Sport: Race, Ethnicity and Identity

Building Global Understanding

Daryl Adair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415483544
• eBook ISBN: 9781135693756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Sport has long been a paradoxical environment with respect to issues of 'race', ethnicity, and identity. For much of the twentieth century, sports around the world were enclaves of difference. Whites and non-whites, for example, were separated on the sports field as they were in many ways off the field. Today sport is much more inclusive, with athletic ability of greater importance than skin colour or ancestry. Yet enmity and antagonism still appear in sport via instances of racial vilification or hostility between some groups. Other problems include the relative absence of minorities from positions of power and influence in sport, as well as folkloric assumptions about athletic ability based upon stereotypes about 'race' or ethnic background.

This book discusses issues of diversity, capacity and equity in the colourful world of global sport. A panoramic approach, covering 'race', ethnicity and identity is consistent with the contemporary global migration of professional athletes, as well as the multicultural contexts of sport in various regions. This collection of essays therefore addresses international dimensions of sport, commonality and difference, as well as the special circumstances of sport and social relations in particular places.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

‘The race for supremacy’: The politics of ‘white’ sport in South Africa, 1870–1910

Dean Allen

Centre for Human Performance Sciences, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

In line with policies of imperialism, Britons of the late Victorian era believed themselves to be superior culturally, economically and politically when compared with other groups of people. This led to a promotion of things British, including sport, in the new regions of the Empire. In South Africa, however, this imposition of culture alienated an Afrikaans population, who, despite their European origins, were now as much a part of South Africa as the other groups that inhabited this area. Based on research conducted in South African archives over the past decade, this article examines the early development of ‘white’ sport in South Africa and its link to the politics of the late nineteenth century. Although a significant amount of work has concentrated on ‘race’ relations between black, coloured and white participants in the history of South African sport, this investigation reveals how the progress of sports such as cricket, rugby and soccer was tied to an antagonistic relationship between the two dominant white factions – the Afrikaners and the British. As such, this article marks an original contribution to the field.

Introduction

Ideas of racial hierarchy were central to the nineteenth-century British imperial ethos. Although there was no scientific basis for ‘race’, whites and blacks were positioned at opposite ends of an ideologically constructed spectrum of human progress. When considering issues of sport and race in colonial South Africa, it is therefore common to think singularly of relations between blacks and whites. In that period, however, the country was also gripped by a struggle for supremacy between two so-called white races – the Afrikaners and the British. This article will show how colonial politics dictated the development of racialized sport in South Africa, but it does so from an unusual perspective – by focusing on intra- and interracial issues within the white, ruling duopoly.

Conflicts between British colonists and Afrikaner settlers were widespread during the nineteenth century. For the British, though, this was not an isolated site of tension. By the time the Anglo–Boer war had broken out in the southern tip of Africa in 1899, the total global area under British control was the equivalent size of four Europes and had a population of around 400 million.¹ Britain’s expansionist policies had accomplished control and influence throughout large areas of the modern world and now the focus was upon achieving the same effect within South Africa.² Anglo–Boer relations in South Africa, however, had been all the more complicated by the 1807 decision of the British parliament to outlaw the slave trade, for Afrikaners had long used slave labour. Thereafter, a British campaign was initiated to ‘regenerate’ the continent by not only banning slavery, but also by promoting the ‘civilizing’ values of labour, commerce and Christianity. South Africa was characterized by the British as economically backward and morally degenerate, and so provided challenges for the imposition of ‘superior’ and ‘supreme’ Anglo culture and skills. The British government provided financial assistance to emigrants in 1819, expecting that settlers of British stock would serve in the diffusion of imperialist values and policy in South Africa.³ From the outset, strategy and commerce were closely entwined, both as means and ends. A dependable colonial community was perceived to be the best long-term defence of the route to India, with a prosperous and progressive colony that would remain dependable and also promote trade, spread enlightened values, and ultimately become self-supporting.⁴

As this article will reveal, sport and politics were never far apart during this imperial period. As Keith Sandiford has observed: ‘The question of status in international [sport] bore a suspicious correlation to varying colonial arrangements in the political arena.’⁵ Indeed, as colonial cricketers and rugby footballers toured the Empire, jingoism was in the air. South Africa was a key to this, as Derek Birley has noted: ‘With Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary, from 1895 to 1902, and Cecil Rhodes dreaming of an English Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi, imperial expansion was a central political issue’ in South Africa during this time.⁶ For any socio-historic investigation of race and sport during the age of empire, an examination of the political arena is thus fundamental. André Odendaal, who has written extensively on African sport during this period, explains how ‘The development of sport in South Africa during the nineteenth century was closely linked to colonial politics and reflected in many ways in microcosm the developing South African colonial society and social structures.’⁷ As such it was being shaped by the ongoing struggle for political supremacy between two dominant white communities – Afrikaner and Briton.

