| This dissertation addresses how and why the influence of football (soccer) stretched beyond the boundaries of the playing fields and created links between people in South Africa's new industrial society. Based on oral and archival sources, this study covers a period from the formation of the Union in 1910 to the Soweto uprising of 1976. It examines the transformation of the British colonial export of football into a central aspect of black popular culture and social capital; that is, accrued shared practices, values, and social connections enabling coordinated action.;Focusing on the culturally diverse cities of Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, this study analyzes how people denied political rights and subjected to legalized racial discrimination employed football to build alternative institutions on a local, regional, and national scale. The dissertation examines football's centrality to the social experiences of black workers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders. It investigates the complex relationship between football, workers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders. It investigates the complex relationship between football, the articulation of new group identities, and the formation of patronage networks orchestrated by local powerbrokers.;A process of Africanization, sensitive to South Africa's history, led to the incorporation of agrarian beliefs and rituals, the adoption of indigenous playing styles, and teams' engagement with the civic and cultural life of the townships. Football groups' conflicts with white authorities, missionaries, and private companies, also transformed soccer---numerically the sport with the most participants and spectators---into a key terrain of the anti-apartheid sport movement's domestic and international struggle. The nonracial Soccer Federation formed in the 1950s symbolized the combative stance of soccer against racism. Football sanctions were among the first international indictments of the South African government. This dissertation demonstrates that soccer was a conduit not only for leisure, but also for political influence, and cultural expression in twentieth century South Africa. In so doing, it addresses the oversight that has left sport on the distant fringes of African history. |
