Bryan Habana: Family betrayal, the ‘sausage factory’ of sport, and life after the Springboks
In 2018, Bryan Habana made the decision to retire from professional rugby. He walked into a room, closed the door, and burst into tears.
“I sobbed,” the Springbok legend recalls. “In that moment of total isolation, being at a low, I heard Timothy, my three-year-old, having this phenomenal belly laugh downstairs. In this moment of uncontrollable solace… I was like, there’s so much more to life than what rugby has given me.”
It was a stark realisation for a man whose speed defined a generation of South African rugby. Speaking in a candid interview on The Harry Hugo Show, Bryan Habana opened up about the brutal transition from global icon to retired civilian, revealing deep personal scars including a painful financial betrayal by his own father.
Bryan Habana Betrayal
Bryan Habana is widely known for his discipline and clean image, but he revealed that his post-rugby life was rocked by a breakdown in his inner circle.
“Trust is a really difficult thing to understand,” Bryan Habana told the podcast. “My trust rested with my dad, who was managing that side of my life, only to find out eight years later that the trust I thought I had was not being had.”
The fallout was not just emotional, but financial. “I unfortunately lost quite a bit of money because the one person I thought I could trust mismanaged my funds and used it for his own.”
It is a sombre admission from a player who spent his career relying on teammates, highlighting the harsh reality that personal challenges often lurk behind public success.
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The “Sausage Factory” Reality
While the personal betrayal was a specific blow, Bryan Habana admits that the general transition away from sport was equally jarring. He describes the professional sports environment as a “sausage machine factory.”
“You’re in the box, and [then] you’ve been deported, and the next sausage is being processed at the back,” he explains.
The loss of status is immediate. There are no more free clothes, no more adulation, and the financial reality hits hard. “You go from earning the salary of a CEO at 21 years old to a very steep cliff when you retire… The real world is pretty brutal.”
Since leaving the field, Bryan Habana has transitioned into the fintech world with his company, Pay Menow. However, he admits the learning curve was steep. He recounts a humbling moment during the 2019 World Cup when his business partners told him they had developed their “MVP.”
“I was sitting in Japan thinking, ‘I’m the MVP… Most Valuable Player, that’s what I am,'” Bryan Habana laughs. “He’s like, ‘Dude, we’re talking about tech. Minimum Viable Product.’ I was the important cog in the wheel, but I wasn’t the minimum viable product.”
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Don’t Let Them Steal Your Joy
Bryan Habana credits his ability to navigate these highs and lows to a lesson learned when he was just 16 years old. Despite making the provincial team, he was dropped to his school’s ‘C’ team for the final game of the season. Furious, he wanted to quit.
His father—the same man he would later speak of with such complication regarding his finances—gave him a piece of advice that became his life’s philosophy. He forced a young Bryan Habana to go back and support his teammates.
“He said: ‘You’re not going to let anyone steal your joy,'” Habana recalls. “If you’re going to allow something as trivial as this… and allow someone else to determine your worth by their decisions, not yours, you’re never going to become successful.”
It taught him that while he couldn’t control the coaches, or the critics, he could control his reaction.
“When you wake up in the morning, the choice of how you’re going to approach life is yours to make. If you allow the world to impact how you choose, the world’s constantly going to choose for you.”
The Unsung Heroes and National Hope
Reflecting on his career, the record-breaking winger is quick to deflect praise to the support systems that allow athletes to thrive, particularly their partners.
“The partner you choose to spend your life with is probably one of the most important career decisions you make,” he says. “That person nine times out of ten gives up their dream so that you can chase yours… That person has to eat up all your crap when it’s going phenomenally bad.”
He also reflected on the broader significance of the Springboks’ 2019 World Cup victory under Siya Kolisi, contrasting it with what a victory would have meant for England.
“If England had won in 2019… there would have been a ticker-tape parade and it would have been done,” he notes. “See Siya and the team take that trophy back to South Africa, and all of a sudden kids in townships in South Africa don’t see hope anymore. They see potential reality.”
For Bryan Habana, the trophies are now in the cabinet, and the cheering crowds have been replaced by business meetings. But the discipline remains. Whether facing financial loss or building a startup, his approach is the same as it was on the wing: wake up, choose your attitude, and don’t let the world steal your joy.
