It started with a rugby match and ended with a question that lingered well beyond the final whistle. On Sunday 7 June, Rachel Kolisi took to TikTok to share a clip of her son Nicholas playing a game in Langa, the Cape Flats township about 11 kilometres from central Cape Town and the oldest township in the city.
The clip was warm and unremarkable in the best possible way: children playing rugby, the way rugby is meant to be played, on a field that wasn’t manicured and in a community that wasn’t their own. But it was Rachel’s message alongside the video that struck a chord.
The post that got people talking
“My son played a rugby match in Langa yesterday, against a team from the community, and I’m here for it,” she wrote. “Watching kids play sport is always special. Watching them do it in spaces that may be different from their own feels even more important.”
@rachelkolisiMy son played a rugby match in Langa yesterday, against a team from the community, and I’m here for it. Watching kids play sport is always special. Watching them do it in spaces that may be different from their own feels even more important. We should be doing more of this, because sport has the power to break down barriers. I’m curious, how often do your schools or sports clubs play in communities different from their own? What impact do you think it has on the children involved? ♬ sonido original – 𝓲𝓼𝓶𝓪𝓪_𝓵𝔂𝓻𝓲𝓬𝓼
She continued: “We should be doing more of this, because sport has the power to break down barriers. I’m curious, how often do your schools or sports clubs play in communities different from their own? What impact do you think it has on the children involved?”
It was a genuine question, not a rhetorical one, and the comments reflected that.
The response
The comment section filled quickly with people who had clearly been waiting for exactly this kind of conversation. One commenter wrote at length about the tendency of private schools, particularly in the Western Cape, to remain in insular circuits where “mixing that does happen, happens with other similar schools.” They encouraged others to cross what they described as existing divides: “Come over Kromboom bridge and experience the other side. Make friends. And in the process, recognise your privilege so that we can make right in our communities and with our neighbours who aren’t as far away as they may seem if you haven’t been taken to see what is on the other side.”
Others were simply moved by the image of a child in a field in a community different from the one he wakes up in each morning.
Why this moment matters
South African children, even those growing up post-1994, frequently exist within parallel worlds that only rarely intersect. Sport, in theory and occasionally in practice, is one of the spaces where those worlds can meet on equal and uncomplicated terms. The ball doesn’t care where you’re from. The score doesn’t know whose school has the better facilities.
Nicholas Kolisi playing in Langa isn’t a grand gesture or a planned initiative. It’s just a child playing rugby where rugby was being played, in a community that has its own relationship with the game, its own players, its own history. Rachel’s decision to share it and to ask the question she asked turned a Sunday morning match into a small but meaningful nudge toward a larger conversation.
That’s what sport at its best does. And sometimes, a clip on TikTok is all it takes to remind people of it.
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Featured Image: Instagram
