essay about soccer in afrikaans

Introduction: Football (Soccer) in Africa: Origins, Contributions, and Contradictions

• First Online: 27 April 2022

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• Augustine E. Ayuk 4  

Part of the book series: Global Culture and Sport Series ((GCS))

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Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in the world, a game that arouses the type of hot-tempered passions not experienced in other sports. Like other sporting activities in Africa, football, however, strives for status, the assertion of identity, the maintenance of power in one form or another, and the indoctrination of youth into the culture of their elders. Giulianotti maintains that football “is one of the great cultural institutions, like education and the mass media, which shapes and cements national identities throughout the world.” Tamir Bar-On points out that “in countries that face stark economic and political problems, from extreme poverty to a ‘war on drugs,’ football [soccer] acts as the great societal equalizer, as it provides popular expressions of celebration and pride for the national team victories.”

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Ayuk, A.E. (2022). Introduction: Football (Soccer) in Africa: Origins, Contributions, and Contradictions. In: Ayuk, A.E. (eds) Football (Soccer) in Africa. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94866-5_1

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Football in South Africa

On 15 May 2004 in Zurich, Switzerland, Joseph (Sepp) Blatter , president of FIFA , world soccer's governing body, made an historic announcement: South Africa would host the 2010 World Cup. Nelson Mandela wept tears of joy: “I feel like a young man of 15,” he told the audience in Zurich. In South Africa, people of all races erupted in simultaneous, raucous celebration of the much-anticipated announcement.

The socio-historical significance of the game in South Africa is not a recent phenomenon, as the impressive growth of football over time clearly demonstrates. The first documented matches took place in 1862 between White civil servants and soldiers in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth . Organised football among Whites originated in Natal, but eventually British ideas about race, class, gender, and empire led to the appropriation of rugby and cricket by Whites, and football and boxing by Blacks. Between the 1880s and 1910s, African, Indian, and Coloured football associations and leagues developed in Kimberley, Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, as well as in the elite mission schools. The game was fun, cheap, and relatively simple. It offered excitement, unpredictability, and new adventures; sport created popular discourse and generated emotional attachment. The ‘intrinsic value' of football provided valuable entertainment and granted temporary relief from police harassment and grinding poverty. The inter-war years signaled the dawn of a new era in South African football.

The Bakers Cup (established in 1932), the Suzman Cup (1935), and the Godfrey South African Challenge Cup (1936) were new national competitions that electrified crowds of 5 000 to 10 000 people in Johannesburg and Durban . Tours by professional clubs from Britain added to the enormous excitement, an atmosphere sustained by popular discourse and improving sports coverage in the Black press. Matches between Indians, Africans, and Coloureds also became more frequent and popular. During this time, the inherited institution of British football was increasingly transformed to suit local customs and traditions, a process of Africanisation that embraced religious specialists and magic, various rituals of spectatorship as well as indigenous playing styles.

The formation of popular teams such as Orlando Pirates (1937) and Moroka Swallows (1947) and rising attendance at Black soccer matches in Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town in the late 1930s and 1940s stemmed primarily from the dramatic increase in the number of Africans migrating to cities to find work in the war-driven manufacturing expansion. Football became an enjoyable part of the daily lives of youth residing in the burgeoning squatter camps. It gave meaning to people's lives. It fostered friendships and camaraderie among team members and fans. The principle of ‘advancement by merit' that underlies sport, helped transform football into a field of action where Black South Africans could seek greater social visibility, status, and prestige than was afforded in the segregated South African society. Male-dominated football teams, contests, and organisations enabled those who were denied basic human rights to adapt to industrial conditions, to cope with urban migration, and to build alternative institutions and networks on a local, regional, and national scale. The game could both reinforce and omit divisions based on race, class, ethnicity, religion, age, and gender, and thus served as a mobilising force for neighborhood, township, and political organisations. Football humanised the lives of South Africans and brought joy to people with little else to cheer about.

