So tonight is the big night and everyone is wondering who will who will be rubbing victory under the noses of their British and South African colleagues and friends at the office on Monday …

In his column for News24 Chris Roper gives 10 reasons why its better to be a Bok fan than a Pom fan:

10 reasons it’s better being a Bok fan than a Pom fan:

1. Bok fans aren’t surprised and grateful when their team wins matches, they’re surprised when their team loses.

2. Green and gold jerseys look cool on all kinds of South Africans, but white jerseys make England supporters look like the love children of unhealthy Zombies and dead fish.

3. We actually have 15 players in our team, rather than just Jonny Wilkinson and 14 old guys.

4. The South African sports media might be a self-serving, sycophantic bunch of freeloaders, but at least they aren’t staked out outside the team hotel hoping to get a picture of Monty’s wife tanning topless.

5. Our coach has got a chin (okay, more than one when he speaks Afrikaans).

6. The Boks’ traditional rivals actually come from different countries like New Zealand and Australia, as opposed to being English provinces, like Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

7. Fans of other teams hate the Boks because they’re hard bastards - they hate the English because they’re hypocrites who won’t admit they’re hard bastards.

8. Instead of wanky names like Jason, Jonny, Martin and Phil, our players have cool names like Os, Bakkies, Wikus, Akona, and, uh, Percy. (Dammit, trust Percy to ruin everything again).

9. Bok fans don’t mind being hated, because of all the practice we had during the apartheid years. English fans, on the other hand, can’t seem to understand why the rest of the world loathes them.

10. Win or lose on Saturday, Bok fans are flying back to a summer of hot babes and beaches. English fans are doomed to a winter of sleet and clogged M1.

11. (Everyone knows South Africans can’t count) Schalk Burger pushes the earth down when he does press ups. Martin Corry sticks his bum in the air.

You just have to love our Archbishop Desmond Tutu! He has just become patron of South Africa’s Braai Day.

“There are so many things that are pulling us apart, this has a wonderful potential to bring us all together,” Tutu told reporters.
“We have 11 different official languages but only one word for the wonderful institution of braai: in Xhosa, English, Afrikaans, whatever.
“We’ve shown the world a few things. Let’s show them that ordinary activities like eating can unite people of different races, religions, sexes… short people, tall people, fat people, lean people.”

Braai Day takes place on 24 September - so wherever you are, get out your tongs, get some good boerie at your local South African shop and don’t forget to send SA Times pictures of your braai!

Anyone who has read Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart might wonder whatever happened to the Alcock family. Malan devotes chapters to their brave work in rural Msinga during the apartheid years. The book tells of the tragic death of Neil Alcock who was “murdered for his trouble”. His wife Creina, “a strange and bewitching creature”, apparently still lives in the same hut in Msinga. But for the first time Rian has now written about the couple’s two boys - GG and Khonya, as they are known. Two “white Zulu’s” - in the true sense of the word (”not the urban fakers whose Zuluness consists largely of dreadlocks and tribal bangles” and certainly not “white liberals who presume to understand Africa but run for trauma counselling if a hard man so much as looks at them”). You simply have to read The Fabulous Alcock boys article that recently appeared in the Observer for yourself. You’ll laugh; you’ll be fascinated; and - as with My Traitor’s Heart - you’ll gain a deeper insight into South Africa.