During the build up to the World Cup, it’s easy to get caught up in team news, injuries, stadium updates, airline collusion (erm, allegedly), and other mundane tidbits.  But the upcoming World Cup in South Africa also provides us with the opportunity to reflect on South Africa’s path to 2010.  Benni McCarthy and Steven Pienaar are standing on countless sets of impressive shoulders.  

In the last part of our South Africa Series, I broke down the unique South African sporting landscape during apartheid.  I know I said we’d get to South African soccer’s road from obscurity to full-exposure, but we should take a quick pit stop first.  To get a clear understanding of the challenges disenfranchised athletes faced under apartheid and what was required to change the system, it helps to learn a bit about the different phases of the broader anti-apartheid movement.  For those of you who appreciate tactics, in many ways, the struggle against apartheid sport mirrors the broader anti-apartheid struggle.

Initially, anti-apartheid activists reacted to the South African government’s policies by protesting.  However, by the early 1950s, protests were proving to be ineffective.  The failure of protests led to the next phase of resistance, defiance, which entailed concerted action focused on breaking unjust laws.  On June 26, 1952, the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Indian Congress launched the Defiance Campaign, which was considered the best way to engage the greatest number of people in the struggle.

A typical example of defiance took place on June 26, 1952, the first official day of the campaign, when a group of defiers led by Nana Sita, president of the Transvaal Indian Congress, entered an African township near Boksburg without permits.  Yusef Calchalia, one of the campaign’s leaders, and Nelson Mandela delivered a message to the Boksburg magistrate stating that an act of defiance was about to occur. The police were waiting for the defiers and immediately arrested them on arrival.  Over the next five months, approximately 8,500 people participated in the Defiance Campaign.

The Defiance Campaign followed Gandhian principles of passive resistance known as satyagraha.  Satyagraha, which translates as force born of truth and love, is a concept of political struggle formulated and popularized by M.K. Gandhi in South Africa during the early 20th century.  Satyagraha’s fundamental principle is that oppressors could be won over through morality and reasoning.  Gandhi believed that rational discussion was the only medium through which truth could be understood by all.  Vitthalbhai Patel, former speaker of the Indian Central Legislative Assembly, explained satyagraha’s underlying philosophy in the following statement:

I am going to make you beat me so outrageously that after a while you will begin to feel so ashamed of yourself.  Even your own family will be horrified at you.  And after you have stood this scandal long enough, you will come to me and say, “Look here, this sort of business cannot go on any longer.  Now why cannot we two get together and settle something?”  And then we will begin to talk … cold turkey.  Otherwise you will have to go on beating me till I go crazy.

But Patel’s scenario raises an interesting question:  What if the oppressor is perfectly content beating you till you go crazy?

A fundamental assumption of passive resistance is that there is a universal morality.  In other words, morality transcends all differences, whether cultural or religious.  However, if this is not true and different standards of morality can be applied to and justified by various peoples, then passive resistance loses much of its effectiveness.

Unfortunately, black South African sport existed in a society with different standards of morality.  Many white South Africans during apartheid believed that discrimination and separation was mandated by the word of God and therefore moral and justified.  These sentiments go beyond economic justifications. They are rooted in a moral code that reinforces a belief system that allocates human value differently depending on race.  This realization is ultimately what led members of the ANC to reconsider the effectiveness of passive resistance.  Mandela recalled that at the time, “We were extremely proud of the fact that during the six months of the campaign, there was not a single act of violence on our side.”  Yet, the defiers made no progress in getting the government to repeal any of the unjust laws.  If anything, the campaign had the reverse effect.  The government saw the Defiance Campaign as a security threat and perceived civil disobedience not as a form of protest, but as criminal activity.  Consequently, in 1953, Parliament passed the Public Safety Act, which allowed the government to declare martial law and detain people without trial, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which allowed for corporal punishment of defiers.  These pieces of legislation directly curtailed the campaign because defiance now had stricter consequences.

The limitations on internal forms of protest and defiance were becoming increasingly clear.  New methods of challenging apartheid needed to be developed.  As apartheid continued, black athletes faced similar challenges.  Rational arguments for integrated sport were also futile because those in power believed in the underlying principles of segregated sport so strongly that they organized a nation around these principles.  Given this conundrum, both anti-apartheid activists and sporting activists had to figure out ways to make their case more effectively.

In 2010, most of us know that something happened that allowed integrated sport in South Africa to thrive.  Clearly the apartheid state no longer exists.  But what tactics were employed to move the struggle to the next level?

