User:The C of E/dvj

, MBE He was nicknamed the "Bald Eagle" due to his pace on the wing and bald head.

Van Jaarsveldt attended trials for selection for the South African national team 1951 and 1956 but was not selected on either times which Van Jaarsveldt believed was because of Afrikaner Broederbond pressures on the South African Rugby Board not to select him because he was Rhodesian.

When he was 31, Van Jaarsveldt became the first Rhodesian to captain the Springboks in 1960 taking over from Johan Claassen after being appointed by Danie Craven, the president of the South African Rugby Board. Previously it had been considered politically unacceptable by the ruling South African National Party for a Rhodesian to captain the Springboks as previously John Morkel was denied an opportunity despite captaining Rhodesia to a 10-8 win over the All Blacks in 1949 (which Van Jaarsveldt missed due to injury). The Afrikaner nationalist newspaper Die Transvaler criticised the appointment of Van Jaarsveldt stating: " "It is an evil day for South African rugby when the country has to seek its rugby captain from beyond its borders in the territory of a strange land." Contrary to this view, the team and the nation at large supported him. Despite his name being similar to Afrikaner names (his familial background was from the Netherlands and did not have any Afrikaner connection), Van Jaarsveldt could not speak Afrikaans and stated about that day "It must be the first time a Springbok captain has had to give his team talk in English."

Despite the success, Van Jaarsveldt was never picked for South Africa again. This was attributed to his lack of ability to speak Afrikaans (which the selectors did not know of when he was selected) and Anglophobia from the South African selectors. It was also claimed that his decision not to follow the Springboks tradition of the captain leading a team prayer, which van Jaarsveldt attributed that it was not in his nature to pray for victory, and not giving a long motivational speech was also not received well by some players.

As the coach of Rhodesia, he received criticism from members of the New Zealand touring party in 1970 after it was believed that he had ordered his Rhodesian players to play defensively and intentionally cause obstruction to plays by the All Blacks by shirt pulling. When he stepped down from coaching Rhodesia, he recommended the future Springboks head coach Ian McIntosh to the Rhodesian RFU as the man to succeed him.

for "services to sport in Southern Rhodesia" As the president of the Rhodesian Rugby Football Union, he ran Rhodesian rugby during the transition of the country to black majority rule. In 1979 following the establishment of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, he called for a meeting of all national sporting bodies to determine a unified approach to any potential name changes which included possibly dropping Rhodesia from their names. This meeting did not occur as several bodies preferred to unilaterally decide on their own names. In 1980, with the newly renamed Zimbabwe Rugby Union, Van Jaarsveldt led an unsuccessful campaign against the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's announcement that Zimbabwe was to sever all sporting connections with South Africa due to their apartheid policies. In the run up to this decision, Van Jaarsveldt did approach the Rugby Football Union to see if Zimbabwe could affiliate with England. He then entered politics, unsuccessfully standing for former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith's Republican Front for a seat in the Senate of Zimbabwe in 1983 where he lost after drawing of lots on a 10-10 tied vote.

In 2019, following the death of Claassen, Van Jaarsveldt became the oldest living former Springbok and is the oldest living South African rugby captain. In 2013, as the oldest living Springbok captain, he was invited to cast his handprints alongside the oldest living South African Coloured Rugby Football Board and the South African African Rugby Board representative captains in the newly opened South Africa Rugby Museum. Also in that year, he played in a legends match for the Springboks at the age of 83 against Zimbabwe Legends to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Matabeleland Rugby Football Union at Hartsfield Rugby Ground. He took the kick-off and was then substituted.