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Springbok legend hits back in quota system ‘spat’

Bryan Habana is one of the greatest Springboks of all time. His career spanned over a decade at international level, where he donned the Springbok jersey a staggering 124 times. During that time, he firmly established himself as one of the most iconic wingers of all time.

Besides an illustrious Test career that included a British & Irish Lions series win, he also became a domestic cult hero at the Bulls, Stormers and Toulon.

Since retiring, Habana has achieved incredible success as both a broadcaster and in the business world, while naturally remaining an avid Springbok supporter.

Earlier this month, he made a classy social media post as he reacted to the news that Springbok lock Eben Etzebeth would equal his tally of 124 Test caps during the Rugby Championship opener against Australia.

In that post, Habana stated his belief that Etzebeth would in fact go on to become the first Springbok to reach 150 caps, but this was met with a spiteful response from a social media user with the handle ‘Duffman’.

“But he (Etzebeth) did it on merit, fighting against a quota system you benefitted from,” the social media troll commented. “Sorry but if you get selected while there is literally a quota system in place and a transformation policy in place then you are a beneficiary of that racist policy. Select players on MERIT! Not their skin colour.”

Habana responded diplomatically, stating: “And what do you then call players selected during the apartheid era when players of colour weren’t allowed to be selected @Duffman96918426? Because some of them probably weren’t selected purely based on MERIT but because of a system that favoured ONLY them,” he added with a winking face emoji.

This led to a wider response, with another social media user commenting: “Ok, that there has been players included in the Boks that shouldn’t have been, bc of quotas? Yes, for sure. Bryan Habana is not one of them. With 67 tries over his 124 test caps, Bryan is one of the best wings the world ever saw. Period. Show some respect.”

Duffman then commented: “Doesn’t matter how many tries you score when it was under a racist policy that discriminates against another race,” before another X (formerly Twitter) user went one step further, posting this nasty comment: “While he tries to push revenge politics that discriminate against my people? I’d spit in his face.”

Despite all of this, Habana once again demonstrated the maturity and temperament that made him such a great player.

“I wasn’t pushing any sort of revenge politics or discriminating against “your people” @donaghy_ross…” he commented. “I’m proudly South African and played for ALL South Africans when I had the privilege to represent OUR country… Resorting to spitting in people’s face is so classy though.”

You can see the exchange involving Bryan Habana below:

Stay classy

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