How Soccer Helped End Apartheid

The political system known as apartheid was set up during the middle of the twentieth century by the white minority in South Africa to create an arrangement of racial segregation. Nearly all blacks in South Africa were opposed to this and few were actually willing to try and do something about it. The solution of the white man’s government was to send all the people who they perceived as threats to their system to Robben Island, known as the Alcatraz of South Africa. Robben Island is a small island about four miles from the shore of Cape Town, South Africa. It was there that a sport helped form the basis of the government of South Africa after apartheid ended. Soccer is considered the world’s most popular sport, and this simple game provided a template for a potential government and taught the prisoners how to effectively run and organize a group. In 2010, South Africa held the first World Cup ever in an African country and ESPN produced a short documentary about how soccer helped those imprisoned develop a system of organization and ways to maintain an association. This documentary titled Robben Island: A Greater Goal illustrates the influence of the sport on the creation of a new government in South Africa.

This documentary was first shown in the month before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and it immediately grabbed my eye because I love both history and soccer. Once I learned how much of an impact my favorite sport had in the development of the current South African government I wanted to share this with my friends and family because it shows how people can make the most out of what they have. When someone watches this short film, it is important to pay attention to the background and the interviews. For this documentary, an unknown narrator begins by explaining what Robben Island is and why people were sent there. He then explains what apartheid is and how numerous people were sent to Robben Island because the government feared that they would try and end apartheid. The interviews that ESPN set up for this episode were extremely important in illustrating the relationship between soccer and government. Each clip from the interviews gives the watcher a deeper insight to how hard life was in the prison and just how much the game of soccer meant to them. The campaign of the prisoners to be allowed to play soccer began in the fall of 1964 and it took three years until the first game was allowed to be played. Before then, many commented during their interviews how miserable life was and how hard it was to be a prisoner there. But as soon as the simple gift of soccer was given to them, hope was all around the island. The sport gave them something to look forward to every week. Everyone wanted to play the beautiful game on the weekends. Anthony Suze, a prisoner at Robben Island for 15 years, was one of the best players there. Soon, he and other prisoners decided that they needed to set up a league to make sure everything is done correctly and fairly. This would become the basis for experimentation of the development of a government.

The Makana Football Association was formed from the overwhelming desire to play soccer. By 1969, there were 27 teams in the league and more than 300 prisoners participated in the weekly games. Lizo Sitoto in a part of his interview says “Because we were political prisoners, every chance that we have we must practice what we feel must happen when we get our freedom.” This quote shows how the development of the Makana Football Association was more than just the creation of a soccer league for prisoners. It was used as a practice government because it showed that those imprisoned had the ability to set up an organization and run it efficiently. They created everything they needed to run the MFA efficiently: rules, team rosters, injury reports, schedules, standings, statistics, roster changes, and even a constitution. Dikgang Moseneke, while imprisoned at Robben Island, earned a law degree through correspondence, was the chairman of the MFA and he was the one who wrote the constitution for the Makana Football Association. Just as a constitution is the basis for a government, so too was a constitution the basis for the soccer league. On November 21^st, 1970 a match was played between the Blue Rocks and the Atlantic Raiders, a newly formed all star team. During the game, the Blue Rocks scored a fluke goal which allowed them to win and the Atlantic Raiders then went on protest for five months which almost destroyed the entire league. Dikgang Moseneke represented the Makana FA and his arguments won the case which helped preserve all the prisoners had worked for. In an interview he says, “When there is conflict, that is hardly the time to jettison rules, it is the time when you need rules.” This shows how many prisoners at Robben Island learned how to act in ways to promote their values of equality and fairness.

Numerous players and officials from the Makana Football Association would go on and be involved in the government once apartheid ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa. Dikgang Moseneke would write his second constitution, this time for the country of South Africa and is now the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. He says that “It isn’t strange at all that [some values of the Makana Football Association] are built into the kind of constitution that we adopted. One of the former players Jacob Zuma went on to become the president of South Africa. Who could have thought that soccer, a simple sport, would help political prisoners put into practice their beliefs that would one day form the basis of a nation.