By Editor | May 4th, 2011 | 1 Comment
South African football mourns the death of Eddie Lewis. He died of cancer on May 2 in Johannesburg at the age of 76. The Englishman played for Manchester United, Preston North End, West Ham and Leyton Orient (1952-1963) before arriving in South Africa in 1970. Lewis coached Wits University — a white team — to a famous 3-2 victory over Soweto giants Kaizer Chiefs in the 1978 Mainstay Cup final. He later coached Chiefs, Moroka Swallows, and other historically black sides.
Full story here.
By Editor | April 20th, 2011 | 8 Comments
Guest blog post by Mohlomi Maubane in Soweto, South Africa
One of South Africa’s iconic tournaments, the Telkom Charity Cup, is no more. PSL chairman Irvin Khoza’s announcement this week brought down the curtain on what was arguably one of the most loved tournaments in the country.
The Charity Cup made its debut in 1986 as the Iwisa Maize Meal Spectacular. This one-day tournament quickly established itself as the domestic season opener. It featured four teams battling off in the semifinals, with the victors meeting in the final later in the day. Local football fans voted for the four teams that took part in the tournament, making the Charity Cup the most interactive professional soccer platform in South Africa. It also served to gear-up fans for the start of the new season.
And now the Charity Cup is no more, with rather puzzling reasons being given for its demise. Khoza explained that the Charity Cup was cancelled to reduce fixture congestion and player fatigue. He added that other knockout tournaments could not be cancelled as they served as qualifiers for international competitions.
Utter nonsense. First, how is canceling a one-day tournament going to reduce fixture congestion? Second, how can players’ fatigue be adversely affected by a one-day tournament at the start of the season? Third, PSL teams have long been apathetic toward African club competitions such as the Champions League and Confederation Cup. Most South African teams prefer to bypass the chance for African adventure for short-term riches at home. So it is disingenuous at best to claim that participation in continental tournaments requires burying the Charity Cup.
If the way to tell when a politician is lying is to see their lips moving, then everything said by a football administrator in South Africa should be taken with a truckload of salt. If there was a tournament worthy of being taken off the local football calendar, it is the Vodacom Challenge. This pre-season tournament features the most popular teams in the country — Orlando Pirates (owned by Khoza) and Kaizer Chiefs — playing against English Premier League opposition. Even though it also essentially entails three matches, it lasts an entire week and no other matches are played when it’s contested.
Methinks the logical reason why the Charity Cup and not the Vodacom Challenge fell to the proverbial axe is because the latter lines up the pockets of some local football heavyweights, while the former mainly benefits numerous charity organizations in the country. Talk about giving a new meaning to ‘charity begins at home’.
By Peter Alegi | March 23rd, 2011 | 4 Comments
Saud Abdul Ghani, head of the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Qatar, recently unveiled a special plan for the 2022 World Cup: remote-controlled artificial clouds over the stadiums!
Powered by four solar engines, the man-made clouds would be made of ultra light carbon fiber in an attempt to bring some relief to fans in the stands and players on the field from temperatures expected to reach 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 Celsius) during the Qatari summer. The cost of this Addams family trick? $500,000.
By Peter Alegi | March 9th, 2011 | No Comments
On Friday, March 11, the Institute for the African Child and the Center for Sports Administration are hosting the 7th Sports in Africa symposium at Ohio University. The program — including my keynote address — will be webcasted from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m (GMT -5) on https://adobeconnect.oit.ohio.edu/sportsinafrica2011/
By Peter Alegi | March 3rd, 2011 | 1 Comment
While putting together a post on Gaddafi and football, I received a poignant reminder of the century-long history of African political leaders’ involvement in the game. Richard W. Msimang, a founder of the African National Congress in South Africa, played football in school in South Africa and in Britain — where he lived for a decade — and then in 1929 was a founder of one of Johannesburg’s leading black football associations. A July 1913 newspaper article celebrating Msimang’s admission as an Attorney of the Supreme Court of South Africa includes the following passage:
Those who have met and seen Mr. Msimang have noticed what a remarkable popular and genial personality he bears. We learn that from boyhood at Emakosini, and at Mr. Dube’s School and Healdtown, in or out of school, he was always popular and well liked by all the boys who knew him. Even at Queen’s College [in Britain] he was very popular and respected by the boys with whom he studied or played.
In the sphere of games he was equally as successful as in education. At Ohlange he played for the 1st XI, and also at Healdtown he was a member of the “Healdtown Swallows” Eleven. At his first football season in England, he got his place in the School first Eleven outside left, where he played with great distinction until he left the school to start his professional training. He then played Rugby football when, during his first season on the new code, he got a place at outside-half in the 1st XV of the Taunton Rugby Football Club, and played continuously for the club. During his last season he was Vice-Captain of the team. The Taunton Rugby Club is one of the first class Rugby teams in the West of England and it is interesting to note that our new lawyer, whether playing for the school or the town team, was always the only man of colour in the game. Again the Taunton Rugby Club appreciated Mr. Msimang’s service so much that when leaving Taunton for his homeland the Club presented him with a gold watch chain and pendant inscribed in commemoration of his association with the Club. Mr. Msimang has now no intention to play football again.
