It was a regular start to the work week when Sitho Mdlalose walked through the door of his accounting firm. He’d played a particularly physical club rugby match that weekend, and still had the bruises on his face to show for it. Noticing that the clean lines of his suit didn’t quite match what was on his face, his partner at the firm asked, ‘Listen, are you an accountant or a rugby player?’ Mdlalose, who has played the game his entire life and is a qualified referee, has yet to give a full answer to that question.
Even today, as Managing Director of Vodacom South Africa, Mdlalose will probably admit that the suit he wears tells his professional life. But in his heart, he is a rugby man through and through and always will be. A man who realised one of his greatest dreams when he joined Springbok greats Breyton Paulse and Jean de Villiers as a pundit on SuperSport looking ahead to last weekend’s Vodacom United Rugby Championship Grand Final between the DHL Stormers and Munster.
Mdlalose tells the story of that question his partner asked him with an infectious laugh that you can imagine reverberating in a changeroom amongst his teammates, and which underlines his deep passion for this game. You’d be hard-pressed to find somebody who knows as much about world rugby, or who follows it with such a purity of spirit for all that he loves in the game.
“Rugby just makes sense in terms of the values you want for life. The way the players speak with respect to the referee. Or that fact that you’ll smash each other on the field, but at the end of that shake hands and have a beer together afterwards. That ability to separate friendship from competition. And that sense of being able to trust other team players to play their part and even cover for you if you’re not fully there. You do that for each other. I’m just so drawn to rugby because of these factors,” says Mdlalose.
As the youngest in what he refers to as a “reasonably sized African family of seven children (and there’s that deep rolling laugh again)”, it was Mdlalose’s eldest brother who brought the game to his younger brothers.
“We all loved it. My mother couldn’t bear it and wouldn’t watch our matches because she was worried for us. But the elements of team spirit, brotherhood and camaraderie just captured me. There is something about rugby that projects onto how you face challenges in life. There is always someone bigger and stronger than you, and people you will be bigger and stronger than. People are going to make mistakes next to you, or you will make mistakes. But with all of this there is still that ability to be a unit and play well together. I also loved the friendships rugby brought me. Rugby has always been important to me.”
Mdlalose played the game as a centre throughout his school career, and it was during one such match for CBC Bulawayo against CBC Boksburg that he realised there are definitely levels in this game.
“We lost to them, and there was this player who scored a try against us. I remember being astounded that this player literally ran around me. I thought I had him and he literally just ran around me. My teammates were joking with me about it afterwards and I kept saying to them, ‘But this guy had something different’. A year later we found out his name is Conrad Jantjes and he’s playing for the Springboks.
“After school I played for a club in Bulawayo called Old Miltonians. Ian McIntosh was the coach at the Sharks at the time, and he had links with Zimbabwean rugby. So we’d tour to Durban and train with the Sharks. It was amazing, but it also made me realise the difference between professional and semi-professional. I was working and then going to rugby in the evening, and there is no way you are ever going to compete with somebody who wakes up, has a gym schedule, then goes to training, and back to gym. You want to play against him on Saturday? Good luck.”
A combination of the physical toll and discipline of rugby and an introduction to the pressures of the financial services industry straight out of school honed Mdlalose’s resilience and penchant for hard work. He was 19 years old when he was doing his articles for Deloitte and adjusting to the “pressure cooker” of working on clients until 10pm and then fitting in university studies. Even then, rugby was a lifeline in terms of relieving the stress of the week.
At the age of 23 Mdlalose decided to pursue something closer to his heart and used his skills to help build up an NGO called Family Impact, which was trying to manage the devastating impact of HIV/Aids on Southern Africa through more proactive societal messaging.
Then, in 2003, he made the difficult decision to leave Zimbabwe for the United Kingdom. “I had a bag of 20kgs with my life in it. I landed in London and stayed with a few friends while I worked at Ernst and Young.”
But rugby remained a constant, albeit now as a spectator.
“Before I was married, my typical Saturday was to wake up in the morning, switch on the TV and the day would start off in New Zealand. I’d watch all the New Zealand rugby and then switch to Australia and watch every single Vodacom Super Rugby match. Then I’d realise I needed something to eat so would break for that. And then be back in front of the TV for the South African games. Then I’d also fit in the Top 14 and Premiership rugby in the UK. I was operating in both hemispheres. Then I got married and started watching recorded rugby when my wife went to bed, to now having kids and only watching highlights. In the UK my wife knew that birthday presents for me were tickets to the Heineken Cup or another match. Or watching France knock the All Blacks out of the Rugby World Cup in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium in 2007. What a match. In the UK we lived in Reading, so London Irish was my home team. The number of rugby jerseys in my wardrobe is another thing. My wife jokes that maybe I don’t need more rugby jerseys.”
He now leads a company that has supported South African rugby for almost four decades and, since moving to Gauteng in 2013, he has had to find an interesting solution to being a fan of the Emirates Lions but also a strong supporter of the Vodacom Bulls.
“I’m a Gauteng team man. That’s the safest way to say it. I support the Lions against anyone they are playing. I support the Vodacom Bulls against anyone they are playing. And I support good rugby when the Lions play the Vodacom Bulls,” he says with that deep laugh.
But his deep reverence for the game shines through in what he says next.
“When you understand the history that rugby has in South Africa and what it has been able to transcend, it really gives you hope. Yes, it’s just a game and you don’t overstate that. But the hope it gives people is huge. I’m not sure you can point to many other things that can do that, and in South Africa across all the sports, rugby still does that more than any other sport and reaches across the deep divides that exist in the country. So for me, it’s a privilege to be in a business that supports rugby so passionately in this country. It’s in moments like this, as it was in 1995, where rugby has the opportunity to raise hope and remind us that there are still so many things, and so many people, that makes South Africa special.”
