Makhaya Ntini will play his 100th Test for the Proteas when the England series starts in Centurion next week, and it begs the question: Where are the Springbok players of Ntini's ilk?
We have to use that odious term "black African" to explain what I am talking about, but it is a relevant question and one which should be disturbing to SA Rugby as the challenge of the Fifa World Cup approaches.
Prop Lawrence Sephaka completed a handful of Test matches in the Bok jersey, but if you consider that Beast Mtawarira is a Zimbabwean, the fields have not reaped much of a harvest for rugby when it comes to that sector of the population the sport should be targeting as its new market.
Jongi Nokwe, who has greatly improved his game, only gets to wear the green and gold when there is nothing on the line. Others just aren't developing because they cannot get game-time at their provinces, as in Chiliboy Ralepelle.
I have often differed with Butana Komphela and his ilk when they have criticised rugby for lack of progress, but more for their choice of targets than any disagreement with their basic problem.
Peter de Villiers is not the person who should be attacked when there is a lack of black faces in the national team. He can only select from the pool of black players available to him, and in last year's Super 14 the pool wasn't big enough.
That is a good reason for SA Rugby to do whatever is necessary to get the Eastern Cape on to the rugby map. Every year people phone me to enthuse about the talent they see at schoolboy level, but what happens to that talent after school?
I don't profess to know who is to blame, but when those players disappear so do their supporters. Rugby's growth does depend heavily on the development of a leak-free pipeline that can ensure good black schoolboy players will be developed into good black first-class players.
The most important thing is that they must be good enough, for there have been too many attempts at window-dressing in this country's rugby that have been transparent to the public. This undermines the credibility of the sport.
Those who get upset when a black player or black coach is criticised by the media and who then use the race card against the critics completely miss the point: Everyone wants rugby to transform, but it has to be meaningful transformation and not cosmetic.
Selecting a player who is not good enough, or appointing a coach not up to the required level, does not help transformation. And transformation can't be seen as meaningful if those players or coaches are then considered off limits to the criticism their white colleagues have to put up with when they make similar mistakes.
This year there were too many empty stands, which showed rugby does need new markets. It needs a black player factory similar to the one that keeps pumping out excellent white players in the Afrikaans heartland up north.
In Mark Keohane's book, Springbok Rugby Uncovered, he refers to the end of the Silas Nkanunu reign as SA Rugby Union president as the beginning of an era where SA rugby was run by a "coloured/white conservative cartel".
Has that changed? If not, what is rugby going to do to ensure that the right message is being put across to the people expected to put their bums on the seats of the magnificent new stadium in Port Elizabeth if that region finally gets Super rugby status?
I don't know the answers. But they are questions which should be mulled over as we go into a year where the sale of the round ball game is going to be bigger than ever.