We’ll get into the next level tactics in the next episode.  But keep the tactics of the broader anti-apartheid struggle that I discussed in this part in mind as we move forward.  These tactics explain the actions of anti-apartheid sports activists as they fight for the recognition of black South African sport.  In the next part, I’ll go a bit more into the steps that ultimately led to a more robust and effective campaign against apartheid sport, which plays a significant role in the eventual downfall of the South African apartheid state.

Tune in next time for more slow cooking …

The South Africa Series:  Part  I | II | III

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Related posts:

1. The South Africa Series: Part II
2. The South Africa Series: Part I
3. The South Africa Series: Part III

Millions around the world are counting down to June 11, 2010.  That’s the date the first soccer World Cup ever to be played in Africa will kick off in Johannesburg, South Africa.  If you haven’t taken notice beyond Charlize Theron’s antics at the drawing or just don’t care, it’s time to become a fan or at least pay attention.  Pay attention because South Africa hosting the World Cup will be a historic moment of first black president proportions.

The South African story is a powerful, historical narrative.  It’s filled with oppression, struggle, and overcoming adversity.  This moment is about much more than soccer.

This is a country where institutionalized apartheid was in effect until 1992.  That’s right, 1992.  Since the beginning of the apartheid era in 1948, countless South Africans have given their lives for basic equality. When South Africa kicks off against Mexico on June 11, 2010, South Africans will break down in tears the same way so many of us did on election night.

It doesn’t matter whether you follow soccer.  For all who care about equality and social justice, the South African story should shed light on why this World Cup is not just a game.  Some context:

1990: Nelson Mandela took his first steps into the world after being imprisoned for twenty-seven years.  I vividly recall watching this moment on television.  I also vividly recall listening to Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison”, Digital Underground’s “The Humpty Dance”, Vanilla Ice’s sadly groundbreaking “Ice Ice Baby”, and, um, Lisa Stansfield’s “All Around the World” (don’t front) right around the same time.  You remember what life was like then?  Well, in South Africa that was two years before the government repealed major pieces of apartheid legislation like the Group Areas Act that provided the legislative basis to separate whites and non-whites in public places.

1992: A whites-only referendum paved the way to equality in South Africa.  We were jamming to Boys II Men’s “Motownphilly”, LL Cool J’s “Around the Way Girl”, Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love”, and Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” on MTV on this side of the Atlantic.  Meanwhile South Africans were celebrating the end of institutionalized apartheid.  Had we been jamming to the aforementioned hits in South Africa, we would have been jamming in racially segregated areas.  1992.  No integrated jamming allowed.

1994: South Africa held its first democratic elections where people of all races were allowed to vote.  You might recall the image of Nelson Mandela voting that day.  Remember where you were in 1994? I bet you remember where you were during the O.J. episode.  Well if Orenthal James Simpson was living in South Africa only a few years earlier, the South African police would likely have stopped his white Bronco to make sure he had a pass.  But he also might not have been joy riding in the first place because if had married Nicole Brown Simpson in South Africa, he would have been arrested for violating the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act.

If your good memories from 1994 came from watching Pulp Fiction, or listening to Snoop Dogg’s Gin & Juice or even Yanni’s Live at the Acropolis, consider how much happier you would have been if that year marked the first time you could legally cast a ballot in your own country.  Considerably happier, I imagine.

2010: Roughly sixteen years after Mandela voted, South Africa is on its third post-apartheid President, none of whom could have legally lived in the same neighborhood as previous South African leaders prior to 1992.  Since the ‘94 elections, South Africa has hosted the Rugby World Cup (a topic worthy of its own article and the subject of recent movie, Invictus), and is about to host the world’s largest sporting event.  That this is happening only sixteen years after people of all races gained the right vote shows how far South Africa has come in such a short period of time.

The United States doesn’t have a monopoly on black history-making moments and remarkable journeys.  Change you can believe in is going on elsewhere too. June 11, 2010 is going to be one of those “where were you?” days.  Where were you when the biggest sporting event in the world kicked off on the African continent for the first time?   Where were you when South Africa finally emerged on the largest world stage fathomable after decades of isolation?

I hope we tune in to this event like so many people tuned in for the first time to our recent election. South Africa deserves this moment, and we owe it to ourselves to pay attention and cheer – if not for the games, then for what the games represent.

