With the announcement that black quotas will be implemented into the South African rugby team in the coming years, columnist Max du Preez wrote an interesting view on IOL of the problems with the policy and where the country went wrong.

If South Africa’s rugby bosses had really been committed to advancing the sport among black South Africans in the last 20 years, radical quotas would not have been necessary.

And if many state schools had not insisted on maintaining their “Christian character” after we got our new constitution, court action against them would not have been instituted.

Max elaborates to say that rugby should’ve been used as a springboard to uplift black communities and re-conciliate the country further.

There is a lot of money in rugby. We should have channelled a big chunk of that money to black schools and black clubs after 1994. We should have focused on giving black rugby the same facilities and coaching abilities white communities had for generations.

The same goes for religion in state schools. We are a secular state and freedom of religion is entrenched in our constitution. The practice of religion belongs in church and at home. Values and morals, we should know by now, do not come from organised religion but from people. We dare not exclude or alienate a pupil not from a Christian background.

You can read Max’s full column on IOL.