After the Second World War and the rise of apartheid, football's mass popularity brought it into close contact with formal resistance politics. In the 1950s and 1960s, the daunting obstacles faced by African footballers in securing playing fields from hostile White authorities created a new space for contesting, negotiating, and shaping capitalist and colonial attempts to impose strict controls over workers' lives. In 1951 Africans, Coloureds, and Indians came together to form the South African Soccer Federation, which opposed apartheid in sport. From 1961 to 1966 the anti-racist South African Soccer League demonstrated that racially integrated professional soccer was hugely popular. Avalon Athletic, Cape Ramblers, Pirates, and Swallows were among the most successful sides, while players such as Dharam Mohan, Conrad Stuurman, Scara Sono, and Difference Mbanya became township heroes. Supporters' Clubs formed around the country, with women playing an active role. (Women's football started in the early 1960s, but gained acceptance only after the end of apartheid.) Politically, the sport boycott movement that played an important role in the fall of apartheid relied heavily on the support of football players, fans, and organizations. It is important to note that football sanctions were among the very first international indictments of the apartheid regime.

Isolated from world football from 1961 to 1992 (with a one-year reprieve in 1963), South Africa maintained tenuous links with the major changes that revolutionised world football in the 1970s and 80s. Inside South Africa, television sparked soccer's commercial boom. Sponsorships increased substantially and top players began to earn a living wage. Cracks in the edifice of apartheid emerged in the mid-1980s. Leading soccer officials Kaizer Motaung (founder in 1971 of Kaizer Chiefs, the country's most popular team), Abdul Bhamjee, and Cyril Kobus formed the National Soccer League (NSL).

On 7 July 1992, at Durban's King's Park stadium, South Africa played its first official international contest in three decades. An integrated national team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana (Zulu for ‘The Boys'), defeated Cameroon 1-0, thanks to a Doctor Khumalo penalty kick. Nelson Mandela acknowledged the magnetic power of the game when he attended a match between South Africa and Zambia at a sold-out Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg just hours after his presidential inauguration on 10 May 1994. On 3 February 1996, South Africa won the African Nations' Cup by defeating Tunisia (2-0) before a delirious home crowd of 90,000 people at FNB Stadium, Soccer City.

In 1998 Bafana Bafana participated in the World Cup finals for the first time. By 2003-04 there were 1,8 million registered players and corporate sponsorships reached more than R640 million. Without question, football in the ‘new' South Africa is a powerful economic, cultural, and political force.

• Article written for South African History Online by Peter Alegi, 2004

Professional soccer is introduced in SA when the National Football League is founded

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Football as code: the social diffusion of ‘soccer’ in South Africa

2010, Soccer & Society

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AFRIKAANS/ENGLISH SOCCER TERMS GLOSSARY

Soccer is one the popular sport in South Africa, it is known to bring people together and unite a nation. As one of the most popular sports in the world, soccer can be a great way to start a conversation with locals and put your language skills to the test.

However, the sheer amount of vocabulary can make this a daunting task! Soccer talk can be chock full of idioms, slang, and informal expressions and it doesn’t help that the announcers usually talk at the speed of sound.

This Afrikaans /English soccer terms glossary will help you learn the basic vocabulary of the most popular sport: football.

Learn these words, and you can be a part of the conversation. Below is the Afrikaans /English soccer terms glossary to help you get a head start on being the number one soccer fan.

Afrikaans/English soccer terms

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One Africa, Many Stories – My Own Soccer Ball Story

How do you define teamwork.

Providing a context to an activity can help to give it significantly more meaning for children. Before doing the My Own Soccer Ball activity, read this story to children and learn a little more about life and soccer in Kenya.

Preparation

Read the story ahead of time so that you are familiar with it.

Suggested Materials

• The story below, “Challenges, Innovation, Teamwork and Collaboration”

Make it Matter

Opening discussion.

Ask your students if they know where Kenya is. Can they find it on a map? Tell them that in Kenya, just like in every country, kids love to play games and soccer is one of the most popular. Do any of your students play soccer? What would they do if they didn’t have a soccer ball around? In Kenya, South Africa and other countries, sometimes children want to play but they don’t have a real soccer ball…but that doesn’t stop them from playing the game they love! Tell your children that you will read them the story of a boy in Kenya who faced just such a problem.

Make it Happen

Doing the activity.

Paul Waithaka shared this story about his experiences in Kenya as a child:

Challenges, Innovation, Teamwork and Collaboration, by Paul Waithaka

Growing up in rural Kenya, playing soccer was very much a part of growing up for boys. It was the country’s pasttime, played from the villages to the big cities. I wanted to play soccer like Joe Kandenge, Sammy Onyango “Jogoo”, Diego Maradona, etc.

