Six years after being accused of assault and racism in Langebaan, Eben Etzebeth has given his side of the story in his autobiography Unlocked
The Bok lock was caught in the controversy on the eve of departing for the 2019 World Cup.
What began as downtime with “friends and family” at the West Coast town spiralled into a saga that saw him facing hate speech charges from the South African Human Rights Commission, a R1-million compensation demand from the so-called “Langebaan Four”, and fierce public debate that divided supporters.
Although charges were dropped in 2021 when the Western Cape director of public prosecutions ruled the evidence unreliable, Etzebeth had never spoken publicly about the incident — until now.
Etzebeth recalls tensions beginning when he walked into a clubhouse and was told: “Hey, Etzebeth, take off your cap!”
I almost always wear a cap, but I would have removed it if I’d known it was a club rule. And I wasn’t going to put up with some stranger being rude to me. So, I walked over to this guy and said, ‘Who do you think you are? I’m not your child. If the club rule is no caps, come over and tell me politely rather than screaming at me from across the room.’”
Later at the Watergat nightclub, things escalated in the car park.
“As I was driving out of the car park towards the traffic circle, something hit my car – a brick, I thought – so I circled back, lowered my window and said, ‘Who the f**k threw that?’”
With a larger crowd gathering and fights breaking out, Etzebeth said his group tried to leave.
“As we were making our way to our cars, another missile – this time definitely a brick – went whistling past my friends’ heads. That was our cue to get the hell out of Dodge.”
Etzebeth feared for his World Cup place but was relieved when Bok coach Rassie Erasmus accepted his version of events.
“I never use racist slurs. It’s simply not in my nature, no matter how angry I get. I wasn’t some isolated, bigoted white guy who never mixed with people of colour – my three best friends in the Bok team were Siya [Kolisi], Beast [Mtawarira] and Cheslin [Kolbe], none of whom are white.”
Etzebeth confronted his accusers after the World Cup, whose story he said “unravelled” because two of them claimed he was wearing a red Nike T-shirt, whereas he had a photo from that night showing him in a shirt by his then sponsors, Asics.
