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Cape Town - A Johannesburg-based rugby lover has told a disturbing story of an alleged racist exchange that he experienced at Saturday’s Rugby Championship clash between the Springboks and All Blacks at Ellis Park.
Reports of incidents of racism surfaced when several match goers voiced their concerns to Radio 702 on Tuesday afternoon, and now another spectator has come forward with what is a chilling story of racial and verbal abuse.
“I went to the toilet at the end of half-time and the queues are obviously quite long. There are queues for the urinals and then for the cubicles,” 30-year old Daryl Lewis told Sport24 on Wednesday.
“A security guard came in and he walked straight to the (urinal) trough. I think that he thought that the queue was for the cubicles so he just walked straight to a gap in-between two guys.
“This guy next to him grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back and he was like ‘What the fuck are you doing? There’s a queue here.’”
According to Lewis, the security guard tried to explain himself before he was met with more abuse.
“The guy told him that this isn’t the new South Africa, this is the old South Africa and he must fuck off out of here and he doesn’t have a place here,” said Lewis.
At this point, Lewis tried to get involved in the altercation.
“I told them to just relax. The guy was just having a pee ... he’s a security guard. Two of them turned around to me and told me to “shut the fuck up” and “get out of here”. I was kind of dwarfed by the guys and didn’t have my mates around me so I just walked out.”
Lewis has been a regular at Ellis Park over the years, having attended international and Super Rugby fixtures and he says he has never experienced racism at the stadium before.
But it was rife on Saturday, he says, and he noticed a ‘racial undertone’ at other points during the day.
“And then you get a guy smoking in the stands and a security guard comes up to him and says ‘Sorry sir, you can’t smoke here’. And then the guy swears at him telling him to get away just because he’s a black dude doing his job,” Lewis recalled.
“You see it ... it was quite prevalent at the game.
“I was maybe naïve enough to think that this stuff doesn’t happen very often but maybe it does.
“I’ve never really experienced it ... I’ve been to stadiums all over the country and this was the first time I’ve experienced it.”
Did you also experience incidents of racism at Ellis Park last Saturday? If so, email feeback@sport24.co.za
