NWU Nuushonde: Thato Bosiu, Jana van der Merwe and Nicola Claassen

Being bullied as a child for his red hair taught Steven Kitshoff from a young age to focus on the solutions rather than the problems.

“I didn’t allow that to put me down. For me all the comments about my hair were simply water from a duck’s back and in fact it motivated me to work harder so that I can proof them wrong,” says Kitshoff.

The former Springbok and Bomb Squad member told this to the NWU Nuushonde when they spoke to him at a discussion about his book, Kitsie: Memoir of a Bomb-Squad Bok by Steven Kitshoff and Michael Vlismas (Jonathan Ball Publishers), at the Momentum Aardklop National Arts Festival Book discussions.

“I suppose that even from a young age it was simply part of my personality to rather be solution driven,” says Kitshoff.

Known for his many achievements as a rugby player Kitshoff explains that this approach to handling bullies as a child later formed his approach to life and of course rugby.

From a young age Kitshoff loved playing sports. He played cricket and rugby throughout high school with the latter giving him his biggest opportunity.

“I loved playing ball sports from a very young aged and really liked cricket and rugby. I had to choose one of them in matric and I decided on rugby because most of my friends played rugby. I liked the feeling of brotherhood,” says Kitshoff.

During his matric exams he was invited to train with the Stormers. He took the opportunity with both hands, working hard to prove himself and signed his first professional contract with them.

This began a professional rugby career of 14 years and the rest is now history… and a book, after his career was cut short because of a serious neck injury sustained in 2021.

“When Michael Vlismas (author of the book), originally contacted me I wasn’t keen on the book because I said to him that I don’t want to expose my fellow mates. But then as we went through the ideas, the lessons that I learned through life and rugby, kept on popping up and we decided to make that the focus,” explains Kitshoff.

But that wasn’t the only focus at the lively book discussion attended by hordes of Springbok fans.

One of the attendees asked Steven about Rassie and his plans and how on earth it was communicated to the Springboks while playing.

Kitshoff laughed then explained…

“Rassie always covers his mouth and then his orders will be given through the fisio and waterboys. And often it contains a bit of swearing for extra motivation. We all know Rassie likes to spice up his language a bit,” joked Kitshoff.

Another attendee asked him about the flack they got from the Japanese in Japan when they won the Rugby Worldcup in 2019.

“Some of us had to fly back on a later flight and decided to rather celebrate our win than sleep. When my alarm went off, RG Snyman said, ‘snooze it’ and we we kept going. Then it went off again and we snoozed again. So, by the time we got back to our hotel to pack our bags, we were greeted with our packed bags in the reception area. We joked that we should have stayed a bit longer because then they would have put it in the taxi for us as well,” said Kitshoff.
Attendees found this very entertaining and all agreed that this is totally allowed when you win a world cup.

He then almost had the crowd in tears when he praised his wife of seven years, Aimee for standing by his side through the highs and lows of his career.

Jané Rossouw, publicist at Jonathan Ball that works closely with Kitshoff says it’s an absolute honour for them to be the publisher of the book.

“Steven is the humblest, hardworking person I’ve met, and I think readers will see that when reading his book”.