Siya Kolisi never knew the woman in his photograph.
He never knew his mother without the scars of violent abuse.
The woman in his photo is beautiful and for that, Kolisi's heart aches. He and his siblings were robbed of that mother. She was robbed of herself.
"When I was young, my mum used to be abused quite a lot," the World Cup-winning Springboks captain told Wide World of Sports on a Zoom call, sharing the precious photo.
"I found this picture of her … I don't have a lot of pictures of her but here, this is her; she was 17 years-old, I think. That's her the year before she had me.
"I see this picture, I look at it now … I have never seen my mother look like that. Never. Because her face changed so much from different men beating her up.
"That breaks me, you know? Because we got robbed of the opportunity [to know her that way], she got robbed of her youth, to be her beautiful self like she was made. My brother … he told me he'd never seen her like this. That hurts me, because she had scars all over her face.
"My aunt also used to get abused and back then, there was nothing I could do. But now I can definitely do something and I can definitely use my voice."
Kolisi, 29, left the world awe-inspired last year when as the first black captain of South Africa's rugby team, he lifted the Rugby World Cup. He used his big moment to tell a nation still torn by grave inequality and violence: "We love you, South Africa, and we can achieve anything if we work together as one."
Gender-based violence is an enormous problem in South Africa, as it is across the globe. One in three women worldwide have experience physical or sexual violence, according to the UN, entirely disproportionate levels of abuse.
A woman is murdered every three hours in South Africa, according to independent fact-checking organisation Africa Check. President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed this year that up to 51 per cent of South African women had suffered abuse from a partner, though reported cases amount to just half that number.
There was no hiding from the brutality in Kolisi's small home, in the dusty, impoverished township of Zwide near Port Elizabeth. A home where his first rugby ball was a brick. Where he awoke many days not knowing when there might be food to eat, but for sugar-water offered by his loving mother.
Where he went to bed on cushions on the living room floor, his stomach grumbling ... and too often lay awake, powerless while listening to his mum suffering another beating.
With the pain of his own experience still fresh in his mind and the wider problem mounting, Kolisi has made a stand. He has just been announced as a global advocate for Spotlight Initiative – a partnership between the European Union and the United Nations which aims to end all violence against women and girls by 2030.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCIdGtDj2Nt/?utm_source=ig_embed&It is a colossal task. But Kolisi, named this month as the most influential person in world rugby, is a colossal player to have on your side.
"I've been trying to use my voice as a sportsman to make a difference in social issues," said Kolisi, who also launched a foundation this year that is tackling poverty; with an immediate focus on problems worsened by COVID-19,
"Something that always really strong with me is gender-based violence. It's been so hectic in our country and obviously all around the world.
"I know it's not right because it's something I've experienced; not physically, I've seen it first-hand and I don't think that anybody should be going through that. It hits home with me because those are people that I love and they went through all of that.
"No man, nobody, stood up and said, 'No, this is not right'. I was just a little boy seeing and experiencing all these things.
"There were a lot of different men that I still see nowadays [abusing my mother]. That makes me so upset."
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBa0jonDIxo/?utm_source=ig_embed&Something that sits heavily with Kolisi is the fact that if rugby had not given him an escape, he may also have been conditioned into acting violently towards women. The sheer volume of abuse to which young men are exposed to in impoverished towns has entrenched a vicious cycle.
Yet as a man who rose above those circumstances and became a towering figure in world sport, in a game of inherent aggression, he is perfectly placed to speak out against gender-based violence.
His message is blunt.
"As a man, there's no way you can call yourself a man if you're lifting a hand at a woman. There's no way you can call yourself a man if you are putting someone down by your words just to make yourself feel good," he said.
"As you see around the world, there's not a lot of men standing up. Especially us rugby players, we're seen as macho men, as hardcore men and I think it's good for us to stand up and say, 'This is not right'.
"We need to call each other out and be willing to be vulnerable, because we actually don't know what we're doing wrong. And be educated a lot more on how to speak to women because I think we've learned a lot of ways that are not right.
