Kolisi urges Springboks to draw on Soweto’s spirit against All Blacks

Siya Kolisi wants the Springboks to carry Soweto’s history onto the field when South Africa faces New Zealand at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium on Saturday.

The 94,736-capacity stadium hosted the opening match of the 2010 football World Cup, the first and only edition held in Africa. For Kolisi, South Africa’s first Black captain, the area carries an even deeper significance because of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, when schoolchildren and students protested against the use of English and Afrikaans in Black schools.

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Many things that happened in Soweto helped shape the South Africa we have today

“Many things that happened in Soweto helped shape the South Africa we have today,” Kolisi said. “Many heroes have come from there, and a lot of the football history of this country is from Soweto, so we know how special that is.”

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Many heroes have come from there, and a lot of the football history of this country is from Soweto, so we know how special that is.

He said the setting gave South Africa more to play for and paid tribute to those who fought for freedoms they never lived to see. Hundreds of protesters were killed by police as the uprising spread through Johannesburg. International condemnation followed, and apartheid ended in 1994 with South Africa’s first fully democratic elections.

The match may also produce a milestone for New Zealand. If both take the field, Wallace and Amarante Sititi would become only the second brother-sister pair to play for New Zealand on the same day, after Xavier and Annaleah Rush did so against Australia in 1998. Their father, former Samoa captain Semo Sititi, has travelled to Johannesburg. Amarante called playing alongside her brother a privilege she would always hold in her heart.

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Representing this country is a privilege but doing it alongside my brother is something special. I will always hold it in my heart.