HEYNEKE MEYER

In January this year, popular former Blue Bulls trainer, Heyneke Meyer, was appointed coach for the South African national rugby team on a four-year term, replacing Peter de Villiers – however, despite a successful career, Meyer’s path to coaching the Boks has been anything but smooth.

As the only coach whose achievements included winning the Super 14, Currie Cup and Vodacom Cup competitions he was a strong contender to succeed Jake White at the helm of Springbok rugby in 2008, but De Villiers got the job. Meyer quit rugby taking on a senior role in a sports supplement company before being enticed back to coach the UK’s Leicester Tigers in the Guinness Premiership.

Now finally charged with leading the Boks to success, Meyer, who by his own admission is not a “quick-fix coach”, faces the tough challenge of taking over a team in the rebuilding phase and developing them into a winning team.

Born in Nelspruit on October 6, 1967, Meyer completed his schooling at Nelspruit’s Bergvlam Hoerskool before studying sports psychology at the University of Pretoria.

He graduated from Tukkies with a Bachelor of Arts with majors in psychology, human movement science and geography and went on to complete an honours degree in geography and an HED. Meyer was both a player and a coach during his time at Tukkies, as well as a part-time sports administrator and the member of his house committee responsible for sport.

Between 1988 and 1996 he coached a variety of teams from high school first teams, Under 21 sides to Carlton League first teams. His notable achievement during this time was that all the teams under his care reached the semi-finals in every season.

Meyer’s professional career stepped up a gear in 1997 when he was appointed assistant coach for the George-based Eagles, responsible for coaching and developing the forwards. In 1998 Meyer was promoted head coach of the South West District team and the Eagles finished the Currie Cup in seventh position – their best finish on record. The following year the Eagles made it into the Currie Cup semi-finals under Meyer’s watchful coaching.

He was appointed assistant coach of the Springboks during the 1999 World Cup, before heading for the hallowed ground of Loftus Versveld as head coach for the Northern Bulls in the Super 12s (as it was known then) in 2000 and as coach for the Blue Bulls in 2002. He overcame personal stresses (including the hospitalisation of both his father and wife on the same day in 2002) and coached the Blue Bulls from 2002 to 2007, leading them to the finals in all six Currie Cups as well has winning four Currie Cup titles. In 2007 the Blue Bulls, under Meyer’s leadership, became the first South African team to win the Super 14 competition – as well as the first team to win three away games on an Australasian tour.

Meyer was nominated as coach of the year by SA Rugby magazine in 2005, inducted into the University of Pretoria Sports Hall of Fame in 2006 and  was a Tukkies Laureate winner in 2007. His stellar performance earned him a reputation as South Africa’s most successful coach, and Meyer was a popular choice to take over from Jake White as national rugby coach in 2008 – but that was not to be.

The father of three sons, feeling disillusioned, resigned from rugby that year but was enticed back to coaching by an offer to take up a position of head coach for the UK-based Leicester Tigers. He filled the role for eight months before retuning to South Africa for personal reasons and then taking up an executive oversight role with the Blue Bulls as well as taking on an advisory role for the Tuks Varsity Cup.

Four years after missing out on the coveted top job, Meyer, known as a tough coach who demands the best of his players, was the top contender for national coach again this year.

With the retirement of key players and a disappointing quarter-final in the 2011 Rugby World Cup under De Villiers, Meyer has inherited a team in the rebuilding stage – something Meyer has excelled at with the Blue Bulls in the past – and the unenviable task of balancing rebuilding a national team with the expectation of producing wins from the outset.

His decision to use younger players in recent matches against England has already drawn some harsh criticism, despite winning the first game. But it’s time to throw our support behind one of South Africa’s most successful coaches to date, and give him time to build our fine rugby players into a strong winning team and do the job the Rugby Union has hired him to do.

KOPANO MATLWA

Kopano Matlwa is an inspirational young South African woman in her mid-20s who has already achieved more than most of us dream of achieving in a lifetime. She has completed her medical degree, won a scholarship to complete her masters at Oxford University in the UK, and written two award-winning novels.

Her list of achievements (which she won’t want used to define her) includes being selected as one of eight Goldman Sachs Global Leaders in 2005 and making the Mail & Guardian “100 young South Africans you must take to lunch” list two years in a row.

The eldest of Matsobane and Ingrid Matlwa’s three children, Kopano was born at the Mamelodi Day Hospital in Pretoria in 1985. As big sister to Tumelo and Manewa, she grew up in Midrand in Gauteng and won a scholarship to attend St Peter’s College in Sunninghill, Johannesburg, on the northern border of Eskom’s Megawatt Park.

Kopano was selected as Head Girl at high school, achieved full academic colours and matriculated with seven distinctions before heading to the University of Cape Town (UCT) to study medicine and always seems on the lookout to improve herself and the space around her.

At UCT she furthered her schoolgirl interest in community outreach projects as a volunteer for the Students' Health and Welfare Centres Organisation a student-run NGO at UCT that aims to improve the quality of life for individuals in developing communities. Kopano was also a member of the Clarinus House Committee, an orientation leader and member and mentor of the Golden Key National Honour Society – well known for developing exceptional leaders.

In her second year at medical school Kopano was selected as one of eight Goldman Sachs Global Leaders and went on to represent South Africa at the Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Institute in New York.

She was also a founding member and chairperson of Waiting Room Education by Medical Students, a non-profit organisation teaching patients, in the waiting rooms of mobile clinics, about common health conditions to empower them to take their health into their own hands.

While studying for her bachelors in medicine and surgery, the energetic Kopano made the time to follow in the footsteps of her heroine author, Toni Morrison, and wrote her first novel. She started writing about two young women growing up in contemporary South Africa in December 2003, after discussions with her sister Tumelo made her realise the important and uncomfortable issues people should consider.

Several rejection slips from publishers later, just as her manuscript was doomed to languish in a drawer while she set off on other pursuits, her debut novel Coconut – a fascinating view into the lives and issues of South African youth living in the modern post-apartheid era – won an EU Literary Award and a publishing contract with Jacana Books, when Kopano was just 21. Coconut, published in 2007, also won Kopano the JD Baqwa merit award.

Her highly acclaimed novel is a now set book, used as a teaching tool in many South African schools and several universities, and won the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature in 2010.

“I’ve always been a dreamer, with many goals and millions of ideas. My family and close friends will tell you what a restless soul I am; always involved in something new, often wearing myself out in the process,” said Kopano at the launch of Coconut in 2007.

Motivated by a quote from Abraham Maslow that reads: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be,” Kopanos said that it was only after publishing Coconut that she truly understood that “when you have a dream or a goal you must go for it with your all, not only for the sake of others who are sure to benefit from what you can contribute, but for your own sake.”

Kopano completed her second book Spilt Milk before she graduated from medical school in 2010 – and made it onto the prestigious long list for the 2011 Sunday Times Fiction Prize, although she didn’t get onto the short list.

In 2010 Kopano was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University in the UK, where she’s currently reading for her masters in Global Health.

In a recent interview with Brenda Nyakudya for AfroPolitan Kopano said: “Fear is a powerfully debilitating emotion, and if you can conquer that, you can conquer anything.” Kopano certainly seems to have found an effective way to conquer any of her fears and achieve great heights!