Football and empire
AIAC Talk this week: the historical entanglement of South African football with English football, and what that tells us about politics and sport. Watch it on our YouTube channel.
SPORTS
The life and times of Trevor Madondo
Trevor Madondo achieved a certain immortality in Zimbabwean cricketing lore precisely for the way in which he confronted cricket’s history as an instrument of empire.
Diego Maradona, anti-imperial symbol
For the peripheries and proletarians of the world—most of the world—Maradona is a symbol of defiance against the football aristocracy, corporate bosses and empire itself.
Sadio Mané, made outside Africa
The Liverpool striker, Sadio Mane, carries the values of his boyhood home, Bambali, with him. But his football is a product of the European professional game.
Sadio Mane is a Senegalese (Fairtrade) brand
What can the Senegalese Sadio Mane’s story tell us about the marketing of dreams.
More than a two-dimensional African celebrity
A new documentary about Liverpool FC striker, Sadio Mane, is watchable, but suffers from the fallacy that sports and politics don’t mix.
The brutal beauty of Morocco’s Soccer Ultras
Raja Casablanca's fan clubs are well organized, politically active and occasionally violent.
Saturday mornings
Recreational soccer in New York City offers significant social, cultural, and sometimes economic support for the African diaspora, one of the fastest growing immigrant communities in the city.
Reading List: Ronnie Close
The author of a book on football and revolution in Egypt gives us a list of must reads on football in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Blitzboks in America
What the recent World Rugby Sevens Series global championship reveals about national rugby cultures, particularly South Africa's.
Afro football fever
Football historian and broadcaster David Goldblatt’s new, encyclopedic book of football opens with a chapter on Africa. Here we republish an excerpt.
Zimbabwe’s forgotten football history
Zimbabwe’s national football was under black control decades before independence—but the colonial legacy of racial segregation still haunts.
The Salah effect
More and more footballers, many from Africa, are openly displaying their religious beliefs on the fields of Europe's top leagues.
Rugby and rainbows
Reflecting on white joy, black celebration, and the meaning of the Springbok win at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Why, despite it all, I’m still a fan of the Springboks
We should not let the achievements of a multiracial Springbok rugby team, led by its first black captain, be commodified and commercialized in the service of neoliberalism.
Chester Williams: pioneer of excellence
The late Springbok rugby wing's legacy needs to be sustained, and the hope that he represented is perhaps more critical than ever.
Try being a woman playing soccer in Sudan
The guardians of women's femininity and virtue and their use of public space come up against a women's football team in the Sudanese capital.
The Ship from Cameroon
The fate of Cameroon's women's national football team, like much else in the country, is a reflection of the sorry state of its politics.
The long short history of post-apartheid South African rugby
The compromises and conciliations of South African rugby mirror the unfinished transition from apartheid racism in the broader society.