African rugby boss Herbert Mensah lauds Boks’ global dominance

Herbert Mensah, president of Rugby Africa, knows it all too well that he now leads a game on the continent where one country, South Africa, is the odd one out.  It’s a rarity in sports to have a dominant force in the world from a continent where pretty much no one else comes close to world-class standards.

It is very much unlike in South America, for instance, where even as Brazil and Argentina rule the roost, they are not alone. Other countries in that region pack quite a punch in world football.

Same as in Asia where India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and lately Afghanistan all play cricket to a very high level on the global stage.

South Africa in rugby is a unique case, though. They are four times winners of the World Cup, a tournament that has been a burying ground for the other three African countries to have taken part since the very first edition in 1987. None of them have won a single game there.

Herbert Mensah is being awarded with The Order of The Volta by Ghana’s last president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, an award for outstanding service to the country.

Ghanaian Mensah, an ex-player for Sussex county in England, sees a key role for South Africa in addressing the world rugby power balance in Africa.

South Africa’s capacity to lend a hand isn’t in doubt. At the moment, under the stewardship of SA Rugby (SARU) president Mark Alexander, South Africa is the financially the strongest rugby nation among the top tier of world rugby, even surviving the coronavirus pandemic. 

Mensah and Alexander have a good working relationship, and the African rugby honcho is banking on that crucial network to secure the South Africans’ backing. 

“I’ve only one criticism of a statement made by Mark. One, and it’s a big one…because Mark is my big brother,” Mensah quips in praise of Alexander.

Herbert Mensah with Springbok World Cup-winner Cheslin Kolbe

“He says every time when the Springboks wear that shirt, they know they are playing for 60 million (South African) people. Mark, Mark, Mark! How wrong are you! You’re playing for 1.4 billion (African) people, that’s who you’re playing for! When Siya (Kolisi) lifted the (World) Cup, children in villages all around Africa understood who Kolisi is and what he stood for, and that is significant and I get you Mark, I’m half-pulling your leg! But you have to understand that for me, it is what you do off the field that creates greatness. I thank you for Jurie Roux (South African rugby administrator with passion for African development) and I thank you for the window that allows me to look into what it is that you are doing and achieving and try to see if I can try persuade not those with me today, but those who will be there tomorrow. Thank you, Mark, and congratulations.”

Mensah – who was elected Rugby Africa president in March 2023 to become the body’s first non-Francophone head – is however not oblivious to what his own administration has to do first before seeking external support. 

The Accra-based entrepreneur believes he has hit the ground running in his bid to oversee a change in the fortunes of African rugby. 

“When I got into Rugby Africa, I was very clear about how the future should be, what we should do to win off the field, and win on the field,” says Mensah.

Herbert Mensah with new members of the Executive Board of World Cup following elections in Dublin last December.

“How important it was to build a team of winners, people who understood the business of sport. Because that’s fundamentally what’s wrong in sport. Because people assume that it is just what you see on the television or at the stadium and therefore most of the structures that are built are either people coming in to continue doing what it is that was done in the past, often, not well enough. That kind of mentality, it may be wrong, and everybody follows and they do it wrong. And for Rugby Africa to be able to succeed, we need to win off the field, create a team of people who understand the need for mindset change, understanding that sport is big business, understand that we need to all roll in the same direction in order to win, and that is a big challenge. We succeed either to some extent, conflict has slowed us down in another extent and I do hope that going into the future we can, because we need partnerships and associations because Rugby Africa has in the past always looked to the north to build, to get associations.”

Mensah was last week in Uganda on a tour of the venue to host African’s final qualification tournament for the 2027 World Cup. The tournament, just as the 2024 Africa Cup, will be staged in July on the immaculate training ground of the Mandela National Stadium in Kampala. 

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