This article will explore the early development of ‘white’ sport throughout South Africa and investigate its link to British imperialism and colonialism. As the study will show, local agents were fundamental in this process of cultural transfer and assimilation. Crucially, the ‘racial politics’ of South African sport shall also be explored during the period in question – 1870–1910. Indeed, early sporting relations between England and South Africa were based upon a burgeoning imperial ‘brotherhood’ that excluded not only the majority of non-white South Africans, but also the white Afrikaans population.

Race for supremacy

Conflicts between the two dominant white population groups, Briton and Afrikaner, would ultimately determine the development of modern sport in South Africa. By 1899, whites constituted only one-fifth of the total population of South Africa,⁸ yet the sociocultural and political divisions within this ‘colour’ group were all too apparent. Most nineteenth-century Afrikaners were men of the land and the countryside, their sporting activities confined largely to riding and shooting. English-speaking South Africans, by contrast, tended to organize themselves in clubs within the towns. Some of the clubs were formed for a single sport: cricket, rugby and soccer and, to a lesser extent, tennis and cycling. Others, like the Wanderers in Johannesburg, and Collegians in Pietermaritzburg, were multipurpose, with vastly superior facilities.⁹ In sport, as in other areas of life, the Anglo and Afrikaans communities were fundamentally different.

For a better understanding of how this situation evolved we can examine the history of ‘white South Africa’ and the developments leading up to the start of the Anglo–Boer War in 1899. To provide a brief history: black Africans migrated south into present-day South Africa some 2000 years ago, the Dutch began to settle in and around Cape Town from 1652, while the British settled much later, in the early nineteenth century. However, the emergence of British colonial authority, supported by the weight of British imperial power, generated unprecedented economic, cultural and political tensions in the region.¹⁰ With the active imposition of British authority and the promotion of British culture throughout South Africa, there was resentment among rural Afrikaners, who considered themselves an historical and integral part of the fabric of South Africa.

Several studies have attempted to clarify the antagonistic relationship between the British and the Afrikaner during the nineteenth century. Notably, Streak suggests that the relationship hinged on the conflict between liberalism and conservatism, and so was not simply about a barrier dividing the ‘colonial south’ from the ‘republican north’.¹¹ Religious beliefs also played an integral part. On the one hand was the liberalism of the British, stemming from the humanitarianism and philanthropy of the evangelical revival that swept Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century; on the other hand was the conservatism of the essentially rural Afrikaner people whose religious traditions were based on Calvinism.¹² Therefore, although the religious philosophies of both groups owed much to the Reformation, their versions of Protestantism and their views about the nature of society differed significantly.

The first Anglo–Boer conflict over territorial rights had been fought earlier (1880– 1881), so there already existed a deep mistrust between the British and the Boers by the time gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886. As a result of the gold rush, foreign workers, including many from Britain, poured into the Transvaal. Kruger’s Republic was being overrun. Cecil Rhodes, the prime minister of the Cape Colony, did little to appease the situation, and with intentions of British imperial domination throughout South Africa he launched the ‘Jameson Raid’ late in 1895. This was a failed attempt to provoke a general uprising of British immigrant workers against the Afrikaners.¹³ To President Kruger and his Boers it only emphasized that the British were not to be trusted. Sure enough, following the failure of protracted negotiations between Pretoria and London regarding the rights of the British workers, the Boers declared war against Britain on 10 October 1899.¹⁴

This was all part of what might be described as a ‘white race for supremacy’ in the South African region. Before 1899, Britain’s prime minister Lord Salisbury had predicted that if the Boers submitted without a fight, they would hate the British for a generation, but if they fought and lost, they would hate them for still longer.¹⁵ This proved to be the case. When the war finally ended in 1902 it left bitter divisions within white South African society. Sport, like other facets of South African society, therefore became highly politicized during this period, and driven by the ‘politics of race’ that would go on to dictate the future of South Africa – in our case, within the two dominant white factions.

The racial politics of colonial South Africa

According to Jon Gemmell, author of The Politics of South African Cricket, ‘politics is a study of society, because it is a crucial component in the day-to-day ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series pages
• Foreword - Building global understanding: ethnocultural diversity and sport
• 1. ‘The race for supremacy’: the politics of ‘white’ sport in South Africa, 1870 –1910
• 2. History and its racial legacies: quotas in South African rugby and cricket
• 3. Around the world: problematizing the Harlem Globetrotters as cold war warriors
• 4. The televised sport ‘monkey trial’: ‘race’ and the politics of post-colonial cricket
• 5. International development or white man’s burden? The IAAF’s Regional Development Centres and regional sporting assistance
• 6. In-groups, out-groups and contested identities in Scottish international football
• 7. Ethnicity, structure and globalization: an argument about Association football in Australia, 1958 –2010
• Index