"But about half of that is true."
The door slid shut behind her. Massy thought bitterly, Her brother
admires me. She probably thinks I really can do something! It
suddenly occurred to him that she knew a Colonial Survey ship was
due to stop by here to pick him up. She believed he expected to be
rescued, even though the rest of the colony could not be, and most of
it wouldn't consent to leave their kindred when the death of mankind
in this solar system took place. He said awkwardly:
"Fifty thousand kilowatts isn't enough to land a ship."
Herndon frowned. Then he said:
"Oh. You mean the Survey ship that's to pick you up can't land? But it
can go in orbit and put down a rocket landing-boat for you."
Massy flushed.
"I wasn't thinking of that. I'd something more in mind. I ... rather like
your sister. She's ... pretty wonderful. And there are some other
women here in the colony, too. About a dozen all told. As a matter of
self-respect I think we ought to get them away on the Survey ship. I
agree that they wouldn't consent to go. But if they had no choice—if
we could get them on board the grounded ship, and they suddenly
found themselves ... well ... kidnaped and outward-bound not by their
own fault.... They could be faced with the accomplished fact that they
had to go on living."
Herndon said evenly:
"That's been in the back of my mind for some time. Yes. I'm for that.
But if the Survey ship can't land—"
"I believe I can land it regardless," said Massy doggedly. "I can find
out, anyhow. I'll need to try things. I'll need help ... work done. But I
want your promise that if I can get the ship to ground you'll conspire
with her skipper and arrange for them to go on living."
Herndon looked at him.
"Some new stuff—in a way," said Massy uncomfortably. "I'll have to
stay aground to work it. It's also part of the bargain that I shall. And, of
course, your sister can't know about it, or she can't be fooled into
living."
Herndon's expression changed a little.
"What'll you do? Of course it's a bargain."
"I'll need some metals we haven't smelted so far," said Massy.
"Potassium if I can get it, sodium if I can't, and at worst I'll settle for
zinc. Cesium would be best, but we've found no traces of it."
Herndon said thoughtfully:
"No-o-o. I think I can get you sodium and potassium, from rocks. I'm
afraid no zinc. How much?"
"Grams," said Massy. "Trivial quantities. And I'll need a miniature
landing-grid built. Very miniature."
Herndon shrugged his shoulders.
"It's over my head. But just to have work to do will be good for
everybody. We've been feeling more frustrated than any other
humans in history. I'll go round up the men who'll do the work. You
talk to them."
The door closed behind him. Massy very deliberately got out of his
cold-clothing. He thought, She'll rave when she finds her brother and I
have deceived her. Then he thought of the other women. If any of
them are married, we'll have to see if there's room for their husbands.
I'll have to dress up the idea. Make it look like reason for hope, or the
women would find out. But not many can go—
He knew very closely how many extra passengers could be carried
on a Survey ship, even in such an emergency as this. Living quarters
were not luxurious, at best. Everything was cramped and skimped.
Survey ships were rugged, tiny vessels which performed their duties
amid tedium and discomfort and peril for all on board. But they could
carry away a very few unwilling refugees to Kent IV.
He settled down at Herndon's desk to work out the thing to be done.
It was not unreasonable. Tapping the ionosphere for power was
something like pumping water out of a pipe-well in sand. If the water-
table was high, there was pressure to force the water to the pipe, and
one could pump fast. If the water-table were low, water couldn't flow
fast enough. The pump would suck dry. In the ionosphere, the level of
ionization was at once like the pressure and the size of the sand-
grains. When the level was high, the flow was vast because the sand-
grains were large and the conductivity high. But as the level
lessened, so did the size of the sand-grains. There was less to draw,
and more resistance to its flow.
But there had been one tiny flicker of auroral light over by the horizon.
There was still power aloft. If Massy could in a fashion prime the
pump: if he could increase the conductivity by increasing the ions
present around the place where their charges were drawn away—
why—he could increase the total flow. It would be like digging a brick-
well where a pipe-well had been. A brick-well draws water from all
around its circumference.
So Massy computed carefully. It was ironic that he had to go to such
trouble simply because he didn't have test-rockets like the Survey
uses to get a picture of a planet's weather-pattern. They rise vertically
for fifty miles or so, trailing a thread of sodium-vapor behind them.
The trail is detectable for some time, and ground-instruments record
each displacement by winds blowing in different directions at different
speeds, one over the other. Such a rocket with its loading slightly
changed would do all Massy had in mind. But he didn't have one, so
something much more elaborate was called for.
She'll think I'm clever, he reflected wryly, but all I'm doing is what I've
been taught. I wouldn't have to work it out if I had a rocket.
Still, there was some satisfaction in working out this job. A landing-
grid has to be not less than half a mile across and two thousand feet
high because its field has to reach out five planetary diameters to
handle ships that land and take off. To handle solid objects it has to
be accurate—though power can be drawn with an improvisation. To
thrust a sodium-vapor bomb anywhere from twenty to fifty miles high
—why—he'd need a grid only six feet wide and five high. It could
throw much higher, of course. It could hold, at that. But doubling the
size would make accuracy easier.
He tripled the dimensions. There would be a grid eighteen feet across
and fifteen high. Tuned to the casing of a small bomb, it could hold it
steady at seven hundred and fifty thousand feet—far beyond
necessity. He began to make the detail drawings.
Herndon came back with half a dozen chosen colonists. They were
young men, technicians rather than scientists. Some of them were
several years younger than Massy. There were grim and stunned
expressions on some faces, but one tried to pretend nonchalance,
and two seemed trying to suppress fury at the monstrous occurrence
that would destroy not only their own lives, but everything they
remembered on the planet which was their home. They looked almost
challengingly at Massy.
He explained. He was going to put a cloud of metallic vapor up in the
ionosphere. Sodium if he had to, potassium if he could, zinc if he
must. Those metals were readily ionized by sunlight—much more
readily than atmospheric gases. In effect, he was going to supply a
certain area of the ionosphere with material to increase the efficiency
of sunshine in providing electric power. As a sideline, there would be
increased conductivity from the normal ionosphere.
"Something like this was done centuries ago, back on Earth," he
explained carefully. "They used rockets, and made sodium-vapor
clouds as much as twenty and thirty miles long. Even nowadays the
Survey uses test-rockets with trails of sodium-vapor. It will work to
some degree. We'll find out how much."
He felt Herndon's eyes upon him. They were almost dazedly
respectful. But one of the technicians said coldly:
"How long will those clouds last?"
"That high, three or four days," Massy told him. "They won't help
much at night, but they should step up power-intake while the sun
shines on them."
A man in the back said crisply:
"Hup!" The significance was, "Let's go!" Then somebody said
feverishly, "What do we do? Got working drawings? Who makes the
bombs? Who does what? Let's get at this!"
Then there was confusion, and Herndon had vanished. Massy
suspected he'd gone to have Riki put this theory into dot-and-dash
code for beam-transmission back to Lani II. But there was no time to
stop him. These men wanted precise information, and it was half an
hour before the last of them had gone out with free-hand sketches,
and had come back for further explanation of a doubtful point, and
other men had come in hungrily to demand a share in the job.

