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.

Human Potential

The idea of human potential has puzzled me for a very long time. It seems like everyone I see isn't living up to their full capabilities, including myself. But there are certain cases which are in my life where I want to tell the person what they should be doing but I do not know how to go about doing it. The famed Winston Churchill once said, “Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential” and I think that this needs to be expanded upon. A person first needs to know what it is that they should strive for. I know of two specific people who are very close to me in my life who I believe have incredible potential but need just a slight nudge in the right direction and hopefully this will help them.
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