"For me, as a kid, if I'd stayed in that environment for the rest of my life, I probably would have been one of the people that had been doing the abuse these days because it becomes so normal that you think it's OK.
"For me as a younger kid, not saying anything to my friends when they're doing those kinds of things … because I wasn't doing it I thought it was OK [for me] but now I'm learning new things and I'm unlearning all the stuff that I've learned.
"I think that's the most important thing: us as men to unlearn a whole lot of things and unlearn new ways.
"To be working with people like the UN to find solutions and listening to women, to be educated, that's the most important thing. I want to ask the questions that us as men are uncomfortable asking and I want to hear what people have to go through during this time.
"So that I can have a slight education … because I will never understand what it feels like. I was speaking to one lady ... she felt so helpless."
Kolisi's mother, Phakama, died when he was just 15. His late grandmother, Nolulamile, was crucial in his upbringing. He carries their lessons with a sense of deep responsibility.
Kolisi now has two children with his wife, Rachel, who is also a prominent social activist: a son, Nicholas (5), and a daughter, Keziah (2). He also adopted two younger half-siblings - Liyema and Liphelo - after managing to track them down in an orphanage after their mother died in 2009.
That's four children looking up to him in his own house and that's where the example begins. Respect works from the ground up; ownership of a Rugby World Cup trophy and an elite sportsman's salary doesn't mean that he shirks his share of cooking and cleaning.
"Life has changed, man. We all have a responsibility. We as men, we're more than just bringing bread home," he said.
"That's what the wives do these days too. That's what women do. That's what women are asking for in our country, just to be equal."
"For me, it's more about being a good man. It's more about me just being an example to them and showing my son how to be a man and how I treat my wife around the house.
"How I treat my daughter too, and me being vulnerable in front of him. Letting him know it's OK to cry, it's OK to ask questions.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCWFI_kjG9c/?utm_source=ig_embed&"If we all are educated as men on how we treat women, then we won't have to protect the girls, we won't have to teach them how to defend themselves. That's not what my son is learning, why should my daughter learn how to protect herself?
"She should be learning about how to play a sport or how to be a doctor. A lot of the kids, a lot of the women, they have to go and learn how to protect themselves around the world because that's how hectic things are here in South Africa.
"I can't speak for everybody else but I'm saying for me, my attitude is just that I'm standing up for women. That's all. I'm using my platform because a lot of people look at me, 'Right, plays rugby, he's the mad man, hardcore, all of that' … but without the women in my life, I wouldn't be where I am today.
"I have so much respect for women and if I don't stand up and use my voice for women, I'll not only be letting down the women in South Africa, I'll be letting down the people that raised me, which is my grandmother and my aunt and my mother.
"All the stuff that I've seen, I don't want to let that go to waste, because it still drives me to make sure that another kid doesn't go through looking at their mum being abused, or looking at their aunt. I just don't want people to go through that kind of thing."
Yet women are still facing horrors every day, all over the world. Kolisi was outraged while speaking with Wide World of Sports about an abhorrent video from Papua New Guinea, another nation rife with gender-based violence, that had gone viral.
"The husband beat his wife up and burned her with an iron. And it was on video," he said.
"Then there's men fighting, saying that they should be allowed to discipline their wives. That doesn't make sense to me, it's stupid to say. We're in 2020. We're equal, that's what people need to understand. Men and women are equal.
"That video broke me and there's far worse things happening here in our country. Pregnant women … every day there's a new person and us as men, we need to first of all own up and say we don't want to be the problem and we don't know the solution, we don't know the answer but we want to learn and want to listen and just use our voices."
The pregnant woman Kolisi was referring to was Tshegofatso Pule, 28. She was found hanging in a field west of Johannesburg on June 8, eight months pregnant with a stab wound to her chest.
Kolisi has chosen a grave fight - but has already proven that he has the power to prevail against immense odds.
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