Peter Alegi

'A nation to be reckoned with': the politics of World Cup stadium construction in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa

On Saturday 15 May 2004, Nelson Mandela wept tears of joy as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) awarded South Africa the right to host the 2010 World Cup finals – the first on African soil. ‘I feel like a boy of fifteen,’ he told the audience in Zurich. In South Africa, people of all races erupted in simultaneous, raucous celebration of the much-anticipated announcement. A young man standing next to me watching the event on a giant television screen in Soweto’s Mofolo Park exclaimed: ‘This is bigger than the elections!’ Ahmed Kathrada, the former political prisoner incarcerated with Mandela for twenty-six years, described the cathartic power of this moment in the closing passage of his Memoirs: ‘To some extent this outburst of euphoria surpassed 1994 . . . The scenes of jubilation, the spontaneous outpouring of celebration following FIFA’s decision, the solidarity of pride and unity evoked by a sporting event should serve as a shining example to black and white alike’ (Kathrada 2004:371). More recently, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela made clear South Africa’s intention to use the planet’s pre-eminent sporting event as political theatre: ‘The 2010 World Cup is about nation-building, putting us on the global map and making us a nation to be reckoned with. The event is going to make us proud. We are going to show the world wonders come 2010’ (The Mercury 16 March 2007).

The Political Economy of Mega-Stadiums and the Underdevelopment of Grassroots Football in South Africa

Abstract As South Africa prepares to host the 2010 World Cup finals, public and scholarly discourses have largely overlooked the consequences of interactions between global sport, professional leagues, and grassroots football. Yet analysing this dynamic is important because it challenges bold claims made by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and South African boosters about the 2010 World Cups capacity to deliver economic, political, and social benefits to the nation-state. Drawing on South African government and media sources, FIFA documents, as well as interviews and secondary literature, this article examines the policy decisions that inspired the construction of a lavish new stadium on Green Point Common in Cape Town and then considers the potential effects of this strategy on sports in poor communities. Preparations for 2010 reveal how South Africas engagement with global capitalism is not mitigating apartheids cruel legacies of racism, widespread material poverty, and extreme inequality. Instead, as Ebrahim argues, preliminary evidence suggests that current World Cup strategies are actually undermining the grassroots game.

South Africa and the global game: Introduction

On 11 May 1994, the festivities for Nelson Mandela‘s presidential inauguration included a soccer match between South Africa and Zambia at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. At halftime, Mandela‘s helicopter landed on the pitch. As the president stepped out onto the grass, the huge crowd erupted in a thunderous roar. When play resumed, the South Africans seemed electrified and went on to win the match 2-1. On 15 May 2004 in Zurich, Switzerland, Mandela wept with joy when the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) awarded South Africa the right to host the 2010 World Cup. South Africans celebrated in the streets as if they had not simply won hosting rights, but the World Cup itself! To some extent this outburst of euphoria surpassed 1994,‘ commented Ahmed Kathrada, the former political prisoner incarcerated with Mandela for twenty-six years; The scenes of jubilation, the spontaneous outpouring of celebration following FIFA‘s decision, the solidarity of pride and unity evoked by a sporting event should serve as a shining example to black and white alike‘. 2

From apartheid to unity: white capital and black power in the racial integration of South African football, 1976-1992

Abstract This article analyses the complex process that deracialised and democratised South African football between the early 1970s and 1990s. Based mainly on archival documents, it argues that growing isolation from world sport, exemplified by South Africas expulsion from the Olympic movement in 1970 and FIFA in 1976, and the reinvigoration of the liberation struggle with the Soweto youth uprising triggered a process of gradual desegregation in the South African professional game. While Pretoria viewed such changes as a potential bulwark against rising black militancy, white football and big business had their own reasons for eventually supporting racial integration, as seen in the founding of the National Soccer League. As negotiations for a new democratic South Africa began in earnest between the African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party (NP) in the latter half of the 1980s, transformations in football and politics paralleled and informed each other. Previously antagonistic football associations began a series of ‘unity talks’ between 1985 and 1986 that eventually culminated in the formation of a single, non-racial South African Football Association in December 1991, just a few days before the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) opened the process of writing a new post-apartheid constitution. Finally, three decades of isolation came to an end as FIFA welcomed South Africa back into world football in 1992 – a powerful example of the seemingly boundless potential of a liberated and united South Africa ahead of the first democratic elections in 1994.

7 ‘Like Cows Driven to a Dip’: The 2001 Ellis Park Stadium Disaster in South Africa1

