'I've never told this story before - I don't even think my Mrs knows'
As a little boy, Joseph Dweba would beg his parents for rugby boots, pleading for the most basic, mundane essentials that his friends and rivals took for granted. Every time he asked, they had to tell him no. There simply wasn’t enough money.
The three Dwebas were stuffed into a cloying one-bedroom shack in Carletonville, fifty miles southwest of Johannesburg in South Africa’s Gauteng province. Much of the land there was owned by the mining companies who plundered gold from beneath its sun-blistered crust. Townships sprung up where the workers and their families lived in a rickety warren of corrugated iron. Sanitation was poor and HIV rife.
How horribly ironic to be reared in destitution with the most coveted mineral on Earth under your feet, but it was here among the mine shafts, the drugs and the crime that the Cheetahs hooker’s journey began.
Dweba’s father, like many others in the town, worked below ground, but squandered most of his wage. He had seven children from previous relationships. His mother, who made 1200 rand a month (roughly £53 at the current exchange rate) working in a kitchen, had three. Imagine her dismay when she returned home to find her modest abode engulfed in flames.
“I’ve never told this story before – I don’t even think my Mrs knows,” Dweba says. “I came back from primary school and there were a lot of insects in the house, so I took a candle, lit it up and wanted to kill them.
“But I was right next to the fridge – I was stupid, I didn’t know. The fridge started sparking and burned the whole house down. I had to go and stay with another woman while they rebuilt the house.
“Yes, my mum was angry with me, but she understood I was a kid and I knew nothing. She was the person who always looked after me. She always supported me.”
When Dweba was asked along to his first rugby session, he hated it. He walked miles home in bucketing rain afterwards, with his mother so worried she greeted him with an almighty smack across the chops.
But he was bullied by the older kids in the neighbourhood. And soon, the sport became a tool for him to “bully them back”. A new coach, Mr Badenhorst, awoke in Dweba a love for rugby that still burns bright, driving him wherever he needed to go and making sure he never went hungry.
“He did that for four years,” Dweba says. “He took me to provincials out of his jurisdiction out of love, all of these places to go to try-outs for the Golden Lions.
“He is hardcore Afrikaans, but he had a soft spot for me. I didn’t understand what he was doing in my life, picking me up, taking me home, buying me food. Only now as I sit back do I realise that this guy had a huge impact on my life to get to where I am today.
“My parents stay opposite the school now, so I still go and thank him. And I go see the kids at the school too. I promise him that if I play for the Springboks, he will be the person I give my Bok jersey to.”
In his quest to capitalise on rampaging ball-carries, striking ability and lust to make it, Dweba changed high school three times. Coaches shifted him from centre to number eight to the front-row. When he went from a local English-speaking school to the Afrikaans-dominated Jan Viljoen, he had to repeat a year while he learned to follow classes in the new language. He was the school’s only player to make the Lions under-16 side. They would drop him off at training, and leave him to find his own way back to Carletonville.
“My parents did not have a car and even if they did, they don’t know the distances or where I was supposed to go,” he says. “There was a point where I walked back.
“My friend would come to pick me up and he told me, ‘Listen, these people are wasting your time, they don’t care about you, only about the school’.”
On he went, from Jan Viljoen to Hoerskool Florida. There, his new team-mates would buy boots for him. Their fathers drove him to and from Craven Week, South Africa’s great gladiatorial stage for boys to battle before scouts from across the land.
To get home from school, Dweba would have to take a combination of trains and taxis, burning through money his parents did not have. There was a kindly family who often took him in at weekends, made sure he had a roof over his head and food in his belly.
Ultimately, his talent pierced the hardship. He was the only Lions player to be selected for SA Schools, and the only schoolboy to make the 2014 South Africa Under-20 squad, a team led by Handre Pollard that went all the way to the Junior World Championship final.
“I had to go to Cape Town to meet up with SA Schools,” Dweba says. “I had never been on a plane before, I didn’t know where the terminal was, I didn’t even know what a plane looked like – I’d only seem them way up in the sky and never been close to them.
