Sport, Popular Struggle and South African Culture

Abstract

The new South African politics of the 1990s has created a climate of optimism that real political change is on the agenda. Even such front line foes of apartheid as Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak have recently conceded that ‘the promise of reforms’ has indicated that a new plan of action is now on the negotiating table (The Sunday Correspondent, 2 February 1990). Mrs Thatcher’s pressure on the European Community to remove economic sanctions on South Africa and President Samaranch’s suggestion that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) should consider welcoming South Africa back into the world of Olympic sport are but two indications of the growing international conservative support for South Africa’s National Party. The new climate of the early 1990s has certainly given rise to some of the most basic questions that might be asked concerning South African development, culture and politics: How should we evaluate these and other reforms which have characterized the development of the South African social formation? Are the current changes essentially reformist or revolutionary? What is the role of sport within popular struggles? What combination of forces characterize the ongoing struggle to overthrow the apartheid state? What are the politics of South African sport? What is particularly significant about these problems is that they necessitate not only a tight fit between theory and evidence but also some understanding of the politics of race, class and nationalism in twentieth-century South Africa.