For those lucky and “rich” enough to own a black and white television in the village in the 1980s they were able to watch imported shows such as “Football Made in Germany”, the Italian league and soccer from Brazil. The problem they would however face was that most of these shows were being aired late in the evening and the village boys would camp in their houses until the game was over.

Growing up in the village also meant that money was very scarce to buy “real ” soccer balls. Once in a while over the holidays one of the boys would get lucky and get a real plastic ball. This however would not last long and would be punctured either by barbed wire or the rough terrain. However this would not stop the fun of playing soccer. The boys would scatter in all directions in search of Plastic bags and sisal or nylon ropes. Within no time the team would bring all the collected bags together and we would methodically start stashing them together into the shape of a ball. We would hold them in place using the rope and in no time we would go back to playing soccer until late hours of the evening. Although recycling was not popular then, I look back and think that we were way ahead of the rest of the world in recycling the plastic bags. This was teamwork at its best. (See figure 1).

Make it Click

Let’s talk about it.

After your students have heard or read the story, have a quick discussion with them. Have they ever faced a similar problem as Paul did, where they had to be creative in order to play or do something? How did they solve the problem? What do they think the soccer balls that Paul played with were like?

Make it Better

Build on what they talked about.

Try the My Own Soccer Ball activity with your students.

Suggestions

For some good books about and set in Kenya, check out the following resources:

• Kitsao, J. Mcheshi Goes to the Market. Jacaranda Designs, 1991.
• Graber, Janet, Scott Mack, (illus.). Muktar and the Camels. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2009.
• Nivola, Claire A. Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008.
• For more, visit Africa Access Review

Boston Children's Museum 308 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02210 617-426-6500

© Boston Children’s Museum 2024

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Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience Essay

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Soccer is my favorite game which brings satisfaction and raises team spirit. Like other sports, soccer is an organized game that has become institutionalized. Last week I was playing soccer with my friends and the game was amazing: energetic and vigorous. Playing with friends in GYM, I was involved in competitions; figure skating and diving are non-interactive. This differed from not taking the game seriously, in that it involved, not a transformation of the game itself, but rather an alternative to the game that was defined as providing greater enjoyment than what would have otherwise occurred. The main equipment is a ball and goals. The soccer ball has two-toned, black and white, markings. In contrast to traditional marking, the ball we used was red and white, and we had no goals.

The game started at 4 PM and lasted 90 minutes. At the beginning of the game, we kick off a coin. During this time, all players were on their own side of the field. My team won. In contrast to the traditional shape of the field, where the size of the areas is about 100 yards in length and 50 yards wide, the shape of the areas is GYM are smaller. There are boundary lines surround the field considered part of the field. The main problem was that we did not have 11 players for each team (according to the rules of the game) but had 7-7 for each team.

During the game, I paid the main attention to team strategy and the configuration of players around the point of action. Usually, I tried to concentrate upon the position of attackers in relation to the defense and overall the success of each attack. Each time the cross occurred, I crossed the area in front of the defense. During this very game, the important step was possession of the ball which switched back and forth between the teams. My team several times lost possession when they made a bad pass, sent the ball out of bounds. When possession of the ball changed from my team to the other, the attacking team became the defense, and my team became the offense.

Because this happens very frequently during a game, it was important for my team to make the transition quickly. As a true sports fan, I spend every hour of the waking day keeping track of the various teams and the thousands of athletes involved. During the first match, I tried to apply all possible techniques to help my team lead a score. My team felt frustration became we could not score a goal for half an hour. We used different tactics and strategies but the opposite team defended its positions and gates.

This game for me was a challenge to force others to keep their attention on the task. In terms of motivation, the game last week was all the necessary ingredients to be intrinsically motivating. The activities themselves were interesting and exciting (at least for some people); challenge and mastery were central components; and participation is, in most cases, voluntary. Certainly in soccer players seem to need no prods or incentives to play; the direct, experiential rewards derived from the activity seem to be enough to maintain their involvement.

Last week, it was difficult to describe the ratio of attackers to defenders in particular events, while simultaneously assessing the space between a defender and an attacker in possession of the ball. Successful attacks made by my team have resulted in 10 goals, an intermediate attack resulted in a non-scoring shot on goal.

