“I sometimes remind myself of how blessed I am to be where I am today. Not that many years ago, the sports governing body of my own country of South Africa wouldn’t have allowed me to run in the Olympics because I am Black. I was born in 1991, just a few years before the first democratic elections in 1994 would finally begin to unravel that insidious and dehumanizing system of government that defined people and even ripped families apart based on the color of their skin and other physical features. My parents, older siblings, and extended family lived through this time. They were not allowed to travel or live where they wanted; some were forcibly relocated. Black people didn’t have access to higher education. And unlike me, so many great Black athletes never got a chance. There is still so much trauma in our communities from the brutality of apartheid. I carry that history of discrimination and resistance and the yearning for freedom within me; they are there in everything I do.

“I was a multi-use player; I could be a striker or a defender. I knew how to handle the ball, how to open space on the pitch, how to dribble. No one cared I was a girl, they just wanted to win. The kids and adults would all gather to see me play and they’d chant “Mokgadi!

Mokgadi! Mokgadi!” I loved to hear my name. I’d love to give those who came to see me a show. You could say I was a performer even from young. I enjoyed being the center of attention.

I’d been speaking to Siya quite a lot and hearing only good things about the new regime, but nothing could prepare me for my first proper sitdown team meeting with Rassie at Kings Park. For the previous few years, journalists and pundits had been imploring the Boks to develop a more sophisticated game – play more like the All Blacks, in other words – and here was Rassie saying physicality was the very essence of South African rugby; and rather than doing something different, he thought that we needed to double down.

As far as Rassie was concerned, we could spend lots of time working on other parts of the game and still lose more matches than we won, but if we focused on making our big rock more solid we’d win more games than we’d lose. Then, once we’d nailed the physical stuff, we could start thinking about adding bells and whistles. As you can imagine, all this talk of physicality was great to hear for us as players, and I left that meeting thinking, This guy is the real deal.”

7: Rassie United

“‘In this team’, he said, ‘transformation is about more than certain guys playing because they’re black or white, it’s about accepting and respecting each other’s cultures.’ Because if we did that, he said, people would feel comfortable being themselves and play better on the weekend. As such, we’d be more likely to win together, and the more we won together, the quicker we’d transform the mindset of the South African public.

Rassie had a set of rules that every player had to abide by but he also knew he couldn't treat everyone the same. An Afrikaner who went back to farm school in the Boland is likely to be different from a black guy who grew up in a township or someone from a wealthy family who attended an exclusive school in Cape Town. The coaching staff understood that they had to be empathetic to individual needs within a framework that applied to everyone.

We were a transformed team, different players come from different cultures and have different beliefs, and we must find a way that works for everyone.