Foodbank wins due to Habana

The video of the prolific winger taking on the world’s largest passenger aircraft was one of South Africa’s Top 10 last year and British Airways’ most popular to date.

Its success gave rise to a competition to emulate the feat, which South African Rudolph Raath won against three other international competitors. It also prompted British Airways to offer FoodBank South Africa two Club World (business class tickets) worth some R60 000 if the clip reached two million views.

Foodbank South Africa, of which Habana is patron, is a national NPO that rescues food and facilitates the provision of 11 million meals in communities with the highest concentrations of hungry or malnourished people.

It rescues edible, donated food and where necessary procures basic food items and distributes these to selected beneficiary organisations that run feeding programmes.

“What started out as a bit of fun caught peoples’ imagination and has had a really positive outcome and I’m glad to have been part of that,” said Habana at the ticket handover.

FoodBank South Africa plans to auction the tickets at its annual banquet later this year.

“We initially thought that 2 million views was a big target but interest in the video kept climbing, and it then received a further boost when British Airways started flying the A380 to South Africa in February,” said Andy du Plessis, FoodBank South Africa, managing director.

He said money raised from the auction will be used to continue its food rescue programme around the country.

Gabriel Mobeana, British Airways customer services manager hands over the two Club World tickets to Bryan Habana, FoodBank SA patron and Andy Du Plessis, managing director.