South Africa has a long and rich sports heritage, with the history of formalised competitive sport dating back to about the 1870s when the first clubs – among them cricket, rugby, football and tennis – were established.
Did you know that the first South African appeared in a Wimbledon final in 1884; that South Africa was one of the early participants in the Olympic Games (in 1904); and that Nelson Mandela played tennis at university (albeit not very well) in the 1940s?
Given the country’s history of social segregation based on race, our sports heritage reflects the contemporary political context of racially exclusive sports clubs and segregated public recreation amenities.
In the late 19th century, black people formed their own cricket, croquet, tennis, football and rugby clubs, while during the 20th century, decades of racial segregation and apartheid bequeathed a legacy of poor sports facilities for black communities.
Racial segregation in sport during the apartheid era was vividly illustrated by the d’Oliviera Affair in 1968, when the selection of Cape Town-born Briton, Basil d’Oliveira (classified as coloured by the apartheid regime), led to the cancellation of an England cricket tour of South Africa, beginning international sports isolation.
It all seems a long way from today, when the celebration of our sports heritage unites South Africans across the racial divide and we cheer the likes of Khotso Mokoena (long jump), Chad le Clos (swimming), Fanie van der Merwe (athletics), Hashim Amla (cricket) and Bryan Habana (rugby).
There was a time, however, when communities were so rigidly stratified and society so hierarchical that even further degrees of separation existed among blacks.
This was a time, well before apartheid, when coloureds often voluntarily separated themselves from Africans; Christians from Muslims; and Muslims from those of Indian descent. As the unquestioning acceptance of segregation by black communities on ethnic and sectarian grounds grew, discrimination inevitably was reflected in sports clubs and fields.
While it is true that during the late 19th century there was some social interaction across the colour line among the working class, increasing levels of formal racial segregation among black and white took root and became the norm.
From the 1920s, government policy increasingly favoured racial segregation in urban areas, with Africans in particular being the target of residential segregation – this encouraged the growth of separate, area-based sports clubs.
The further splintering of sports clubs on ethnic grounds followed and from the mid-1920s onwards, separate coloured, African and Indian national cricket associations emerged which were not welcoming to those outside the designated groups.
This pattern was followed by other sports codes and even extended to membership based on religion which excluded adherents of other religions.
Thus, for example, among the two coloured rugby unions which were established in Cape Town, one (City and Suburban Rugby Union) specifically banned Muslims from membership – a position which prevailed until the 1960s.
The Alliance Football Association (established in 1924) forbade the inclusion of “Muslims and natives” into its ranks.
Muslims were also banned from using certain sports facilities, such as the William Herbert sportsground in Wynberg and the rugby field in City Park, Mowbray.
Those classified Indian also faced discrimination as, for example, soccer players were not allowed to play in the coloured unions and hence had to form their own club and union.
While Muslims also founded clubs, these were often formed in response to their exclusion from existing clubs and usually did not formally exclude non-Muslims.
There was, however, an instance of a club which had a “Muslims only” clause in its constitution – Vineyards Rugby Club, established in Paarl in 1944.
Cultural reasons have been put forward as the reason for the sectarian basis of religion-exclusive clubs in the coloured community, pointing out that, because observant Muslims do not drink alcohol or eat meat forbidden by their religion (such as pork), it was easier to form separate clubs.
While this explanation may provide some rationale for clubs which were predominantly Muslim or Christian, it does not explain the existence of those clubs whose constitutions restricted membership to a specific religion.
The reason for the acceptance of voluntary segregation probably lies in the fact that, despite living in culturally mixed areas, Muslims and Christians largely lived separate lives and chose to have limited social interaction with each other.
This behaviour is illustrated by the motivation for the establishment of the Wisteria Tennis Club in Salt River by a group of Muslim teachers in the mid-1930s.
The late Galiema Brown explained that their club was established despite the existence of the Salt River Tennis Club, “as it was not the done thing at the time – Muslims and Christians did not join the same clubs”. Among the broader black community, the reason for segregationist tendencies between coloured and African communities was probably embedded in the hierarchical notions based on race that South African society was based on and which, during the early decades of the 20th century, many had, to a greater or lesser extent, accepted.
Ultimately, however, the explanation for the adoption of voluntary social segregation by black communities lies in the fact that this was widely accepted as the norm in South Africa.
Simon’s Town in the first half of the 20th century offers a textbook example of a culturally and racially mixed society which, at a social level, was rigidly segregated by race, religion and culture.
In this little coastal town, whites and those classified Indian, coloured and Malay lived together in several mixed enclaves in the town; Africans, however, were forced to live on the outskirts, in the settlement of Luyolo.
Sports clubs not only followed the divisions of race, with separate sports clubs for black and white, but ethnicity as well, with the African residents of Luyolo having to establish their own clubs, such as the soccer club, the Sea Bombers.
Sectarian divisions also resulted in separate Christian and Muslim sports clubs being formed.
Zainab (Patty) Davidson, now director of the Heritage Museum in Simon’s Town, remembers that in the 1940s the only way her brother could join the local badminton club was by adopting the name of “George” and pretending to be Christian – a ruse many Muslims were forced to adopt at the time.
Ronald (Rocky) Roberts, a former Simon’s Town resident and keen sportsman during that period, is at a loss to explain the sectarian divisions which existed then, saying: “I don’t know why it was like this because it was before apartheid, but that’s the way things were in Simon’s Town.”
As in other areas of Cape Town, this state of affairs would change only as the younger generation began going to high school in any great numbers from about the mid-1950s onwards, since it was during their formative adolescent years that they began to interact socially with youngsters from different cultural backgrounds and were exposed to teachers who challenged their notions of a homogenous and static culture.
This was the experience of Rushdie Majiet and Yusuf (Jowa) Abrahams.
Abrahams, who is on the Western Province Rugby Union executive committee, was born into a sports-loving Muslim family living in upper Claremont in the early 1940s.
Like the rest of this community, he and his family were passionate followers of white sport, forming fan clubs and attending matches at Newlands sports grounds despite being denied the opportunity to play there and being confined to a small segregated area.
The life experience of Rushdie Majiet (a former Cricket South Africa selection panel chairman) followed a similar trajectory to that of Abrahams and for both of them, being educated at Livingstone High School in Claremont during the 1950s came as a rude shock as teachers such as Ali Fataar and Richard Dudley derided them for their docile acceptance of racial discrimination and for being willing participants in their own humiliation at Newlands. Both attribute their political awakening to education at Livingstone.
The experience of Abrahams and Majiet was typical of many of their generation – indeed, it was their generation’s response to radical teachers and political activists such as Imam Haron, which enabled the sectarian barriers of the past to be broken down during the 1960s.
The political winds of change that had begun to blow during that decade gathered strength during the 1970s when the racial framework of sport in South Africa was challenged by organisations such as the South African Council on Sport, and unity among black sports structures was achieved.
This was followed by the struggle for non-racial sport in the 1980s and the establishment of national sports structures during the 1990s.
We cannot pretend in 2014 that the challenges presented by our legacy of inferior sports facilities at grassroots level have all been addressed or that the bitterness engendered by a history of racism in sport has receded into the past, as the negative elements of our sports history still form an integral part of our sports heritage today.
Notwithstanding, we can take immense satisfaction in the fact that, from the second half of the 20th century onwards, many in the sports fraternity, together with political activists, worked to ensure a level playing field (both literally and figuratively), so that today South Africans can take pride in and celebrate their sporting heritage together as a nation.
* Dr Khan is an independent researcher and an environmental and sports historian with an interest in heritage matters.