Rugby boss Tabata was a citizen of the world who wanted to put wrongs right

Rugby boss Monde Tabata, 60, who died on Thursday, was a scion of a prominent Eastern Cape family.

One of his antecedents, IB Tabatha, was a prominent leader of the New Unity Movement and his own father, KB Tabata, a well-known rugby administrator and educationist.

From an early age as a teenager  at Adam’s College in the 1970s, Tabata actively opposed the regimentation of the students under the guise of discipline.

This regimentation involved cruel punishment for anything the authorities saw as being “out of line”. The authorities may have taken umbrage and he was subjected to disciplinary measures, but the message was loudly received.

Rhodes University's liberal principles admitted black students using a loophole in the apartheid legislation, but still, conditions at the residences  were appalling for blacks compared to those of their white counterparts.

Black students were supposed to be  thankful that they were admitted to the university “in defiance” of apartheid laws, but this did not sit well with Tabata.

As a leading student activist, he organised protests to point out the sharp contrasts in living conditions between the black and white students.

When he started his working life, he worked for the Ciskei government in the rural communities, promoting agricultural development.

He recognised  the need to develop all human potential and, to him, the upliftment of rural communities was was something that needed to be addressed urgently.

He was not a proselytiser for homeland politics, but fielded a lot of flak from his comrades in the student movement who had adopted what Roosevelt would call a “cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities”.

He remained undaunted, however, leading successful agricultural projects which benefited many regional communities.

The dawn of democracy saw him make the move to Gauteng where he helped to conceptualise the new small business regime in the new government. He also became head of the National Small Business Council.

Rugby was always his passion and when he was recruited by Megapro, a sports marketing company, to help  rugby development following the Springboks'  World Cup Rugby triumph, he threw himself into the game with his usual gusto and energy.

He recalled meeting late former president Nelson Mandela who, on hearing his surname, spoke about IB Tabata and his influence on young leaders in the 1940s.

Tabata's most prominent rugby role was that of administrator at Border rugby after the union experienced financial difficulties.

As a fellow director at the time, I used to say to him he was on a fool’s errand and was trying to perform a Sisyphean task.

But he treated me as one of Roosevelt’s cynics.

One of the projects he was involved in at the time of his passing was the recording of black rugby history from when it was started in the Cape in the 1800s.

Another project he was working on was a group insurance scheme for former black Springboks in the Border region.

Tabata saw wrongs in the world, and he wanted to put them right.

He saw suffering and wanted to relieve it, and he tried to leave the world a better place, and never sought to harm the world and its people in anyway. He was truly a citizen of the world.

• Damane, an Adam’s College alumnus, is a former rugby player.