South Africa Sport

What breaks, can heal. Grief doesn’t always look like sadness. Mercedes Nel is out for justice. Her brother is injured in a high-stakes game against New Zealand’s top club side, and she blames the pre-match haka for inciting aggression. Fuelled by a misguided sense of loyalty, she launches an anonymous campaign to have it banned before the return leg in Johannesburg—fixating on Jason Te Hira, the Knights’ star player and All Blacks player. But when fate—and an injury—sidelines Mercedes, she finds herself paired with Jason for a PR project in Pretoria. He doesn’t know she’s ...

Flying Scared. Loving Bold. Piper Nel has one dream: to earn a starting place on South Africa’s elite professional women’s rugby team, the Jacaranda Braves, along with her twin sister. But chasing that goal means travel—and travel requires planes. Many of them. There’s just one problem: she hasn’t flown since a traumatic event ten years ago. Determined not to let fear ground her future, Piper turns to the person she trusts most—her brother’s best friend, Caleb Taylor. Confident, charming, and maddeningly steady, he offers to help overcome her fear. But what starts in the ...

'He is rugby's Pep Guardiola' – The Telegraph Rassie Erasmus has been called a genius. He’s been called reckless. All his life, he’s done things differently. Now, with his trademark candour, Rassie talks openly about his adventures and misadventures at the pinnacle of world rugby, both as...

Few athletes hold a record comparable to that of Oscar Chalupsky. He made history at the age of fifteen as the first person to win both the Junior and Senior Ironman titles on the same day at the South African National Lifesaving Championships, he was the country’s spokesman at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and he is a multiple-times global surfski champion. No Retreat, No Surrender is an uplifting account of grit, perseverance, talent and attitude, vividly capturing the determined mindset of an inspirational sporting legend.

The Boer War was the defining conflict of South African history and one of the most important conflicts in the history of the British Empire. Naturally, complicated geopolitics underscored it, going back centuries. In fact, the European history of South Africa began with the 1652 arrival of a small Dutch flotilla in Table Bay, at the southern extremity of the African continent, which made landfall with a view to establishing a victualing station to service passing Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) ships.

In Soccer Grannies, Jean Duffy, a soccer-playing mom herself, recounts how she and her team set to work to bring the Soccer Grannies to the U.S. after hearing their incredible story. Despite many obstacles that stand in their way, the Soccer Grannies finally arrive, and Jean describes the wonderful friendships and cultural exchanges that follow. But Soccer Grannies tells more than just the physical journey of the South African women; it also details the Grannies’ personal journeys, sharing poignant insights into the realities of women living in South Africa.

South Africa revels in its reputation as a sport-loving country. Yet just beneath the surface lurks a dark underbelly that reeks of cheating and illicit shenanigans, where shady characters and willing athletes are prepared to do whatever it takes to come out on top. South African sport is awash with steroids, a habit that formed in the late 1980s and continues unabated today, with participants and champions alike opting to play dirty.

The Sunday Times bestseller 'A genuine super-coach' – Stephen Jones, Sunday Times Brilliant, honest, combative – Eddie Jones is a gigantic yet enigmatic figure in world rugby and a true legend of the game. In My Life and Rugby he tells his story for the first time, including the full inside...

Among many legendary episodes from the life and career of men's basketball coach Dean Smith, few loom as large as his recruitment of Charlie Scott, the first African American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drawn together by college basketball in a time of momentous change, Smith and Scott helped transform a university, a community, and the racial landscape of sports in the South.

In the spring of 1970, a Pretoria schoolboy, Joe, becomes obsessed with Muhammad Ali. He begins collecting daily newspaper clippings about him, a passion that grows into an archive of scrapbooks. Forty years later, when Joe has become a writer, these scrapbooks become the foundation for a memoir of his childhood. When he calls upon his brother, Branko, for help uncovering their shared past, meaning comes into view in the spaces between then and now, growing up and growing old, speaking out and keeping silent.

In 2019, South Africa celebrates 25 years of democracy and the freedom that turned the country from a political pariah to one warmly embraced by the world. Nowhere was the welcome more visible, or more emotional, than in sport. Vuvuzela Dawn tells the stories of that return. From Bafana...