Young Athletes Caught in South Africa's Battle Over Who Belongs

Schoolchildren competing in rugby, hockey, and netball at Hoërskool Hans Strijdom last week became the unlikely centre of a national argument about who gets to decide who belongs.

Two rugby tournaments took place in South Africa within days of each other. Only one ignited controversy. That gap says something important about how the country handles questions of culture, association, and discrimination.

Bokkieweek, organised by Afrikaner Volkseie Sport (AVS), drew teams from across most of the country. The event uses colours and symbolism reminiscent of the Springboks and has faced sustained criticism for being exclusionary. Its origins trace to the 1980s, when Daan Nolte and others founded AVS partly out of concern that “there will come a time where my people’s children will not get any sporting opportunities.” The tournament still uses sporting regions from that founding era, including a Stellaland region named after a rugby union dissolved in 1995.

Hoërskool Hans Strijdom, the school that hosted the event, faced pointed questions about its involvement. The Limpopo Department of Education clarified that the school played no role in the substance of the tournament; it leased its facilities as a means of raising funds. More than half the learners at the school are exempt from paying fees, making that income essential to keeping the institution running.

AVS frames its existence in cultural terms, emphasising the Protestant, Christian character of the organisation and describing its approach as a “kultuurgebonde sportbedeling,” a culturally based sport system in which teams are selected on merit. The group grounds this in Section 18 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of association.

The legal questions are not simple. South Africa’s Constitution does not prohibit discrimination outright, only “unfair” discrimination. The operative question is whether a group can justify restricting access. Post-apartheid South Africa already accommodates numerous institutions founded on similar logic of group identity. These include the Black Management Forum, the Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants of South Africa, the Black Lawyers Association, the Native Club, the Forum of Black Journalists, and the Black Business Council, some of which have received direct or implicit government support. Cultural organisations representing minorities or sectarian interests are equally common: the Muslim Judicial Council, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, churches, and traditional authorities all operate on comparable premises.

In practice, South Africa’s state institutions have tended to accept “fair” discrimination when it is presented as advancing the interests of “disadvantaged” groups, while applying sharper scrutiny to groups perceived to hold inherent “privilege.” The South African Human Rights Commission has stated openly that it applies different standards when evaluating alleged violations committed by different groups, citing historical context. This same ideological foundation underpins the country’s system of racial preferences and explains the disproportionate attention directed at Afrikaans-language schools and university study options.

Terence Corrigan of the South African Institute of Race Relations, who has written extensively on civic freedoms, was direct about the inconsistency. He said it was “hard to see why there was any excitement about a private sports contest, especially an amateur one.” A free society, he argued, had to accept that people could associate however they wished, even when that made others uncomfortable. “Cultural groups will always in some way draw a distinction between themselves and others,” he said. “This is the nature of culture and pluralism.”

Corrigan pressed the consistency question further. “Is this because it is an Afrikaner event?” he asked. “I don’t think we can rule this out. The reporting on this matter has tried to make apartheid comparisons. It seems to me that this is a hazardous basis to pass judgement. If we condemn behaviour not out of principle but because we don’t like the people or the ideology doing it, we abandon the logic of rights and rules; it becomes all about the politics of the prevailing sentiment.”

He did not dismiss the broader concern entirely. “These groups have the good right, moral and legal, to hold something like this,” he said, “but South Africa is a diverse society. The upcoming generation needs to be able to navigate this reality. I don’t think that exclusive interactions like Bokkieweek are conducive to doing so. I also fear that cultural groups that become too insular can cut themselves off from the understanding, friendship, and goodwill of others.”

Marius Roodt, deputy editor at The Common Sense, placed Bokkieweek in a wider context. The sensationalised media focus, he argued, creates a misleading picture of how most white Afrikaners actually experience school sport. “Bokkieweek is a fringe event,” he said. “Arguably the biggest sporting event on the Afrikaans schools sports calendar is the Paul Roos and Paarl Gim annual rugby derby, with more than 20,000 people in attendance. The match is also televised, showing the broad interest in the game. And the match is not only played by white Afrikaners, there will be English-speakers, coloured players, and black players in both sides.”

The contrast Roodt raised is hard to ignore. In the same week Bokkieweek took place, the Springboks fielded an all-Afrikaner starting forward pack against Scotland, out of a squad where roughly half the players were Afrikaans. That reality, he suggested, reflects where school sport in South Africa actually stands far more accurately than the Bokkieweek controversy does.

By contrast, sport at the national level has become deeply political in its own right. South African Rugby Union disinvited an Israeli team from a tournament in 2023. Cricket South Africa demanded that players “take the knee” and effectively demoted David Teeger from the captaincy of the Under-19 national cricket team for his public support of Israel.

The week’s events leave an unresolved question hanging over South African public life: whether the country applies its principles consistently, or whether the rules shift depending on who is doing the associating.