Kamp Staaldraad

Kamp Staaldraad (Afrikaans words, translated idiomatically as Camp Barbed Wire) was a military-style "boot camp" organized as a "team building" exercise for the South African national rugby union team, the Springboks (or Boks), during their preparation for the 2003 Rugby World Cup (RWC). Details of the camp emerged in the South African media, resulting in protest from the upper administrative levels of South African rugby.

Soon after the naming of the Springboks World Cup team in September 2003, Boks coach Rudolf Straeuli arranged for the team to go to a police camp in the South African bush, near the town of Thabazimbi. He delegated the responsibility for running the team camp. Several members of staff proclaimed the intention was to banish a sense of individuality from players.

Soon after the Boks were eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup, a South African newspaper reported that before the RWC, the Boks had been sent to a boot camp where players had allegedly been ordered into a freezing lake naked to pump up rugby balls underwater. The story also alleged that players who tried to get out of the lake, including Boks captain Corné Krige, were forced back in at gunpoint. Within days, several South African newspapers ran pictures leaked from the camp, showing players standing naked in the lake and holding rugby balls in front of their private parts, and shivering Boks players huddled naked in a pit. The whistleblower emerged as Boks video analyst Dale McDermott.

In the days that followed, the media reported other details from the camp:

Most South Africans condemned Kamp Staaldraad, including the South African military forces; a spokesman for the South African National Defence Force pointedly told the Cape Times newspaper that the force never trained its recruits naked, and he knew of no military organization in the world that did so. Many rugby observers also pointed out that trying to eliminate all individuality from a team could be counterproductive, as there are many times during a rugby match when individual initiative can make the difference between victory and defeat.

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