The Izichwe Football Club: Youth, Sport and Masculinity in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Abstract

This article reconstructs the ‘hidden’ history of Izichwe Football Club, a not-for-profit grassroots initiative that ran from 2010 to 2016 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Using oral interviews, media accounts and participant observation, it explores how community-based coaches fused Zulu cultural inheritances with specialised sports knowledge to train young athletes, assist them with secondary education and promote a civic-minded masculinity. By combining elite athletic training with the programme’s underlying masculine rhetoric, coaches instilled confidence and self-esteem in their protégés, fostering their growth and development. The voices of coaches and players, mostly first-language isiZulu speakers, open a rare window on the daily realities, challenges and dreams of young men in Pietermaritzburg. This article demonstrates the benefits of a holistic approach to sport development and also reveals a contradiction: the ‘small is beautiful’ philosophy that made Izichwe successful at the local level limits its potential as a replicable model for the positive transformation of South African football and for the uplifting of youth more broadly.