Sport, Politics and Black Athletics in Souh Africa During the Apartheid Era: A Political-Sociological Perspective

Labuschagne, Pieter

doi:10.18820/24150509/jch41.v2.5

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…This was done to balance biases that could arise from using only one data collection tool. Snowball sampling was used to help locate athletes who have historically been excluded by apartheid policies (Labuschagne 2016). This study's target participants were the unsung heroes of athletics (road running), people who had first-hand information about the lives of ordinary sportspersons.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in shaping public memory by filling gaps resulting from past imbalances, the National Archives and Records of South Africa (NARSSA) was established as a mitigatory strategy by acquiring non-public records and actively documenting the experiences of those who were either excluded from or marginalised in colonial and apartheid archives (Halim, 2014). The latter inclusion strategy arose as a result of South African sport's strong regulatory apartheid policies, which resulted in a situation in which the history and performances of black athletes were largely obscured and unreported (Labuschagne 2016).…”

Section: Measures Taken To Preserve Athletics Memory In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Golden bulb covered with a dark cloth: memories of undocumented athletes in South Africa

Matshotshwane

Ngoepe

2023

Esarbica J

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Sports in South Africa have evolved into an arena for self-discovery, a place of self-revelation. Through sports, particularly athletics, heroes emerged who not only achieved for themselves and their communities, but also served as golden bulbs, flickering lights of hope, inspiration, and motivation to the community. Despite the heroic roles played by athletes, sporting memories of unique and gallant characters remain self-stored, exposed to all natural disasters such as loss, rapid deterioration, inaccessibility, thus turning into golden bulbs covered in a black cloth. This qualitative study adopted oral testimony triangulated with content analysis to explore the memories of undocumented athletics heroes in South Africa. Snowball sampling was adopted to help locate historically excluded athletics heroes and sheroes. The study revealed that athletes' houses have been transformed into museums encompassing all of their running memories, displayed all over their living rooms, with only a few athletes overseeing forgotten historical memories of most legendary runners and, in some cases, without specialised handling, compounded by the fact that these archival memories are only accessible to those fortunate enough to be close to these legendary runners. The study recommends that these memories be included in the national archival system so that they can be accessed by the public, as a large portion of athletes' historical memories are unaccounted for and thus inaccessible.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Measures Taken To Preserve Athletics Memory In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Golden bulb covered with a dark cloth: memories of undocumented athletes in South Africa

Matshotshwane

Ngoepe

2023

Esarbica J

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“…This objective sought to describe memories of athletes excluded from archival holdings. For many decades before democratisation in 1994, the potential and talent of black athletes in the country have been largely neglected and manipulated for political reasons (Labuschagne 2016). Hence, Lane (1999) questions the whereabouts of young runners who used to dominate road running during those dark days in South Africa.…”

Section: Memories Of Athletes Excluded In Archival Holdingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transcending invisible lanes through inclusion of athletics memories in archival systems in South Africa

Matshotshwane

Ngoepe²

2022

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

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In countries like South Africa, sports have the power to transcend invisible lanes of politics and race and thus inspire citizens to come together. Sport, including athletics, has been demonstrated as an instrument of solidarity of fragmented cultures. However, while sport is of such significance, it is still minimally represented in public archival holdings in South Africa. Despite the mandate to transform the archival system, evidence suggests that much of the memories of sports heroes, especially that of athletes, have not been recorded. This qualitative study utilised oral history as a research method to explore the feasibility of building inclusive archives through the collection of sports memories. Athlete participants were identified through snowball sampling and data were collected using both oral testimony interviews from athletes with first-hand information and oral tradition augmented through document analysis. The results of the study indicated that there are stories and memories of many great South African distance runners that must be told and included in the archive repositories. Sadly, these stories have not been recorded in written words, as there is a tendency to perpetuate elitism by documenting mostly oral history of prominent members of society with political power. The study revealed that most of athletes’ memories from their running careers include certificates, trophies, medals, Springbok jerseys, newspaper clippings and pictures in their possession. It is concluded that until these sports archives and objects are considered as an important and unique element of South African history, they will forever be lost.Contribution: This study makes a contribution to the ongoing discourse of building inclusive archives in South Africa through the collection of athletics memories. The study is linked to the scope of the journal through propagating the inclusion of marginalised voices of athletics sports memories in mainstream archives.

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“…(Neville Alexander as cited in Choudry, 2015, p. 40) What comes through strongly from Alexander's thoughts is that intergenerational exchange of ideas, shared documents, and mutual support in movements of resistance were valuable methods of maintaining organisation. As other literature (Hirson, 1988;Jonas, 2019;Labuschagne, 2016;Manenzhe, 2007;Suttner, 2005;Turok, 2014;Willian, 2001) reveals, social spaces where black people gathered during apartheid, such as trains, workplaces, prisons, funerals, taverns, sports stadiums, rallies, schools, and stokvels were all utilised to educate, theorise, learn, and struggle. The apartheid government banned mass gatherings of black people in public spaces and, as a result, black people strategically used every social space they could find to actively conscientise one another (Jonas, 2019;Turok, 2014).…”

Section: The Intellectual Traditions Of African Social Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal Education and Collective Conscientisation in the #FeesMustFall Movement at Nelson Mandela University

Mzileni

2020

Educ. res. soc. change.

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This paper draws attention to the intellectual life of the #FeesMustFall movement, highlighting how it became a student platform for critical informal education. Freire's concept of conscientisation is utilised to frame the social movement as a learning space of dialogue, critical thinking, knowledge exchange, and formulation of practical political action against higher education injustices. The Nelson Mandela University in South Africa is the site under study where informal education, conscientisation, and active learning occurred in its #FeesMustFall uprisings. Although the #FeesMustFall movement broadly took on a national temperament, each university campus had its own local unique experiences of the agitation. For Nelson Mandela University's microenvironment, the movement took on strong student-worker alliance organising principles and solidarities that yielded promising and continuing material transformations within a short period of time for its low-income university workers and black students. As one of the student leaders of this social movement, I provide here a personal activist experience from that period and space, emphasising the debates, knowledges, learning experiences, and theorising efforts that went with the protests that the #FeesMustFall student-worker alliance movement organised. This study contributes to the decolonisation of university learning spaces by centring alternative "classrooms" provided on the university margins by student social movements as pioneering platforms in the sociopolitical rollout of critical intellectual development and decolonisation of higher education.

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Sport, Politics and Black Athletics in Souh Africa During the Apartheid Era: A Political-Sociological Perspective

Abstract: The

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

Golden bulb covered with a dark cloth: memories of undocumented athletes in South Africa

Golden bulb covered with a dark cloth: memories of undocumented athletes in South Africa

Transcending invisible lanes through inclusion of athletics memories in archival systems in South Africa

Informal Education and Collective Conscientisation in the #FeesMustFall Movement at Nelson Mandela University

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