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Related posts:

1. The South Africa Series: Part II
2. The South Africa Series: Part I
3. The South Africa Series: Part IV

In Part II, I explained a bit about the social and spatial legislation that laid the foundation for the development of apartheid sport.  But to begin to understand the current state of South African sport and what this World Cup means in historical context, you need to understand South Africa’s unique sporting landscape.

South Africans are sports mad.  The madness is more than a passion, it is religion.  However, observing South African sport from the viewpoint of major South African newspapers during apartheid skews one’s perspective on South African sport.  Before South Africa was awarded the 2010 World Cup, South African soccer, which was a predominately a black sport, was largely invisible to most outside of South Africa.  To most of the outside world, rugby, and to a lesser extent cricket, were the quintessential South African sports.  Internally, stories and scores from these sports frequently rivaled political news for headlines.  This reality allowed rugby and cricket to thrive inside South Africa, while support for black leagues, players, and competitions suffered behind closed doors. 

New Age was one of the few newspapers that paid attention to the slighted world of black sport.  Its writers during the 50s and 60s included activist Ruth First, politician Govan Mbeki (father of Former South African President Thabo Mbeki), novelist Alex La Guma, and Chief Albert Luthuili, President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1952 to 1967.  As one of the few voices from the black sporting world, New Age succeeded in keeping black sport alive during a period of intense suppression.

The apartheid government labeled New Age an outlet for black grievances, frequently pressuring the paper to shut down.  In its twenty-six years of existence, the New Age was published under seven different titles, in part because it was banned so many times.  Virtually all of the contributing writers were banned, jailed, or exiled from South Africa.

One of the paper’s many highlights was its coverage of the South African Soccer League (SASL), the first non-racial soccer league in South Africa.  During the league’s existence from 1961 to 1965, SASL was routinely ignored by major South African newspapers, The Johannesburg Star and The Cape Argus. These publications routinely had large articles on comparatively obscure sports such as men’s hockey, horse racing, and South African baseball.  Seriously, South African baseball.  The fact that the Argus regularly covered English, Italian, Spanish, and even Australian soccer showed there was an interest in soccer, but only in leagues where whites were the majority.

Even though the majority of South Africans are black and play football, the disproportionate allocation of resources into athletic facilities and player development for rugby ensured that under the apartheid government, rugby became South Africa’s national sport even though it wasn’t the favorite sport of the majority of the people.  Rugby became a medium for Afrikaners to display their dominance and superiority.  So for black South Africans (and notably a significant number of white South Africans), challenging rugby became a way to challenge apartheid.  But beyond simply challenging the system, black South African athletes were also fighting for exposure to the outside world.

This summer South Africa and South African football will be fully exposed.  South African soccer will officially leave obscurity and step on to the world football’s largest stage.

South African soccer is still far behind South Africa’s storied rugby and cricket sides.  But soccer is getting proper investment these days.  It’s only a matter of time before South Africa can field a soccer team to match its already world-class rugby and cricket sides.

That’s a wrap for now.  In the next part, I’ll explain a bit more about soccer’s road from obscurity to  full-exposure.

The South Africa Series:  Part  I |  II |  ..  |  IV

Related posts:

1. The South Africa Series: Part I
2. The South Africa Series: Part II
3. The South Africa Series: Part IV

In Part I, I alluded to the Nationalist Party’s policies laying the foundations for South African sport to develop along racial lines.  Understanding the development of apartheid policies provides some key insights into why South African sport has developed into what it is today.  Granted, South African sport has come a long way since the mid 20th century.  But delving into the complex journey of sport in South Africa, particularly football’s journey and its seemingly odd dynamics to outsiders, offers vivid insights into the South African experience and the countless challenges that have led South Africa to where it is today.

Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan journalist, writer, novelist and football savant, once wrote, “Tell me how you play and I will tell you who you are.”  If I could tweak his profound words to apply to the South African context, I would write, “Tell me what and where you play and I will tell you who you are.”

And with that, here’s Part Deux.

Several pieces of legislation from the 1940s and 50s set the tone for institutionalized separate development in South Africa.  Under the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, marriages between whites and members of other races were banned.  In 1950, the Immorality Amendment Act outlawed extra-marital sexual relations between the races.  The Population Registration Act of 1950 made it mandatory for all South African citizens to register and be classified into one of four racial groups that were defined by the government – White, Bantu (black African), Indian, or Coloured.  You might ask, “What about people of mixed background? What about people who don’t conceivably fall under one of these categories?”  If you are starting to ask these questions, you are starting to see some of the inherent problems associated with racial categorization, many of which are the same types of problems that faced other countries that instituted similar policies in the past.