Taylor and Francis Ltd fs s5207.sgm 10.1080/1466097042000235236 Socce Society 466970 (p int)/1743-9590 (online) Original Article 2 04 & Francis Ltd 50 00 Summer 2 04 PeterAlegi 21 Lancaste AvenueRichmondKY 40475USA al gi@y ho . om On Wednesday 11 April 2001, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates took the field at Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a derby with the league championship at stake. As the 8 p.m. kick-off time approached, the 62,000-seat stadium was bursting at the seams with more than 80,000 fans squeezed into every seat, aisle, and access way. Outside the arena, thousands of fans pressed to get inside to watch the country’s two most popular clubs. A portion of this massive crowd in the north-eastern corner of Ellis Park surged forward. A suffocating crush ensued. Veli Mpungose, his nine-year-old daughter Londiwe and 13-year-old son Siphiwe were trapped at the top of a steep stairway. ‘I felt something push us away. We were scared. We thought the stadium had collapsed’, Mpungose said. ‘I was trying to rescue Londiwe and when I reached for Siphiwe, there were ... big guys lying on top of him. I felt his pulse and I couldn’t feel anything. He was dead already.’ Media images captured the heartbreaking scene of Mpungose and Londiwe kneeling in tearful prayer over Siphiwe’s limp, lifeless body on the pitch. In the end, 43 people died and 158 were injured in South Africa’s worst-ever sport disaster. Drawing on interviews, government documents, newspapers, video footage and a visit to Ellis Park in August 2003, this study analyses the causes, consequences and legacy of the tragedy. This analysis of the disaster reveals that conditions beyond the control of fans were primarily to blame for transforming Ellis Park into a landscape of death and destruction. These included fundamental organizational flaws, contempt for spectator safety, and incompetence and dereliction of duty on the part of security personnel. Under South African Football Association guidelines for high-risk matches, responsibility for spectator safety lay with the home side, Kaizer Chiefs, the Premier Soccer League (PSL), and, to a lesser extent, Ellis Park stadium management. A critical examination of the governmental commission of inquiry into the tragedy notes the limitations of the investigative process and questions the official interpretation of the events. While South African football’s main powerbrokers emerged unscathed

Podcasting the past: 'Africa Past and Present' and (South) African history in the digital age

Abstract The World Wide Web and other computer-based technologies like listservs, reference management tools, databases, blogs, Skype and visual media have transformed the field of history. In 2008, Peter Alegi and Peter Limb, historians of South Africa at Michigan State University, USA, launched Africa Past and Present, a podcast about history, culture, and politics (http://afripod.aodl.org). Drawing on the 54 episodes of the podcast produced through June 2011, this article explores the role of podcasting technology in the production and dissemination of historical knowledge about Africa and South Africa in a global context. It begins with an examination of the technical aspects of podcasting, and then interrogates the relationship between podcasting and Africanist scholarship and teaching in the digital age. The study demonstrates that, if the advantages are maximized and disadvantages minimized, podcasting can be a useful tool with which to democratize knowledge, enrich classroom learning, and significantly broaden opportunities for and access to scholarly publishing and communication, locally and internationally.

A biography of Darius Dhlomo: Transnational footballer in the era of apartheid

This biographical study of Darius Dhlomo begins to uncover the sporting past of a transnational and iconoclastic South African footballer. Based on the author’s interviews with Dhlomo, archival documents, articles from the black press, and a wide range of secondary sources, this essay deepens our understanding of broader processes of change in South African football between the 1940s and the 1960s. In striking, even surprising, ways Dhlomo’s career brings to life key aspects of South African football’s transformation from a local racially segregated amateur game to an increasingly mixed semi‐professional sport linked to trends such as international tours and labour migration. This work contributes to the ongoing democratization of South Africa’s historical record and highlights South Africans’ active role in the cultural and economic globalization of the world’s game.

Rewriting Patriarchal Scripts: Women, Labor, and Popular Culture in South African Clothing Industry Beauty Contests, 1970s–2005

This study explores how black women garment workers in South Africa transformed a seemingly banal beauty pageant into a cultural event for self-empowerment, solidarity, and trade union democratization. It examines beauty contests in the Cape Town clothing industry by using oral and written sources that privilege the voices of factory workers. The study analyzes how and why the Spring Queen festival changed from being a tool for social control of increasingly restive employees to a partially autonomous space for proletarian womens sociability and power. As apartheid gave way to democracy in the 1990s male and female unionists debated the value of the Spring Queen pageant, which they eventually transformed into a vehicle for the promotion of South African-made clothing and textiles in a fiercely competitive global business. The article reveals how black working women reworked a gendered form of popular culture to assert their humanity and citizenship, and promote gender equity within the union.

From Leopoldville to Liège: A Conversation with Paul Bonga Bonga

Gerard Akindes met Paul Bonga Bonga Gailly in Brussels on December 15, 2011. When the latter mentioned that his father was a former footballer from Congo, it immediately became clear that he was the son of Paul Bonga Bonga. A defensive midfielder from Kinshasa, Bonga Bonga was probably the most accomplished of the first generation of African footballers who played in Belgium (Alegi, 2010: 92). Since his remarkable experiences in football have largely been overlooked or forgotten, a request to meet with the elderly Bonga Bonga became obligatory. Following a telephone conversation, he graciously agreed to meet; a couple of days later, his son introduced Akindes to Paul Bonga Bonga in his Brussels apartment.

Interview with Bob Edgar

Dr. Robert Edgar is Professor of African Studies at Howard University. He has written primarily on twentieth-century Southern African political and religious history. He is currently collaborating with Dr. David Anthony and Dr. Robert Vinson on a documentary collection on African-American linkages with South Africa. In this interview with historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb (Michigan State University) for their Africa Past and Present podcast, Edgar discusses fascinating connections between African Americans and South Africa and how he rescued the Prophetess Nontetha Nkwenkwe from the ash heap of history and pieced together a biography of the African Communist Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana. These exciting historical investigations inspired the New York Times to brand Edgar the ‘‘Indiana Jones of South Africa.’’