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Rugby, Resistance and Politics: How

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Central to the transformation of sports towards non-racialism, Qeqe

This story is an attempt at understanding a man of contradictions.

Abbreviations and acronyms ix

PART ONE (1820–1971)

PART TWO (1929–1971)

PART THREE (1971–2005)

AAM Anti-Apartheid Movement

NAHECS National Heritage and Cultural Studies

Qeqe; Mpumelelo Qeqe; Sinazo Vabaza; Thembela Vabaza; Thando

training and coaching regimen, placing a premium on physical fitness,

celebration.35 In the room above Melisizwe Butchery36, Abbas named

My answer sought to placate, concerned only with how to save

The conceptual framework for this biography demanded some

This work on DaniEl Dumile Qeqe (1929–2005) is divided into

associates, both hostile and friendly, in the formation of Kwaru.

Qeqe’s life in the 1990s, his final contributions to the construction of a

A Port Elizabeth ex-provincial black cricket player, Mr Dan Qeqe,

In print, it was an annoyance only captured by the headline’s strapline:

put together arrangements for the picture to accompany the press

… from time immemorial the Whites, the Coloureds, the Indian

Moreover, it is only comparatively recently that the Bantu peoples

Douglas Booth and John Nauright further propounded on both

Notwithstanding sports traditional association with merit and the

Pamensky’s nakedly racist remark was nurtured by apartheid, ‘a

Racism in nineteenth-century South African sport was not driven

Modern society has the inclination to credit Apartheid with the

It is on the sports field where the young middle-class Briton learns

the English public school, which would be expanded to the colonies

And so it was that racism in nineteenth-century sport preceded state-

impact of colonial institutional values on modern sport in South Africa,

The arrival of the British settlers in Port Elizabeth in 1820 introduced

At a time when the Empire advanced its interests under the

To the British, this was a gravely important element of social

awarE of ThE valuEs of reconciliation and camaraderie inculcated into

Rugby’s rootedness in Port Elizabeth’s black communities was

Although sport shares many of the characteristics of a culture or

Church]. St Cyprian’s, that black and white, is of St Cyprian’s

in ThE samE yEar, a group of players who worked at St Andrew’s

Clubs struggled to generate enough funds to buy balls and jerseys.

In Grahamstown, rugby clubs had become a community’s pride, both

formed closely on the heels of the Orientals.53 In 1907, the Spring

Box 1: List and Founding Dates of Early Black Rugby

together after playing an informal rugby match to form Swallows.

inspired by the visit of the Princess of Wales to the city in 1925.59 By

Herndon thought heavily. Presently he stirred slightly.

Two hundred days to conditions corresponding to the colony-planet.

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