The Incredible Watsons

In many ways 1994 was wonderful.

- Wessel Ebersohn

It was the moment in our history when we turned away from a rac-ist dispensation to the possibility of a democratic future. It was the moment when the door opened to the chance of all being only South Africans with no qualification as to race or group. But it was also the moment when formerly honourable activists and freedom fighters morphed their struggle credentials into vast amounts of money.

Among these, none are more colourful than the incredible Watson brothers of Port Elizabeth. Good looking, gym-fit, charismatic, well-dressed, rugby playing, born-again Christians, they were everything that the average pale-faced, unshaven, 40kg activist that populated the white left back in apartheid days, was not.

For those of us who knew them then and had since lost contact, the evidence of Angelo Agrizzi, a man in every way different to the Watsons, was a cause for astonishment. Millions paid in bribes; billions invoiced; Gavin Watson’s alleged control of Jacob Zuma; the management of the notorious Lindela Repatriation Centre that was accused of treating people without dignity or compassion: none of this fitted the picture of the Watsons that resided in our minds.

In the years between 1965 and 1973 there was always at least one Watson in the Graeme College first rugby team, sometimes more than one. To say they were the stars of the school is to be guilty of the most complete understatement. Old boys of the school, former masters and coaches, if they remember no one else from those days, they cannot forget Gavin, Ronnie, Valence and Cheeky, most of all Cheeky. He was the one on his way to playing wing for the Springboks. Anyone who knew anything about rugby could tell you that.