Ami Kapilevich

I often get asked why I am a Cheetahs supporter. It’s a fair question. I grew up in Jo’burg, and I’ve been living in Cape Town for more than 20 years. It should be Lions or Province for me, surely.

I’m not a Lions’ supporter because my parents are Russian and I didn’t have a clue about anything rugby-related until high school, when I started to play the game. To pile humiliation upon ignorance, we were one of the last households in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg to get M-Net, so the only time I got to watch rugby on TV was at my best friend’s house. And his family were Natal fans.

So my earliest rugby viewing memories are of Cabous van der Westhuizen’s flowing brown locks waving in the faces of defenders as he scored try after try.

And I’m not a Province fan because however hard I tried to support them after making Cape Town my home, I couldn’t handle the Stormers’ Ivy League culture.

Then I met a girl who supported the Cheetahs, so I started watching all of their games. I loved their permanent underdog status, their massive fullback who ran every ball from anywhere on the field, and the fact that their coach sat on the roof of the stadium and flashed coloured lights to the neckless Zimbabwean flyhalf.

There was a whole lot of love in the room. The following year the Cheetahs beat the Bulls at Loftus to win the greatest Currie Cup final in the history of the competition. And that was that.

It’s not something I am terribly proud of. Adopting the rugby team of your girlfriend is not exactly the most macho and heroic thing that you can do in your life. But I’m spilling my guts to make a broader point.

My point is that one’s sporting allegiances have less to do with geographical location, and more to do with interpersonal bonds.

Those moments of sitting in the living room with my mate sharing one precious bottle of his dad’s homemade beer if Natal were winning at halftime. The afternoons on the couch with the woman who would become my wife. That’s what influenced which team I wanted to win the game.

Most Lions supporters think they are Lions supporters because they live in Johannesburg. They claim it is some sort of territorial pride. And there may have been a time when you became a supporter of a particular team because you could only watch the game at the actual stadium.

But today most people are Lions supporters because the people around them are Lions supporters, because those people have a dad or a best mate who is a Lions supporter, because his cool uncle or school buddies used to go to Ellis Park every Saturday before you could watch any games on TV.

We get our love for teams from people, not places. It’s contagious. Which brings us to the Cape Crusaders – a moniker I’ll use to refer to all South African All Blacks supporters.

There is a good chance that the younger crop of Cape Crusaders don’t hate the Springboks – they support the All Blacks because their fathers and uncles support the All Blacks. These fathers and uncles may have supported the All Blacks because they hated the Springboks, but they had a pretty good reason for their antipathy.

Supporting the All Blacks because your family does is one thing; supporting them because you despise the Springboks is another. One is born out of love; the other is born out of hate.

It’s unclear how many Cape Crusaders fall into either category. It stands to reason that those that fall into the former camp should be younger and therefore, in their heart of hearts, have the Springboks as their second team, while those who fall into the latter camp will want the Springboks to lose whether they play the All Blacks or England or France or Japan.

As a centrist on most political issues, it often seems to me that two extremes are flip sides of the same coin. There are some similarities between those clinging to the past by flying the old SA flag at games and those clinging to the past by supporting whoever plays against the Springboks. In both cases, the Springboks are made to be a symbol of everything that is wrong with this country.

I’m not convinced with the argument that this is all in the past and we need to forget about it, to move on. Neither am I convinced that the Springboks today still represent some sort of white sports industrial complex. For all their faults, SA Rugby has answered the call for quotas. And there’s a much better argument for the team being a unifying force than an Apartheid symbol.

It’s probably worthwhile to mention here that hate-based support inevitably leads to hate-based behaviour at live games and towards opposition supporters. Hooliganism and rudeness belong in soccer stadiums, not rugby ones.

This article probably won’t change any hearts out there. The only thing less likely than adopting your girlfriend’s rugby team is changing your allegiance after a lifetime of passionate support.

But if one side understands the emotional connections of the other, they might be less disdainful of them. And if the other side honestly examines the motives for their support, one or two Cape Crusaders may adopt the Springboks as their second favourite team. And that would be a huge leap in the right direction.