“Way more talented than me.” Cheslin Kolbe, on the friends he raced in the street as a boy.
Cheslin Kolbe has won two World Cups, and he still thinks the boys from his street were better than him.
“I firmly believe that most of those kids in the community or in the street that I’ve played with was way more talented um talented than me um in athletics, in rugby, in soccer,” Kolbe said.
He grew up in Scottsville, in Kraaifontein, in the northern suburbs of Cape Town. The Springboks wing talked about his childhood with Steven Kitshoff on For The Love Of Rugby: South Africa, published on Wednesday 21 October.
He is home in Cape Town with a broken jaw from the Soweto Test.
Who was the best player you grew up with who never made it?
Gunshots in the middle of street touch rugby
Kitshoff asked about the area. Most people, Kolbe said, hear Kraaifontein and think of gangsterism, drugs and poverty.
“whether that was just playing do we call it touches back back home touch tag rugby in the street and the next minute you’ll just hear gunshots going off um in broad daylight. And like if I look back at it now, that was a norm for for us”
He called himself “super proud” to be from Scottsville, and said he would not change it “for the world”. He believes it made him mentally stronger.
On the night of the interview, at a bookshop in Tyger Valley, he met a man he had looked up to as a boy. That man played for a community club in Kraaifontein.
What ‘action’ meant at his grandmother’s house
His parents ran a strict house. He and his sister could not do much at home, so they looked for any excuse to go to their grandmother’s, where they “could get away with a lot more things”.
It was a two-bedroom house among the flats. On weekends it held his grandparents, Kolbe, his sister and a cousin.
“whenever you want to see action or you want to see entertaining, you’ll go to that house because like that was literally in the colored community in between the flats and and things on weekends. And if I’m saying action, that’s when you will see like fights, you’ll see stabbing, you’ll see shooting.”
At home, he said, they played outside for a while and then went back in. At his grandmother’s they stayed out late with their friends.
The friends Cheslin Kolbe lost
Those were the boys he raced in the street.
“it’s just that lack of a father figure in in the lives that just kind of changed everything.”
Children there want to feel part of the community, he said, and it is “easy to to to get trapped into it”.
“I’ve lost quite a lot of friends um due to gangsterism, stealing, and things like that.”
He wishes they had seen what he has seen, the travel and the career. “They’ve definitely played a massive part in in in my youth youth days and to who I am today as well,” he said.
He described rugby as his “escape from falling into the easy route of being a gangster selling drugs”.
Why he still owns the house
Kitshoff asked whether he had bought his grandmother’s house.
“Yeah, I still own the house.”
His grandfather died first. His grandmother died of cancer just as Kolbe was starting his professional career at Western Province. The family could not afford to keep the place. His father and his father’s siblings had grown up there.
“through rugby, I was a bit more in a better position to to not just sell the house and rather keep it part of the family.”
He still drives past it. His grandfather was the street’s mechanic.
“whenever someone in the street or in the [Scottsville] community um had problems with their car they would just come to his house and he’ll just fix everything for them”
Kolbe never learned the trade. He loves cars, he said, but he is “not that much of a handyman”.
What Kolbe wants to give back
He wants to mentor children in Scottsville and in communities like it across South Africa.
Someone is always watching, he told Kitshoff, and one opportunity can change a child’s life.
He spent nine years at Toulouse, Toulon and Tokyo Suntory Sungoliath before he came home to the Stormers this year.
For The Love Of Rugby: South Africa has the full interview with Cheslin Kolbe on YouTube. The Scottsville passage starts at 3:40.
Your turn: the one who never made it
Kolbe says the most talented kids on his street are not the ones anybody has heard of.
Who was yours, and what happened to them?
Frequently asked
Where did Cheslin Kolbe grow up?
In Scottsville, Kraaifontein, in the northern suburbs of Cape Town. He spent his weekends at his grandmother’s house there.
Does Cheslin Kolbe still own his grandmother’s house?
Yes. He told For The Love Of Rugby: South Africa that he kept it in the family after she died of cancer, as his professional career began.
What is Cheslin Kolbe’s book called?
Sidestepping the Odds. It came out in October 2026.
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