Source: “The New Solicitor: Mr. R. W. Msimang”, Abantu Batho 3? July 1913 [reprinted in Tsala ea Batho 5 July 1913]. My thanks to Peter Limb for bringing this article to my attention.
Further reading: Laduma! and African Soccerscapes
By Peter Alegi | February 8th, 2011 | 2 Comments
By Mohlomi Maubane
The 2010 World Cup was heralded as the dawn of a new era in South African football. This new epoch was to be devoid of the old amateurish ways in the local game where officials “forget” to perform rudimentary tasks like erecting corner kick flags for an international match. But alas, as the events of the past week have shown, it’s not yet Uhuru.
A few weeks ago, the wise chaps at SAFA announced an upcoming friendly against Burkina Faso, 41st in the FIFA rankings. Problem is they seem to have forgotten to confirm this news with the intended opponents. When they did eventually contact the Burkinabe FA last week to “finalize” arrangements for the match, SAFA officials found out the West African country already had a fixture against Cape Verde on the same day. A scramble to find a “replacement” ensued. So now in preparation for a crucial AFCON qualifier against Egypt in March, on Wednesday (Feb. 9) at the Royal Bafokeng stadium outside Rustenburg Bafana Bafana will instead square up against mighty Kenya, ranked 127th by FIFA.
Speaking of the first World Cup host team to be eliminated in the first round, Bafana Bafana will soon be trading under a different name. Why? SAFA failed to register the team’s nickname. Instead, a shrewd businessman named Stanton Woodrush owns the copyright and is not playing ball, unless he is handsomely rewarded for being the first to register the Bafana name with the Department of Trade and Industry.
Simply put, SAFA are a disgraceful bunch. Despite the election of a new leadership in September 2009, the association failed to secure a training camp for Bafana Bafana in preparation for the 2010 World Cup; failed (again) to submit votes for the FIFA World Player of the Year awards; and failed to send a confirmation letter to CAF stating their intention to send the national Under 23 team to participate in the All-Africa games.
Perhaps, the overall state of the nation and its favourite pastime is best symbolized by the postponement of a Chiefs vs. Swallows game scheduled for February 5 at FNB Stadium – known as Soccer City during the World Cup – due to the theft of electric cables that left the stadium without power. Soccer City was a showpiece of South Africa’s technological sophistication and, with its calabash shell exterior, a monumental symbol of Africa’s first World Cup. The circumstances that led to a domestic league game being postponed there less than nine months after hosting the 2010 World Cup final, together with SAFA’s latest foibles, illustrate vividly how in South African football the more things change, the more they stay the same.
By Peter Alegi | February 7th, 2011 | 2 Comments
African Activist Archive, Michigan State University
When Chris De Broglio told me the sad news of Isiah Stein’s passing I knew very little about this brave Capetonian activist. All I could remember was that he was an exiled South African, a former executive committee member of SANROC, the heart and soul of the anti-apartheid sport boycott, and that his sons had played professional football in Britain.
Then Omar Badsha, an ex-activist and founder of South African History Online, wrote a strange comment to my post. He asserted that Stein was white and could not have been incarcerated on Robben Island, a prison reserved for black political activists.
Based on the skin color of the Stein footballers, I had assumed their father was black (in the Black Consciousness sense of the word). In his comment to my post, Howard Holmes, director of the Sheffield-based Football Unites, Racism Divides (FURD), seemed bewildered by the confusion about Stein’s racial identity. After further research, I confirmed that the Cape Town-born Stein was classified “Coloured” (mixed race) under apartheid’s racial classification system. In other words, he was definitely not white.
But had he done time in the infamous apartheid prison with Nelson Mandela in the mid-1960s? This online list of Robben Island prisoners does not have Stein’s name. I consulted memoirs of prisoners and other published sources to no avail. I turned to colleagues intimately familiar with the Robben Island/Mayibuye Archives at the University of the Western Cape, but came up empty.
To resolve the matter, I sought the help of a former political prisoner who survived twelve years on the island. He sent a swift, courteous, and unambiguous reply: “Isiah was definitely not on Robben Island during the period [between] 1964 and 1975.”
I am struck by how a simple “hamba kahle” (Go Well, Rest in Peace) post in honor of a sport and human rights activist took on a life of its own. Blogging, memory, and the craft of history combined together to shed some new light on a not-so-ordinary South African and, at the same time, revealed how the history of the liberation struggle in South Africa is far from complete and seldom free of controversy and contestation.
« Previous Posts
Newer Posts »
RSS Feed
