Asad Bhorat, secretary of the Transformation and Anti-Racism Rugby Committee (TARC) has labelled Peter De Villiers the ‘ultimate traitor’.Bhorat said the coach will be summoned to appear before TARC and Parliament’s standing committee on sports and recreation on his return from Australasia for failing to transform the team after proclaiming he would never pick fewer than 10 black players in his starting line-up. De Villiers has picked only three players of colour in his starting XV during the Tri-Nations – Bryan Habana and JP Pietersen on the wings, and Zimbabwean-born Beast Mtawarira at prop. Bhorat told the Saturday Star that De Villiers had let his ‘ego be inflated by his winning streak’ and had silently become ’submissive’ to SA Rugby by fielding an almost all-white team.
‘The TARC and the sports portfolio committee have not criticised him up to now because we were giving him time and space. But no more. He will not be protected anymore,’ Bhorat added. ‘Sacrificing one’s principles is tormenting enough but betraying the trust of a nation hoping for change is another thing altogether. It is now clear De Villiers has turned his back on this support, choosing instead to chase the mirage of white rugby support. This decision will, inevitably, prove to be fatally flawed.’