GQ chats with Springboks star player Makazole Mapimpi
Makazole Mapimpi’s drive when the odds seem stacked against him has as much to do with his backstory as proudly representing the Springboks and becoming the first South African to score a try in a World Cup final.
The recent recipient of the SA Sports Awards Sportsman of the Year award got there mostly off his own back and is a role model for boys and men alike
It’s a cloudless summer’s day in Joburg. I’m seated at a table on the piazza at Steyn City’s gourmet XIX restaurant next to Makazole Mapimpi, South Africa’s knight in a green and gold jersey, the man who’s scored a try against every team he’s played in international rugby.
(I say this because I can’t believe my luck, not because he needs an introduction.) The 31-year-old has flawless skin even before he’s in the makeup artist’s chair. And he’s ever so softly spoken.
Starstruck golfers nervously approach him during our interview. ‘Makazole! I’m a huge fan of yours,’ says one of them. ‘You make me proud to be a South African.’
They ask him to pose for a photo with them, hand me a phone switched to camera mode and huddle together, their backdrop a verdant golf course, and dead ahead Douw Steyn’s R250-million palatial home. A helicopter thunders overhead. A caddy ambles past in a golf cart.
Later, photographers, stylists, makeup artists and lighting technicians will fawn over Makazole. In the cigar-lounge-like men’s changing room at Steyn City’s Clubhouse gym, stylist Luke Ruiters will clip back a silk Scotch & Soda shirt to t him perfectly and complete his loungewear look with Zara pants, Birkenstocks, and Arnette eyewear.
Then the crew will position him in a tan leather tub chair at the edge of a Kilim rug, surrounded by walnut lockers, opulence.
And Makazole will have as much physical prowess as a model as he does on the rugby pitch. He’ll sing along when GQ editor-in-chief Molife Kumona plays Q-Mark &TpZee’s ‘Paris’ over a portable speaker wheeled into the room to set the mood. The song is in Zulu, which shares similarities with his home language Xhosa.
‘All I can see in this photo is his big toe,’ celebrity photographer Austin Malema will say. ‘Can we do something about that?’
As part of a collaboration between GQ and Samsung, Malema will photograph the star winger through the lens of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G.
It’ll be the second GQ cover shot using a mobile device – the rest was Prince Kaybee using the Galaxy S21 Ultra for GQ’s May/June 2021 issue.
Ruiters will reposition Makazole’s foot; makeup artist Caroline Gree will see it as an opportunity to swoop in and sweep more powder over his face.
‘This is my style,’ Makazole will say of the shirt, smiling at his reflection in a gilded full-length mirror.
Throughout the day, he’ll wear numerous looks: a pair of boxing gloves as he poses on one of the machines in the Clubhouse, and at dusk on the fairway, a linen suit for GQ’s cover.
‘I don’t know where my love of style comes from,’ he admits. ‘We didn’t wear fashion stuff in my village, and no one taught me about clothing. I don’t prefer a specific colour, but I have an eye for what’ll look good on me and t me best.’
People recognise him – that’s part of the job – ‘but it’s not about that,’ he says. ‘Now I get to eat, drive a car and live in a nice apartment. It wasn’t like that before. Sometimes, I’d go to bed hungry. If you don’t eat, you can’t think.
It’s no secret Makazole grew up poor in Tsholomnqa, a rural village in the Eastern Cape. His gran brought him up as his father was absent and his mother, Eunice, worked away. Eunice died in a car accident when he was 14.
“My sister Zukiswa was working away as a nurse at the time, so there was no one to take care of me. I tried to manage my pain by telling myself there’d be ups and downs, that not everything was going to be great.”
And there were times when things were great. ‘My family loved going to church on Sundays. We’d sing gospel songs, and we didn’t have a TV at home, but we’d listen to the radio,’ Makazole fondly recalls.
The rest of his family passed away: first Zukiswa of a brain illness, and then his brother, Zolani, after he was electrocuted and lost a leg.