“Then the tallest guy I’ve ever seen comes up and grabs me on the head and says, ‘Hi Joe’. It was RG Snyman.
“With the Under-20s, I didn’t know what coach Dawie Theron wanted from me. He told me I would play, I gave everything in training, but he never gave me proper game time.
“Then Malcolm Marx tore his ACL in training, and the second-choice hooker, Corniel Els, tore his ACL in the final against England. I had to go on. Wow.
“I made my line-outs, my scrums, my carries. After the game, the boys, Jesse Kriel and them, were like, ‘You’re a beast’. What do you mean? I didn’t know what was going on, my eyes were so big. They told me I played a hell of a game.
“Dawie Theron comes to me and says in Afrikaans that it’s a shame he didn’t play me earlier, because he can see how hungry I was. He tells me straight – ‘You are going to be my starting hooker next year’.”
His coaches were astounded that such a brilliant young player did not have an agent at 19 – Dweba didn’t even have a phone at that stage, far less an advocate to negotiate contracts and secure goodies on his behalf. He found a reliable representative, who helped him sign professional terms with the Cheetahs.
Check out @myoddballs – raising awareness of Testicular Cancer pic.twitter.com/cPi3P8kBXf
— Joseph Dweba (@josephdweba2) November 15, 2019
Dweba began life in Bloemfontein poor and car-less and Franco Smith’s fifth-choice hooker, finishing up at Louis Botha, high school number four. He borrowed Smith’s bike to cycle the 10km to training twice a day. He says Rory Duncan, who led the team’s maiden Pro14 campaign, “promised me the moon”, but his opportunities on the field were as rare and fleeting as a lunar eclipse.
“Sorry for my language, but I have been bullshitted and fucked around so many times. I was getting a minute here, two minutes there, never got clear game time,” he says.
“Torsten van Jaarsveld was first-choice hooker and I was promoted to the bench when he injured his neck. Tortsen comes back, and Rory tells me that the senior guy is back so we just have to make space for him.
“I’m saying, ‘Coach, you just said a month ago that Torsten has to work his way back into the team – it looks like he’s walking back into it, and worst of all, he’s starting’. That pissed me off a lot. And I did not understand.
“The defence coach tells me to be patient – I can’t be patient for that long, my contract is coming to an end, I need to prove myself, and the Mrs is also pregnant with my kid. I’m giving my all on the training sessions, but this guy is not recognising me and not giving me a contract.”
The Cheetahs offered a meagre new deal, and then withdrew it when Dweba took his time to respond. Their recruitment chief told him that players were investments, and so far, the franchise wasn’t getting much return on its money.
“I went to Harold Verster, the CEO of the company, and told him, ‘You are the only guy I’m telling this, but we’re having a baby, my contract is coming to an end and I want to stay at the Free State, so please help me out’,” Dweba says.
“They gave me the exact same offer that they had taken off the table. It was a shitty contract. I don’t care, I’m having a baby I’ll sign the contract and I’ll work my ass off. I’m going to show them something different about myself.
“Torsten had just left, he told me as he was leaving, ‘This is your jersey, take it, and if you don’t take it, then you’re stupid’.”
Dweba trained like a warrior possessed, smithereening team-mates, thundering across the paddock as through the grass on which he ran was a mortal enemy. Little baby Khayone arrived and with fatherhood came a great swell of responsibility.
“Franco Smith himself did not understand what was happening to me. I was hungry. This was my time. When the Currie Cup hit, I just went all-out. That’s when people started to recognise, there’s the Joseph Dweba we know – there he is.”
This season, under Hawies Fourie, Dweba has been stupendous, a dreadlocked colossus wreaking mayhem wherever he rumbles. He was named Currie Cup player of the year after helping propel the Cheetahs to the famous old trophy. In the Pro14, he has bludgeoned his way to seven tries in 12 outings and the team’s line-out is among the most effective in the league.