Decisions on racial categorization were based on physical appearance.  Therefore, there was a possibility that family members could be split into different racial categories.  This was not an uncommon occurrence.  In fact, these often arbitrary categorizations caused serious problems in many families.  The Population Registration Act together with acts legislating marital and sexual relations were keys to ensuring that racial groups identify with their own and shy away from combining forces as oppressed peoples.  In short, the Nationalist government was keenly aware that social segregation would naturally follow from enforced racial identification.

While the aforementioned pieces of legislation were integral in institutionalizing social segregation, the Group Areas Act (1950) was the centerpiece of maintaining spatial separation amongst the races in towns.  Cities and towns were divided into areas for specific racial groups.  In general, the best land and facilities were reserved for whites.  People who found themselves living or owning property in a zone created for another race were given a period of time by the Minister of the Interior to evacuate the premises.  A Group Areas Board allocated permits for members of different racial groups to operate in areas for other racial groups.  As you can imagine, these permits weren’t the easiest to obtain.

These early pieces of social and spatial legislation start to lay out the foundation for the development of sport in apartheid South Africa.  As we move forward, my goal is to provide you with enough background to begin to fully appreciate the significance of South Africa hosting the 2010 World Cup.  Hopefully, once you can grasp South Africa’s unique historical landscape and social complexities, you will be able to understand what a monumental moment this is for South Africa, and particularly what a monumental moment this is for South African football, a traditionally Black sport in South Africa that has emerged from decades of legislated isolation.

Till next time …

The South Africa Series:  Part  I | … | III |  IV

Related posts:

1. The South Africa Series: Part I
2. The South Africa Series: Part III
3. The South Africa Series: Part IV

As we countdown to the first World Cup to be played on African soil, Nutmeg Radio will feature a series of articles on football in South Africa.  South Africa’s rich and unique past is filled with powerful anecdotes laced with struggle, inspiration, success and failure. Over the years, international coverage on South Africa has focused on politics, particularly South Africa’s apartheid past and the obstacles that the country has faced as it moved out of apartheid towards the creation of “A New South Africa”.  Sport in South Africa, however, has always been a fascinating subplot of South African society, largely due to the unique role of sport in the country.  Delving into sport in South Africa presents a wonderful and unique opportunity to tell many of the stories that we’ve heard about the country through the lens of sport, and will hopefully allow you to learn about what is without question a powerful undercurrent of South African history and society.

Part I will begin to set the backdrop for the series.  The difficulty in starting the series is determining the right place to start.  If this was a novel, I would probably select the moment when soccer was introduced to what is now the Republic of South Africa to begin the series.  But this is no novel.  So I’ll begin in 1948, the year the world was introduced to apartheid as defined in the South African context.  That gives us roughly sixty-one years to cover.  Alright, we won’t cover all sixty-one, but my goal is to give you a truncated version.

Here we go …

In 1948, the National Party (also known as the Nationalist Party or NP) came into power in South Africa.  The NP was supported primarily by Afrikaners, who are white South Africans of Dutch, German, and French Huguenot descent.   Afrikaner nationalists focused on maintaining their Afrikaans identity and way of life distinct from those white South Africans of British descent as well as from black South Africans.  For future reference throughout this series, historically, the use of “black” as a term of reference to people in South Africa is not as straight-forward as blackness in many other parts of the world.  In South Africa, blackness often referred to a broader category of oppressed people under apartheid, namely, Africans, Indians and Coloureds.

As a primary method of maintaining Afrikaner identity, the NP began strictly institutionalizing a doctrine of racial separation, which mandated that the four racial groups – white, Coloured, Indian, and African – live and develop separately and independently from one another.  Each group would have its own facilities, its own land, an as the policy was developed its own form of government.  Preserving the purity of the races, particularly the Afrikaner people, was a priority for the NP.   As far as sport was concerned, the institutionalization of separation policies provided the framework for different sports to develop in isolation.  When you look at how South Africa’s most popular sports – football, rugby, and cricket – have developed, and their alignment with certain communities, from level of interest to participation, most of these realities in many ways have their roots in apartheid policy.

We’ll explore this a bit more in Part II, but that’s all you get for now.

The South Africa Series:  Part  … |  II |  III |  IV

Related posts:

1. The South Africa Series: Part III
2. The South Africa Series: Part II
3. The South Africa Series: Part IV