Joost van der Westhuizen has faced a terrifying adversary in the past, and come out triumphant.
The Lowdown:
On eating My veggies are chicken and pork, I'm a farm boy. I like a good piece of steak and for vegetables, I'll take some chicken.
Sporting heroes Gareth Edwards, Naas Botha, David Campese, Nick Farr-Jones, Brian O'Driscoll, Christian Cullen. I was privileged to play in a great era. Outside rugby I admire Michael Jordan, the basketball player.
Nelson Mandela What is phenomenal about Nelson Mandela is that he phones me every year on my birthday. I have a lot of respect for him. I wish our leaders today could learn from him.
On South African rugby will strangle any guy that talks about quota systems. Are you calling the Beast [Tendai Mtawairira] a quota? The quota system is over. See what's happening at the grass roots. It's phenomenal.
What does it mean to be a South African? I'm proud to be South African, I will never leave it, simple as that..
It was the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. The All Blacks from New Zealand were the clear favourites. They had a ferocious weapon in Jonah Lomu, a giant runner built like a Hummer but with the engine of a Ferrari.
Early on in the first half, the ball went out from Andrew Mehrtens, the All Black fly half who dummied to send it out wide, before slipping it to Lomu who ran on to it at pace. There was nobody between him and the try line except the South African scrum half. The crowd went silent. Would the All Black run over the slight figure as he had brushed aside the English defence in the previous match?
How does van der Westhuizen remember it?
"I was moving across the field to get to Mehrtens and I saw him throw a dummy, Joel Stransky fell for it, then he passed to Jonah. I knew I had to bring him down. … I went for him and luckily my technique worked."
Sixteen years later, and he is now facing an opponent that he may not be able to tackle.
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At the South African Embassy in Abu Dhabi van der Westhuizen has come on a visit to see the ambassador to talk about better ways of promoting exports of fruit to the country. He is more than 6 feet tall, retains the build of an athlete, with the palest green eyes you ever saw, the colour of pale grass or Japanese green tea.
He has been commenting for OSN, the subscription television service in the Middle East and North Africa, on the pool matches of this year's Rugby World Cup from a Dubai studio for the past month, but today we are talking about naartjies - small citrus fruits like mandarins or tangerines, but sweeter. He has a business shipping fruit from the Western Cape to the Netherlands and is looking to expand into the Middle East.
"The farmers love Joost," says Neil Hamp Adams, a friend based in Dubai. "They give him the best of the crop." You can see why a South African farmer would love van der Westhuizen. He is good-looking, good-natured, and likes a laugh.
He has been busy in Dubai taking orders when he hasn't been criticising the England rugby team's performance.
Grapes are the biggest export crop, but also watermelons, and naartjies of course. But fruit is not the only thing on his mind. He has a real fear that each harvest might be his last. The doctors say that he is dying.
"You know, I was lying in bed the other night and I realised that it was a year ago that I was diagnosed with the illness," he says. The illness is motor neurone disease, a progressive muscle-wasting disorder that usually takes two to five years to kill a person. There is no cure.
The British film star David Niven died of it. In America, it is known as Lou Gehrig's disease, after the baseball player who died of it. The physicist Stephen Hawking has suffered with it for more than 50 years, but one feels that a life spent in a wheelchair talking through a voice box is not for van der Westhuizen. His voice has always been distinctive, but already it is beginning to sound slurred.
"It's not about quantity of life, but quality," he says. He is just 40, with two children aged five and seven.
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The life of a professional rugby man passes in a flash, a flurry of tackles, tries, changing rooms, journeys and brief encounters, the smell of embrocation and the roar of the crowd, training, coaching, late night television, cheap hotels and boredom.
He began playing as a boy of five, following the family passion for the game and an older brother who was already in the under 9s. Van der Westhuizen was too young to play but he kept turning up for training, so eventually the coach allowed him a game.
"I spent four years in the under 9s," he says. He started on the wing, moved to the centre when he found that nobody at that age passes to the winger. Finally he got the coveted scrum-half position, which meant he was in the thick of things.
