Читать книгу The Politics of South African Football - Alpheus Koonyaditse - Страница 11

chapter three

From as early as the 1920s, South Africa’s segregation policies were internationally known and despised, but despite this, international sporting relations remained friendly. Within the country’s corridors of sports’ power there was already talk, albeit fairly quiet talk, about the non-inclusiveness of the national football team. Meanwhile South Africa went about its “friendlies” as usual.

In 1921 the Melbourne Argus reported that the South African Football Association had proposed a European tour. The report indicated that the team was to tour Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. If accepted, the report went on, “the tour should begin in November 1922.” At university level, sporting exchanges were also unchallenged as indicated in the same report: “[I]t is also proposed to invite a team of athletes from Oxford and Cambridge universities to visit South Africa.”

It is not clear if the national team’s European tour did take place, for there had been opposition even then. Two years later however, in 1924, (as detailed in Chapter 1) the South African Springboks toured Great Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands. Despite the fact that football in this period of history was not well developed in South Africa, it should be noted that the game was widely played. On January 4, 1897, the Bristol Times and Mirror¹⁰ ran an article titled “Football Phases” in which it mentioned that the game had been played in South Africa since about 1888. It indicates that even before the British began to take the game elsewhere around the world, in South Africa football not only “blossomed forth everywhere, but all clubs, whether European, Cape Dutch, Malay, or Kaffir, began to appreciate and exhibit the nuances of the game.”

The article describes the July 1891 tour by an English team, which was a “revelation to the semi-continent over which they marched easily victorious, despite efforts to get at them with refreshments and with collapse of coaches.” The touring English team played against “local sides in Somerset, Western Province, the Cape, Rand and Kimberly.” Commenting on locals’ strategy, the report says: “rough-game tactics were thrown” and that the tourists had to endure a “brace of snarling Afrikanders.” On January 13, 1907, in its preview of the American team’s tour of England, the New York Times was optimistic that the tour would help the growth of football in America and “make a new departure in Association football, placing America in the same class as England, Ireland, Australia and South Africa as a soccer centre.”

It was decades later, in 1957, however, that South Africa would play an important role in the formation of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) – only to be expelled immediately thereafter. Prior to this, there had been campaigns from various quarters to have South Africa expelled from international sports bodies. In the beginning of a very long battle, which would last almost half a century, the South African Soccer Federation led a campaign against segregated sport. This received its first major boost in Paris in 1955, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) acknowledged and recorded that “non-white” athletes were being discriminated against in South Africa.

In 1956, at the FIFA Congress in Lisbon, South Africa was to play a role that would later define football in Africa. It was at this congress that initial plans for the establishment of the Confederation of African Football, a new FIFA-affiliated body, were first proposed. The seeds of the idea had already been sown at the 1954 FIFA Congress. On June 7 and 8, 1956, African delegates met at the Avenida Hotel in Lisbon and discussed the possible formation of the Continental football governing body. The delegates were Abdelaziz Abdallah Salem, Youssef Mohamed and Mohamed Latif from Egypt; Dr Abdel Halim Mohamed, Abdel Rahim Shaddaad and Bedawi Mohamed Ali from Sudan; and Fred Fell from South Africa.

Despite the fact that Ghana was to gain independence only the following year (in 1957) the Confederation of African Football has consistently indicated that the Ghanaian Ohene Djan also played a part. However, CAF minutes of that meeting and the FIFA attendance roll of the 1956 congress show only seven African representatives: three from Egypt, three from Sudan, and one from South Africa.¹¹ The new body was formed in Khartoum, Sudan, on February 8, 1957.

South Africa had, along with Egypt and Sudan, been a FIFA member and attended previous world governing body gatherings, including the historical 1954 congress in Berne, Switzerland, where Africa was recognised as a FIFA continental zone. South Africa, for its part, had been a FIFA member since 1910. In a letter dated February 16, 1910, FIFA stated: “The Emergency Committee, making use of its power given by Article 5, has sanctioned the provisional affiliation of the South African Football Association.”

The missive, addressed to SAFA secretary JH Weaver in Cape Town, was sent by Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschman, the FIFA secretary general in Amsterdam. Then three months later at the 7th FIFA Annual Congress held in Milan, Italy, on May 15-16, 1910, South Africa and two other European associations were formally admitted: the Liga Portuguesa de Football (Portugal) and the Fédération des Sociétés Luxembourgeoises des Sports Athlétiques (Luxemburg). Forty-six years later, at the 1956 Lisbon Conference, the idea of an all-Africa tournament – an African Cup of Nations – was first proposed by Egypt. Two Egyptian nationals, Abdel Aziz Abdallah Salem and General Abdel Aziz Mostafa, were the first two presidents of CAF. Egypt had initially been earmarked to host the first African Cup of Nations. However, Egypt had troubles of its own to deal with, and could not host a football tournament at the time.

