Friday’s Western Cape Heritage (WCH) committee’s recommendation, after a six-month legal process that included a month of public participation, read as follows: “The committee considers that Newlands Rugby Stadium does not possess enough intrinsic heritage value to warrant a grading of G11 and accordingly does not recommend declaration as a provincial heritage site.”
The background to the delay in the sale of Newlands was because of a belated application, from former apartheid-era white Springbok captain Wynand Claassen, that the stadium be declared a heritage site and not be sold.
Forget that the financial implications of not selling the stadium would ruin WP Rugby. Claassen felt a museum would save the soul of apartheid South African rugby.
Claassen, who played one Test at Newlands and played his provincial rugby elsewhere, romanced the notion of Newlands as being the home of South African rugby for the past 130 years, when he should have been saying that up until unification in 1992, it was the home to white South African rugby.
Newlands, as a stadium, was only home to a united WP Rugby Union for 30 years. The new home of the union and the Stormers is the Cape Town Stadium. Claassen was arguing heritage on the basis of nostalgia, but it was nostalgia for only a minority who were privileged to call Newlands their home for 100 years based on their white skin.
Claassen was arguing heritage on the basis of nostalgia, but it was nostalgia for only a minority
There’s no doubt those who had the privilege of sitting wherever they wanted and who were allowed entry at every point, and for those who played there, the stadium has memories. But Newlands excluded the majority of rugby people in the Western Cape for 100 years.
The crowd images, pre-1992, show the segregation in who sat where and who stood where. There is so much pain for so many who were denied the opportunity to play at the stadium or watch from the comfort of the better seats in the house.
The Stormers coach John Dobson, who played at Newlands and grew up going there, had insisted before Friday’s decision that Newlands did not represent a heritage to the squad of 2023 and that the new home of rugby in the Western Cape was the Cape Town Stadium in Green Point, now known as the DHL Stadium.
“The transition to playing here in Cape Town has been spectacular, from a playing and team point of view. From the team’s perspective, we are incredibly happy here. These guys have no affiliation with Newlands whatsoever. There is no interest in going back there, no fond memories — even in this team — but they do have very, very fond memories of the Cape Town Stadium already,” said Dobson.
“This is where we want to be, want to play, where rugby is going to thrive. We have won 20 games in a row here. Newlands is antiquated, old and most of the team have no memories of it.”
Dobson also spoke of there being no history of exclusion or segregation, in terms of crowd attendance or support, at the Cape Town Stadium.
The committee’s decision will need to be ratified by the WCH board, but the Inventory, Grading and Interpretation Committee’s recommendation was exceptionally strong in its view that the stadium did not meet the criteria to be declared a provincial heritage site.
WP Rugby, to survive, needs money and not the nostalgic memories of an elite and privileged minority. It also does not need a museum to remind the masses of what they were excluded from and one that allows for the romantic notion among the white minority that Newlands was the home of South African rugby for 130 years. It wasn’t.
• Mark Keohane is the founder of keo.co.za, a multiple award-winning sports writer and the digital content director at Habari Media. Twitter: @mark_keohane
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