The Southern Hemisphere sides have always taken rugby more seriously than their northern counterparts. Rugby is the game in South Africa, even if football is more widely played. To be South Africa's scrum half and later captain is like being Diego Maradona in Argentina, or David Beckham in England.
Van der Westhuizen played for the Blue Bulls, a Johannesburg side, and of course the Springboks. He was a new kind of scrum half, faster, stronger, bigger.
He was captain in the 1999 Rugby World Cup, the first in the fully professional era, taking his side to a bruising semi-final encounter against Australia. Scores were level after 80 minutes, so extra time was played. You can see his bent disconsolate figure on YouTube as the final whistle is blown, realising the game has slipped away. Australia's Steve Larkham dropped a goal from 48 metres, and his team won the match 27-21. It was South Africa's first defeat in a World Cup.
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When the whistle was blown on his playing career, van der Westhuizen had scored more tries than any other Springbok and he was about as popular as any man deserves to be. He married a singer called Amor, and they became the Posh and Becks of South Africa, appearing in magazines and on television, sharing their beautiful lives with the public and producing two children.
Then two years ago, his life changed. A video appeared purporting to show a man who looked and sounded like him in a hotel room with a half-naked woman taking what looked like illegal substances. Van der Westhuizen denied any involvement.
For six months he told anyone who would listen, including his wife, that it was a stitch-up and he threatened to sue the people who had produced the video. But this was one dummy that he was unable to sell.
Finally as the pressure grew and grew, he wrote a book called Man in the Mirror, in which he revealed that he was the man in the video. He asked his wife and public to forgive him. He went on a radio show to apologise but was accused by the disc jockey of just doing so to create publicity for his book.
"There must be a better way to make money than to humiliate yourself in public," van der Westhuizen replied.
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"Trust is very important in business, as it is in sport," he says. "You learn a lot from sport to take into business: discipline, trust, punctuality, fitness and mental discipline. You need all those things to do business. If I can't trust you, I can't do business with you."
Once he retired, his coach advised him to go out and meet people, talk to them and things would happen. "Business opportunities come up," says van der Westhuizen. "Everywhere I go I meet people. This often leads to something. Often with friends." He also imports canned fish from Peru and is involved in South Africa Rugby Legends, a group of former Springbok players who are helping to engage the young South African community with the game. They are building sport towns, feeding 20,000 youngsters a month. So far they have built four, but they have ambitious plans to build more than 1,000.
He is also raising money for a foundation he has set up to research motor neurone disease. Its cause is unknown, a cure so far elusive. "It seems to be sports related," he says. "Ninety per cent of the people that catch it are sportsmen. I have to keep busy and keep positive," he adds. "It's all I can do."
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The 2011 final of the Rugby World Cup takes place on Sunday. The Springboks were knocked out by Australia in the quarter finals. Van der Westhuizen may be unwell, but before leaving Dubai he hosted a charity event at Emirates Golf Club to raise money for his foundation. Half the crowd seems to be South African or Zimbabwean, and they clearly love him.
Yacoob Abba Omar, the South African Ambassador to the UAE, says his compatriots have taken van der Westhuizen to their hearts. "On the field he showed such backbone, commitment and courage. He inspired millions of young people. He is tough like the African baobab tree and a great inspiration for all of us."
We chat for a while before the auction.My final question: It's 1976. You're a small boy on the High Veldt and the ball comes out of the scrum and you're about to pick it up. Just then a figure falls out of the sky and says: "Joost, I am going to offer you a choice. You can be the best Springbok player ever, score lots of tries and win the World Cup, but you will be stricken by a terrible illness at the age of 40. Alternatively, you walk away from the scrum and live to be 80, watching your grandchildren grow up, and enjoy a life of quiet contemplation. Which do you choose?
He replied without a moment's hesitation, fixing me with those green eyes: "I pick up the ball. I pick up the ball and run with it."