An Eastern Cape man is seeking to have the courts bar the use of the Springbok emblem, arguing it is an illegal and gratuitous display of an apartheid symbol.

Kanya Mdaka intends launching proceedings in the Equality Court in East London against the SA Rugby Union’s continued use of the symbol, says a Daily Dispatch report.

He has the support of a pre-democracy non-racial rugby star with Kwzakhele Rugby Union, Zola Yeye, who said there was nothing wrong with Mdaka’s action, and lamented then-President Nelson Mandela’s overruling of those who did not want the Springbok emblem to be maintained after 1994.

Mdaka hopes that a 2019 decision in the Nelson Mandela Foundation v AfriForum matter will be enough for a finding that the emblem is a ‘symbol of hate’ and its display inappropriate ‘given its controversial history and what it symbolises’.

The 2019 decision found the apartheid-era SA flag was ‘a vivid symbol of white supremacy and black disenfranchisement and oppression’.

In a landmark judgment that ensured the Equality Act’s ambit applied to symbolic acts of expression, Gauteng Deputy Judge-President Phineas Mojapelo found displaying the old flag constituted hate speech and harassment, was discriminatory, had a clear intention to hurt, and incited harm and hatred against black people.

Mdaka wrote to SARU this month alleging the organisation was in contravention of the Mojapelo judgment.

He said the Springbok, adopted for SA’s 1906 tour of the northern hemisphere, was later copyrighted by rugby authorities and shared with other sporting codes, provided it could be awarded only to white sportspeople representing SA.

‘It is for this reason that the Springbok has come to be known as an international symbol of hatred, white supremacy and apartheid.'

This, he said, led to other sporting codes ending the use of the Springbok emblem.

Responding to Mdaka, SARU’s attorney, Matt Kemp, said the organisation denied the Springbok was a divisive, hurtful or dehumanising symbol, arguing the emblem, along with the new SA flag, represented the values of hope, possibility and unity.

He said despite SARU’s fundamental disagreement with Ndaka’s views, the rugby body respected its responsibility to redress past imbalances, notes the Daily Dispatch report.

Mdaka said yesterday that he had not yet lodged papers in the matter due to logistical problems but he hoped to do so this week.

Citing former Springbok player Luke Watson who in 2008 reportedly said he felt like vomiting on the Springbok emblem Mdaka said opposition to the use of the Springbok symbol was ‘not a Kanya Mdaka issue; it is a national issue’.

He said he initially intended to bring the application before the court in Engcobo, but after being ‘sent here, there and everywhere’, and due to ‘issues of competency and the complexity of the case’, he decided to lodge the application in East London where he will seek an order barring the use of the emblem.

Full Daily Dispatch report