Perhaps lesser known is why Makazole launched his #Mapimpi67 campaign in 2020 to raise awareness of gender-based violence.
‘Without a man in the house, there was no one to protect us from the guys [living in his community] who’d enter our home, coming and going as they pleased, and abuse my family in front of me.
I’d do odd jobs for my neighbour who’d pay me R20 or R30. Then if someone went to town, I’d ask them to buy sweets I could sell at school for pocket money.
But people would steal those from me because they knew no one would tell them not to.’
Makazole was young then, not yet physically able to stand up to his attackers. He admits it was traumatic, but even as a child understood their actions were outside of his control.
He wasn’t at fault. Whereas other kids might’ve grown up emulating that behaviour, he chose not to.
I ask him, how do you move on from experiencing so much death and sorrow? ‘I faced so many challenges when I was young and saw things no child should, but that’s life. It’s all about your mindset.
I wouldn’t say I was lucky because it was painful, but I’m grateful my experiences made me stronger. I thought, “how am I going to get out of this situation?”
Rugby is a popular sport where Makazole comes from, and if you play it your neighbours hold you in high regard. So, he started playing the game on Sundays.
The ball he and his peers kicked and passed was an empty plastic bottle they’d filled with paper – the older guys had a real one but it’d seen better days. There were no coaches to teach him the finer details of what to do on the pitch, when and how.
He never once stepped inside a gym – he didn’t even know what a dumbbell looked like – but would run in the surrounding mountains. Despite a lack of access to facilities, Makazole fell in love with rugby instantly.
And he was very good at it, which proved his passport to protection.
Out of respect for his potential, people from his village chose to play a positive role in his life by standing up for him. ‘That’s when the beatings stopped.’
Makazole’s career trajectory is steep but unconventional.
He attended Jim Mvabaza Secondary School in Twecu, a 20km walk from his village. It wasn’t a private school where scouts would look for tomorrow’s rugby stars.
He joined the Border U19 team in 2009. He was an amateur in his first provincial team, Border Bulldogs, which he joined in 2014, yet he scored a try shortly after half-time. Even then, his teammates told him one day he’d play for the Springboks.
The winger played for Southern Kings, Free State Cheetahs and the Sharks. He was a relative latecomer to international rugby, making his Test debut against Wales in Washington DC when he was 27.
‘When I finished school, I didn’t think beyond getting work to help me buy food. I never want to go back to struggling financially,’ he says.
Makazole’s philanthropy extends to donating 140 food hampers to those suffering poverty in the Durban area during the lockdowns.
He insists he’s not doing it for media attention but from his heart.
“I wanted to do something to help because I know how tough it is to live in those conditions.”
Perhaps the pinnacle of his career is his performance at the 2019 Rugby World Cup final in Yokohama, Japan, even though he had less experience playing international rugby than the other players. I ask him what he remembers about the final.
After the Springboks secure the ruck, Lukhanyo Am passes the ball to Malcolm Marx on the left. Marx to Makazole.
What spectators can’t possibly hear is Am shouting to Makazole, ‘just chip it!’
Makazole remembers: ‘On the field, you have to trust your teammates, especially when they’re telling you something because when you’re focused on the ball, and they’re on the outside, they can see the things you can’t.’
Makazole chips the ball over Billy Vunipola, slightly infield.
Am, still onside, gathers the ball and has drawn England scrum-half Ben Youngs to him, leaving Makazole free.
Am passes left to Makazole, still fixing his eyes firmly on the defender.
It’s as if he instinctively knows Makazole is there, the sort of natural peripheral vision honed through years of practice.
Makazole doesn’t expect him to do that, but afterwards, he’ll understand it would’ve been a risk for Am to take the ball to the line with England’s last line of defence, Elliot Daly, close enough behind him to tackle him.
In the 66th minute, Makazole scores the winning try, his sixth in that Rugby World Cup and on Saturday 5 March this year, he scores the Springboks’ only try against England in a Test match.
He reaches 20 Test tries faster than any other Springbok player in history.
This article was taken from the GQ magazine May/June 2022 issue.