Today, 44 years ago, the New Zealand All Blacks played the Proteas, the national rugby team of the South African Rugby Football Federation, at Cape Town’s Goodwood Show Grounds. This game took place three weeks after the Soweto Uprising, at a time that mass events in Black communities were still banned. In addition, this was only the third time that the Proteas, the representative team of a non-white rugby body, were set to play against overseas opposition. Having played England (1972), British Lions (1974), this occasion marked the first time for any black representative team to play the famous New Zealand All Blacks.

Friday 3 July marked the commemoration of one of the key moments in the history of South African rugby. On this day 49 years ago, the South African Rugby Union (SARU), formerly known as the South African Coloured Rugby Football Board (SACRFB), hosted its first final of the South Africa Cup Inter-Provincial rugby competition. Taking the field on this auspicious occasion was the Western Province and Eastern Province. The right to the final was only achieved after a gruelling week-long competition which involved a total of 12 provinces.

Image: Deputy President David Mabuza delivering the eulogy at the special provincial official funeral of Mr Masana Sam Nzima, Lillydale, Mpumalanga Province

No other South African photographer is more closely associated with the Soweto uprisings of June 1976 than Masana Sam Nzima. Sam, who passed away in 2018, became world- famous for the powerful and moving image he took of the dead body of Hector Pieterson being carried by another learner. The house in the small village of Lillydale in Bushbuck Ridge, Limpopo Province, where Sam grew up and had lived at the time of his death, was recently turned into a museum.