KWARU

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KwaRU is an acronym for the KwaZakhele Rugby Union.

Born out of a split from the Eastern Province African Rugby Board, having been denied affiliation to the SAARB, it became part of the SARU.

Merged into Eastern Province in 1992.

Founded in 1971.

Notable KWARU Players

Dan Qeqe

Daniel Dumile Qeqe (1929–2005), ‘Baas Dan’, ‘DDQ’ was the Gqeberha (then Port Elizabeth) leader whose struggles and triumphs crisscrossed the entire gamut of political, civic, entrepreneurial, sports and recreational liberation activism in the Eastern Cape.

Central to the transformation of sports towards non-racialism, Qeqe paved the way for the mainstreaming and liberation of black rugby and cricket players in South Africa. He co-engineered the birth of the KwaZakhele Rugby Union (Kwaru), a pioneering non-racial rugby union that was more of a political and social movement.

Daniel 'Cheeky' Watson

Watson grew up on a farm near Somerset East, in the Eastern Cape. He attended the Graeme College boarding school in Grahamstown, where he began playing union rugby. He later captained the Graeme College side.

As a 21-year old, Watson played for the Eastern Province team which lost by one point to the visiting All Blacks in 1976. Mona Badela, a black journalist and president of the KwaZakhele Rugby Union (Kwaru), invited him to practise his Christian convictions by coaching a black side in the townships. When Watson took the black rugby team to practise at the Saint George’s Sports Ground in Port Elizabeth, they were met with strong opposition.

Watson was selected as a wing for the Junior Springboks in 1976. However, he declined an invitation to participate in the trials for the 1976 senior Springbok team. He joined the Spring Rose Rugby Football Club in the black township of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, which was affiliated with Kwaru. His wing partner was Zola Yeye, later manager of the 2007 Springbok squad.

On 10 October 1976, Watson and his brother Valance played with 13 black players for Kwaru against the South Eastern Districts Rugby Union (Sedru) in the Dan Qeqe Stadium in KwaZakhele township. Local authorities and the Crusaders Rugby Club tried to dissuade him from participating. Non-racial sports meetings were at that time prohibited in terms of the apartheid-era Group Areas Act, 1950 and the Separate Amenities Act, 1953. Armoured vehicles circled the stadium, and the two brothers had to lie flat on the floor of a taxi that transported black Africans.

Kwaru was a vehicle for political dialogues and banned meetings, providing resources for political campaigns and orchestrations for moving activists into exile.

After the South African Rugby Football Federation broke away from the Coloured Rugby Football Board to ally themselves with the white South African Rugby Board in 1966, the remaining members changed the name to the South African Rugby Union (not to be confused with the current body of that name). In 1973 SARU became a founding member of the anti-apartheid South African Council on Sports, whose slogan argued that there could be no normal sport in an abnormal society.[4][5][6]

SARU's predominantly coloured composition changed when they were joined by the mostly black Kwazakhele Rugby Union (Kwaru), itself a breakaway from the Port Elizabeth African Rugby Board. Kweru had initially wanted to affiliate with the black South African African Rugby Board but were rebuffed. Other black sporting bodies then followed Kwaru's lead.

Notable Wins

10 October 2025: Kwaru made history when they won the Premier Division Final of the inaugural Betway Women’s Club Championship, beating Walker Bay Babes 17-14 (half-time 12-7) at Alberton Rugby Club south of Johannesburg to bring the curtain down on a watershed week for women’s rugby in South Africa.

Walker Bay Babes 14 (7), Kwaru 17 (12)

Walker Bay – Tries: Sinalo Ziqwayi, Claudine Bani. Conversions: Rufaro Tagarira (2).

Kwaru – Tries: Yandisa Nobanda, Hlomla Puzi, Unathi Mali. Conversions: Nobanda.