Former South Africa boss Luyt dies

Former South African rugby kingpin, business magnate and politician Louis Luyt died Friday aged 80 in a Durban hospital from unknown causes.

Luyt was best known as the outspoken boss of South African rugby when the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup for the first time in 1995, a year after the fall of apartheid.

That victory was immortalised in the Hollywood blockbuster 'Invictus', starring Morgan Freeman as then-President Nelson Mandela.

"I would like to convey my deepest sympathies to Doc Luyt's dear wife and children on behalf of myself and the Golden Lions Rugby Union (GLRU)," the provincial union president Kevin de Klerk said in a statement.

"This union was always regarded as his home in rugby and we are saddened by the news of his passing." In many ways, Luyt was Mandela's antithesis, earning a reputation for being a brash, unapologetic figurehead during the apartheid era.

In 1998, Luyt was accused of racism and financial mismanagement in his role as South African Rugby Union president, resulting in his resignation and a presidential inquiry.

He refused to appear in front of a presidential commission and forced Mandela to court in a bid to clear his name. The Constitutional Court found against him and for Mandela.

Luyt turned to politics following that defeat, forming a political party and eventually becoming a member of Parliament in 1999 as leader of the now defunct Federal Alliance.

His business success was based on the founding of a fertiliser company and a brewery. In 1976 Luyt started The Citizen, an English-language newspaper that came under fire for receiving money from the apartheid regime.

AFP