Former Springbok wing Bryan Habana revealed how his relationship with his father deteriorated due to financial issues.
Springbok rugby icon Bryan Habana has opened up about one of the most difficult times in his life – when he discovered his father, Bernie, had stolen money from him.
The two have effectively not had a relationship since 2010, when Habana found out.
In an emotional podcast with the UK-based podcast, Business of Sport recently, Habana revealed he had trusted his father to handle his financial affairs for him “from an early age”.
Although he was receiving a salary as a professional rugby player, Habana relied on Bernie to handle the huge extra income which came from sponsorships and endorsement contracts.
He saw none of it, he maintained.
Contracts signed without consent
Habana said he believed Bernie had set up a Bryan Habana Trust which would handle the extra income… but this was never done. He only discovered this later.
All the money from his extra deals should have been going into this trust but it was “going into my dad’s bank account”.
He recalled having to contact individual sponsors at the end of 2009, and let them know he was no longer allowing his father to negotiate his contracts.
“But the CEO of Canterbury International [the apparel makers] e-mailed me back immediately and said ‘Bryan, we’ve just signed you for five years. We paid a very big re-signing fee’.”
When he tackled his father about it, Habana said he denied he had received any money, “but I had the contract in front of me… “It was tough.”
When asked to confirm whether his father had pocketed the money, Bryan answered: “Yeah. They were living off it.”
Still willing to ‘meet halfway’
The star winger said the first person to raise the issue of Bernie running all his financial affairs was Janine, who would later become his wife.
When they got married, Habana and Janine wanted a quiet wedding, but Bernie convinced them to go for a major public spectacle.
He was playing in New Zealand when he got calls from the wedding organisers saying they had not been paid by Bernie.
When he and Janine were moving to Cape Town after he was signed by the Stormers, Habana asked his father to put down a deposit on their dream house.
“He said: ‘Cool, it’s coming.’ The more I asked, the more it wasn’t coming. So I had to get bridging finance…”
After he discovered the mismanagement, he had to keep it secret because the world believed he and his father were the best of friends.
But it cut him up. Asked whether he would ever want a relationship with his father again, Habana said: “I would easily choose it if he was willing to meet halfway.”
His priority now was “my tribe” – Janine and sons Timothy and Gabriel.
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