For all South Africa’s riches at hooker, a Springboks call cannot be far away, even with an overseas contract at Bordeaux-Begles, who finished the abandoned Top 14 season in first place, in the offing. “I felt like Rassie Erasmus could have invited me to alignment camps before the World Cup, even though I wasn’t in his plans for Japan,” Dweba says. “It would just be good to see how they work and where are my strengths and weaknesses. I never heard anything.
“Jacques Nienaber, the new coach, said I am in their plans and that moving to France won’t disadvantage me. If I stayed in South Africa, it is much easier for them to call me up, but if I’m shooting the lights out in the Top 14, I’m definitely going to be chosen.
“I have to look after my family. We can put the money we earn in France aside. I feel like I can fit in properly in the league, and I feel like I can dominate, I want to dominate. I want them to know who I am and what I stand for.
“And it’s not just the money. I could have easily chosen a different club – I went to see Castres, Toulouse, Lyon, and the last one was Bordeaux-Begles. That solidified everything for me, because the head coach [Christophe Urios] was a hooker himself, he would help me improve my skills and the team is very good, I’m not just going there to fill in the numbers.”
The big hooker is not so much silencing his doubters as clamping their teeth together with a vice. At 24, he can secure his family’s future by moving to France, while testing himself against the behemoths of the Top 14. Bordeaux-Begles may have lost the great Semi Radradra, but are tooling up in a serious way with Dweba, the absurdly proportioned Ben Tameifuna, and Ben Lam, the fabulous winger, all joining for the new campaign.
If it wasn’t for rugby, Dweba would have followed his father to the Carletonville gold mines. These days, he might very well be among the scores of unemployed miners in dire straits as the industry withers.
Instead, life is very different. It is happy and exhilarating and full of opportunities, thanks to a heart that shines brighter than any gold chiselled out of the Gauteng dirt.
“A few of the guys that I grew up with have died due to drugs and overdoses, some died from HIV,” he says. “Rugby took me away from all of that. It was frustrating moving from school to school, further away from my parents, but it helped me in the long run.
“I can provide for myself, for my parents, and for my kids now. I always say that I am doing this for my kid and I want him and my kids to come to have a better life than I did. I don’t want to spoil them, but I want them to be comfortable.
“That’s my story. Maybe somebody else has a bigger and better story, but this is mine.”
Comments on RugbyPass
It was a pleasure to watch those guys playing with such confidence. That trio can all be infuriating for different reasons and I can see why Jones might have decided against them. No way to justify leaving Ikitau out though. Jorgensen and him were both scheduled to return at the same time. Only one of them plays for Randwick and has a dad who is great mates with the national coach though.
53 Go to commentsBrayden Iose and Peter Lakai are very exciting Super Rugby players but are too short and too light to ever be a Test 8 vs South Africa, France, Ireland, and England, Lakai could potentially be a Test player at 7 if he is allowed to focus on 7 for Hurricanes.
5 Go to commentsPencils “Thomas du Toit” into possible 2027 Bok squad.
1 Go to commentsDon’t see why Harrison makes the bench. Jones can play at 10 if needed, and there is a good case for starting her there to begin with if testing combinations. That would leave room for Sing on the bench
1 Go to commentsWhat a load of old bull!
1 Go to commentsOf the rugby I’ve born witness to in my lifetime - 1990 to date - I recognize great players throughout those years. But I have no doubt the game and the players are on average better today. So I doubt going back further is going to prove me wrong. The technical components of the game, set pieces, scrums, kicks, kicks at goal. And in general tactics employed are far more efficient, accurate and polished. Professional athletes that have invested countless hours on being accurate. There is one nation though that may be fairly competitive in any era - and that for me is the all blacks. And New Zealand players in general. NZ produces startling athletes who have fantastic ball skills. And then the odd phenomenon like Brooke. Lomu. Mcaw. Carter. Better than comparing players and teams across eras - I’ve often had this thought - that it would be very interesting to have a version of the game that is closer to its original form. What would the game look like today if the rules were rolled back. Not rules that promote safety obviously - but rules like: - a try being worth 1 point and conversion 2 points. Hence the term “try”. Earning a try at goals. Would we see more attacking play? - no lifting in the lineouts. - rucks and break down laws in general. They looked like wrestling matches in bygone eras. I wonder what a game applying 1995 rules would look like with modern players. It may be a daft exercise, but it would make for an interesting spectacle celebrating “purer” forms of the game that roll back the rules dramatically by a few versions. Would we come to learn that some of the rules/combinations of the rules we see today have actually made the game less attractive? I’d love to see an exhibition match like that.
