KEY POINTS:
Chume Notshe had walked 5km in his bare feet, a journey that took him well over an hour. He'd passed grim alleyways, dark, lonely fields and streets where muggers roamed, knives glinting menacingly in the darkness.
All for his love of rugby.
We'd travelled there in the back
of a people carrier, rattling along the rough old roads of the Nyanga township to reach the local rugby club, Lagunya. You turn off the highway from Cape Town and enter the notorious Cape Flats area, where death is a daily assailant for so many of the ordinary people of this land.
There wasn't much to announce this particular rugby club. Abandon images of the luxurious club rooms you might find in Europe. A couple of burned-out tyres lay abandoned near the entrance, a car wreck nearby. As the dark closes in, you feel a quiet menace, as though a stalker is close by.
But Chume has made it safely. So has his younger brother, Sikhmduzo, good enough at 14 to play on the wing for Western Province under-15s. They're out on the field in the growing dark, these 60-odd kids ranging from under-14s to under-19s, a ball being thrown around amid shouts of glee.
There is hardly a rugby boot between them, and most don't have any footwear at all. The only light is the distant glow of the street lamps down the road in the township.
The club gym is a converted container, brought here from the docks at Cape Town, probably because it's too rusty to use there. But they cut off one side, put a few rudimentary weights and metal bars inside and a couple of the boys from the town are working out. There are no lights inside.
But Louis Mzomba's eyes light up, big, gleaming orbs, when you ask how long he has been involved with this game. "I have loved rugby for more than 20 years" he smiles. "And to see these boys coming and being happy is what makes me smile."
But now, as South Africa celebrates its second World Cup victory, Mzomba is far from smiling. For a start, this school teacher-cum-rugby coach who works at Nomlinganiselo High School in New Cross Roads, not far from Nyanga, was held up at gunpoint in his classroom last week, and cell phones and other valuables were seized.
Crime in the townships, he reports, is escalating; people have nothing, so they take from others.
But it is not even that which induces a sense of no hope in the heart of Louis Mzomba. It is what he calls "the betrayal" of black South African rugby that leaves him desolate of hope, of belief that some day, young men like Chume Notshe will enjoy a better fate.
"Nothing has changed in South African rugby in terms of hope for black people" he says. "There is no sense of excitement at all about them playing in this final. When you look at the Springboks team now, it is not a team that is representative of this country. It is always a white team.
"The top rugby players of South Africa or even of Western Province in Cape Town never come here to coach, or to offer advice or even support us. And there are none of our guys in their senior teams.
"So they have lost interest in rugby because of the political things. They supported the New Zealand team or the Australians because there were black players, like Lote Tuqiri.
"Rugby in South Africa is a game for white people. Racism is naked [here] and interest in the game among black kids is decreasing steadily."
Mzomba admits he feels a growing threat of isolation, a sense of despair at what he has seen in the country since 1992 when Nelson Mandela walked free from jail and South Africa's status as the pariah of world society ended.
In 1995 when the World Cup was held there, Mandela urged unification and black and white came together, almost literally hand in hand. Hope was omnipresent, expectation high.
Alas, says Mzomba, the reality has been cruelly different. "In 1995, people of all colours wore green jerseys and there was a feeling of unification. But 12 years later that has all gone."
The reasons are simple, he says. The transformation issue has made countless headlines but this humble man points to one undeniable fact. "In 1995, there was only one black player in the Springboks team, Chester Williams. But we accepted that, we expected it to change.
"But 12 years down the line it is no different: it is still not representative at all. There are five non-white players in the whole South African squad at this World Cup: four coloureds and one black player, Akona Ndungane and he only played one game. He is there for a holiday. They have shown nothing at all towards an act of faith regarding transformation.
"They tell us there are no blacks who can play in this team yet about 80 per cent of South Africans are the black population. But you look at the Springboks team and there is not one black man. It doesn't make sense."
But of course, you must have a will to see that transformation process triumph. With a few notable exceptions, the evidence is that may not yet exist in the new South Africa.
As Mzomba wonders aloud, how else to explain the absence of players like Gcobani Bobo, Solly Tyibilika, Hanyani Shimange and Lawrence Sephaka from the South African squad? All have been tried and discarded. Continuity has been scarce.
Mzomba says the other problem is that the provinces have not changed either. "There is only one black player in the Western Province team. The rest are white and coloured.
"In fairness to [national coach] Jake White, he does not have a huge number of black players to choose from because even the provinces themselves don't bring on the black players."
Mzomba has experienced the difficulties himself. A referee for many years, he discovered in 2005 he was the only black referee officiating in the Vodacom Cup or Super 12 competitions. The best any other black officials were was touch judges.
He complained, kicked up a stink and led a strike by the black officials.
It ended up with Mzomba being hauled up on a disciplinary charge before the South African Rugby Union. He answered by revealing in the media how statistics showed, allegedly, that black officials were being ignored.
They called for an inquiry and the whole thing was buried, despite promises that things would change.
Mzomba was fired as a referee last year. Referees convenor Andre Watson's explanation? "He said I was too old. At 40. But Watson handled a World Cup final at 46. I expected the decision," said Mzomba, sadly. "But what happened to me doesn't matter. It is the bigger picture about the black community in rugby in this country that matters more to me."
Perhaps former England coach Dick Best, who coached Western Province in the late 1990s, hit the nail on the head before the game. "The South Africans are going to Paris in their droves this weekend [because] they feel it may be the last time they can seriously entertain the prospect of winning the World Cup.
"Forced integration [transformation] will put the Springboks well down the world rankings. They have seen this in other sports."
Louis Mzomba's love for this game has been infectious. But for how much longer? He says fewer black state schools are now playing rugby. If this trend grows, soon South Africa will have no choice but to field a side purely of white boys from the rich, exclusive schools where they excel.
That would be more than just a sadness, given the enormous levels of natural talent waiting to be developed among the poorer kids of South African sport. It would be a crime.
* Peter Bills is chief rugby correspondent for Independent News and Media in London
