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Outlook: 27/10/2015 12:06 GMT: Rugby Saved My Life

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Ashwin Willemse

27/10/2015 12:06 GMT

27/10/2015 12:06 GMT: Rugby Saved My Life

Rugby Saved My Life

BBC World Service - Outlook, Rugby Saved My Life

Ashwin Willemse went from Cape Town gang member to South African Springbok rugby star

South African Ashwin Willemse says that rugby saved his life. Ashwin remembers watching the World Cup in 1995, when South Africa took the trophy and he was a 14-year-old in a rough part of Cape Town with big dreams and few prospects. Little did Ashwin know that he would be part of his country's World Cup winning team 12 years later. 

When Islamist militants took over northern Mali three years ago, one of the first things they did was ban music. Singer Aliou Toure wasted no time in getting out. He moved south to the capital, Bamako, where he formed a band called Songhoy Blues to keep the music of the north alive.

American runner Suzy Favor Hamilton had competed at three Olympics before apparently settling into family life. But then it came out that she had been working as a high-class escort in Las Vegas. Suzy has just published her autobiography to set the record straight. She has bipolar disorder, a condition that results in dramatic mood swings and at times contributed to her becoming, as she describes it, 'hypersexual'. 

(Photo: Ashwin Willemse. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

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27/10/2015 12:06 GMT: Rugby Saved My Life

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