29 Go to commentsIrish Rugby CEO be texting Andy Farrell “Andy, i found our next Kiwi Irishman”
5 Go to commentsI certainly don’t miss drinking beers at 8am in the morning watching rugby games being played in NZ.
1 Go to commentsThis looks like a damage limitation exercise for Wales, keeping back some of their more effective players for the last 20/25 minutes to try and counter England’s fresh legs so the Red Roses don’t rack up a big score.
1 Go to commentsVery unlikely the Bulls will beat Leinster in Dublin. It would be different in Pretoria.
1 Go to commentsI think it is a dangerous path to go down to ban a player for the same period that a player they injured takes to recover. Players would be afraid to tackle anyone. I once tackled my best friend at school in a practice match and sprained his ankle. I paid for it by having to play fly-half instead of full-back for the rest of that season’s fixtures.
5 Go to commentsJust such a genuine good bloke…and probably the best all round player in his generation. Good guys do come first sometimes and he handled the W.Cup loss with great attitude.
2 Go to commentsWord in France is that he’s on the radar of a few Top14 clubs.
5 Go to commentsGet blocking Travis, this guy has styles and he’s gonna make a swift impact…!
1 Go to commentsWhat remorse? She claimed that her dangerous tackle wasn’t worthy of a red! She should be compensating the injured player for loss of earnings at the minimum. Her ban should include the recovery time of the injured player as well as the paltry 3 match ban.
5 Go to commentsArdie is a legend. Finished and klaar. Two things: “Yeah, yeah, I have had a few conversations with Razor just around feedback on my game and what I am doing well, what I need to improve on or work-ons. It’s kind of been minimal, mate, but it’s all that I need over here in terms of how to be better, how to get better and what I am doing well.” I hope he’s downplaying it - and that it’s not that “minimal”. The amount of communication and behind the scenes preparation the Bok coaches put into players - Rassie and co would be all over Ardie and being clear on what is expected of him. This stands out for me as something teams should really be looking at in terms of the boks success from a coaching point of view. And was surprised by the comment - “minimal”. In terms of the “debate” around Ireland and South Africa. Nice one Ardie. Indeed. There’s no debate.
2 Go to commentsThere’s a bit of depth there but realistically Australian players have a long way to go to now catch up. The game is moving on fast and Australia are falling behind. Australian sides still don’t priories the breakdown like they should, it’s a non-negotiable if you want to compete on the international stage. That goes for forwards and backs. The Australian team could have a back row that could make a difference but the problem is they don’t have a tight five that can do the business. Tupou is limited in defence, overweight and unfit and the locks are a long way from international standard. Frost is soft and Salakai-Loto is too small so that means they need a Valentini at 8 who has to do the hard graft so limits the effectiveness of the backrow. Schmidt really needs to get a hard working, tough tight 5 if he wants to get this team firing.
3 Go to commentsSorry Morgan you must have been the “go to for a quote” ex player this week. Its rnd 6 and there is plenty of time to cement a starting 15 and finishing 8 so I have no such concerns.
2 Go to commentsGreat read. I wish you had done this article on the ROAR.
2 Go to commentsThe current AB coaching team is basically the Crusaders so it smacks of wanting their familiar leaders around. This is not a good look for the future of the ABs or the younger players in Super working their way up the player ladder. Razor is touted as innovative, forward looking but his early moves look like insecurity and insular, provincial thinking. He is the AB's coach not the Golden Oldies.
10 Go to comments