During the whole game, I was good at receiving the ball. In this game, players of my team received balls from different directions and heights. I used different parts of the body to receive the ball except for my hands and arms. The proper technique for controlling the ball and maintaining possession was to cushion the ball’s impact by relaxing and slightly withdrawing the part of the body receiving the ball, with the most common parts being the foot, thigh, and chest. This play was not just a game but emotional cooperation with my friends.

To this emotional charge, players responded in various ways. The behavior players saw during the excitement becomes tied to all types of courageous as well as cowardly behavior. During the second set, my friends and I performed far beyond their usual expectations whereas others suddenly fell below their usual game. The emotion tied to the game produces not only unexpected circumstances but unexpected behaviors. The second match carried an immense appeal. No two contests could ever be repeated exactly, and we were constantly expecting the unexpected. Last week, there were no severe penalties against players of both teams. The break between matches was at 4:45 PM.

During this time, my team planed and discussed our drawbacks in defense and created new tactics and strategies for the play. We decided to attack the other team from the very first moment in order to exhaust them till the end of the match. This strategy helped us to end with an equal number of goals. The second match started at 5:05 PM. In contrast to the traditional 15-minute break, both teams took more time to create a new strategy.

Last week, the game was slow thus players of both teams were on the run constantly. The main players were defenders and goalies. Because of an inefficient number of players, we lacked forwards and midfielders. Players from the opposite team touched the ball with arms several times during the second match. As you know, the main rule is that players cannot touch the ball with arms except the goalkeeper. The goal of my team was to obtain ends beyond the simple benefits of participation in the game.

The game was not an end in itself, but a path to other desired ends through the resolution of competition. Soccer involved other people and was highly structured or seriously regarded. During the game last week, most of the goals were made from shots. For me the most difficult technique in the shooting was accuracy. I suppose that effective shooting was not only a technique but mathematical thinking and calculation.

The end of the game was vigorously marked by competition and a desire to win. Furthermore, soccer almost invariably involved competition; individuals or teams attempted to beat other teams. The game last week was interactive where there was a critical defensive. Soccer is often called a low-scoring game because it is difficult for two teams to make a goal. During the second match, in order to faster the result, my team used shooting.

The game ended at 6 PM, thus we needed additional time. When a game ended with an equal number of goals having been scored by each team, the game was tied and ends in a draw. Thus, overtime periods were used to determine a winner, followed by a tie-breaker—a series of penalty kicks taken by players from both teams. After five shots were taken by each team, my team won the game. According to rules, if the teams are still tied, they continue to take shots, one at a time, until one team scores and the other does not. At the end of the game, we were tired but happy, we felt excitement and pleasure.

I liked the game last week because it showed me and my friends that sports like soccer build character. A comparison has often been made between the athletic field and the battlefield. Last week, every team member was directly responsible, and that all things attained from players were good for the growth and development of a team spirit. The game was supposed to bring out the best in us. There can be little doubt that the athletic area has become a center for taking care of our emotional needs. We participated in and were spectators of the emotional charge. If players did not provide excitement it would be gone in a short period.

The main advantage of the game last week was the fact that all players admired and respected the talent of other team players. Playing soccer, my team restored and rejuvenated energies to work and deal with life by playing. Fatigue and boredom were relieved by using the body physically in temporally novel ways. I admired the game last week because like all games, it shared the goal of victory. In short, as much as anything else, soccer was a form of occupation for the players who participated in them. Soccer was the object of cooperation and team spirit. Some of my friends, came to the GYM to support my team and me. Many fans were functionally members of the team group.

At the same time, this craze was taking place in professional athletics, it was being matched, if not superseded, by the fanaticism on the college level. The collegiate system was so close to the professionals that the average person can barely determine the difference between the two.

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IvyPanda. (2021, August 18). Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience. https://ivypanda.com/essays/playing-soccer-game-personal-experience/

"Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience." IvyPanda , 18 Aug. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/playing-soccer-game-personal-experience/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience'. 18 August.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience." August 18, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/playing-soccer-game-personal-experience/.

1. IvyPanda . "Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience." August 18, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/playing-soccer-game-personal-experience/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Playing Soccer Game: Personal Experience." August 18, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/playing-soccer-game-personal-experience/.

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