It is a mystery why the African delegates to the 1956 Lisbon Conference invited a representative from South Africa, a country whose policies they disapproved of, to discuss what was a turning point not only in the history of the continent’s sport, but of Africa as such. However, researcher and historian Dr Peter Alegi explains it this way: “Not many African nations were FIFA members as they were not independent then. [The] African voice was not taken seriously, so Africans didn’t have much of a choice but to include anyone who will push the continent’s agenda.”¹²

What the rest of the world did not know was that on June 27, 1956, nineteen days after that historical meeting at Lisbon, the South African press quoted the then Minister of the Interior, Dr Theophilus Ebenhaezer Dönges, as saying that sport within the borders of South Africa had to be practised according to the principle of “separate development” and that, while the government was “most sympathetic towards and anxious to help legitimate Non-European sporting activities,” these must be within the laws of the country.

Fred Fell, the South African delegate to the formal launch of CAF and the African Nations cup in Sudan in 1957, was asked to confirm or deny the existence of apartheid in sports. He told the Khartoum congress that the country’s constitution prohibited mixed-race sport. According to Yidnekatchew Tessema, who was CAF president at the time, Fred Fell “without defending apartheid” had declared that he would be jailed if the South African government knew his true position on the issue. As recounted by Tessema, Fell explained that South Africa had both an all-white and an all-black team on standby to fly to Khartoum for the first African Cup of Nations.

The CAF executive argued that a national team should not be constituted of only a single race. As a result, South Africa was compelled to withdraw from the first African Cup of Nations, held in 1957. Two years later, with Egypt now ready to host the tournament and South Africa firmly out of the picture, the tournament was again contested by only three countries – Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. As FIFA had promised, the South African issue was again part of the agenda at the 1958 congress in Sweden. CAF also held its congress in Stockholm, during the FIFA World Cup in 1958, and a major decision was made to terminate South Africa’s membership from the continental body it had helped form. This was also the year that the World Cup introduced the skinny Brazilian football genius – Edison Arantes do Nascimento, known to the world as Pelé.

Interestingly, while 1958 saw the rise of this black football genius, South Africa was being condemned for refusing to allow black players into the national team.

From that point on CAF was at the forefront of international campaigns to get South Africa expelled from all international sports bodies. The campaign proved to be fairly easy within the corridors of African football power, but it was not the same on other continents, as international bodies did not fully approve of CAF’s decision to expel South Africa. FIFA immediately warned CAF that it “had no right to expel a member association” and demanded the “immediate reinstatement of South Africa.” CAF, at the time consisting of only three countries, refused point-blank to do this, and started a bitter and arduous dispute, which was to last 17 years before other world bodies began to isolate South African sport. It was not an easy campaign, especially since South Africa had been a member of both FIFA and the International Olympic Committee long before CAF came into being.

Fred Fell, as president of the South African Football Association, explained that FIFA could not have two associations from the same country as members. Both SAFA and the South African Soccer Federation (SASF), which had been formed in 1951 and was calling for integrated sport, were present at the FIFA Congress despite attempts by the South African government to stop SASF members from leaving the country.¹³

After a marathon series of discussions by FIFA members, the two South African associations were urged to find common ground. FIFA delegates were against racial discrimination and emphasised that “all those wishing to play Association football should be given equal opportunities to play.”

FIFA executive member, Dr Ing Ottorino Barassi from Italy was tasked to intervene on behalf of the world body to find a solution and “modus vivendi”. Later, Dr Barassi reported that both Bloom and Fell had agreed that the application for membership should be postponed to the 1958 congress.

But as the fourth CAF president, Yidnekatchew Tessema of Ethiopia later explained, the politics of South African sport were rather mystifying. “Although racial discrimination in South African sports was officially instituted in 1950, not many outsiders knew about it,” Tessema asserted.

The two bodies accused CAF of mixing politics with sports. The Continental football governing body insisted that “sports segregation in any form is racism and this contravenes fundamental principles and objectives of sport and contradicts FIFA statutes.” They instead demanded South Africa’s expulsion from FIFA. The South African question led to major clashes between the FIFA president Sir Stanley Rous and Yidnekatchew Tessema of CAF.

Tessema later said that what astounded them was the discovery of what appeared to have been a FIFA plot to disempower CAF: the African football leadership came across copies of a confidential communiqué just before the 1966 FIFA Congress in London. There was a plan to create a regional Southern Africa Football Association, consisting of South Africa, Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), Mauritius, Madagascar, Botswana and Malawi. More than a quarter of a century later, South Africa was to help establish the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA), a regional football body accepted by both CAF and FIFA.

The commitment of Sir Stanley Rous to keeping the Football Association of South Africa as a full member of FIFA, despite its colour bar, was also evident in the lengthy correspondence between himself and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, which called for the exclusion of the racist body from international football.

“If South Africa applies segregation in soccer that is its concern ... all we are interested in is to see the controlling body of soccer in this country furthering the cause of football to the best of its ability,” Sir Stanley wrote.¹⁴

There was a letter apparently written by Sir Stanley on September 6, 1971, to Mr GHL Kerr of the Rhodesian Football Association proposing that countries that were not CAF members could form their own confederation that would be accepted by FIFA, by default, maintaining South Africa’s membership.

According to Tessema, to whom the copy of the letter was sent, Kerr said it “[would not be] possible for FIFA to invite member countries in Southern Africa to join a new group.” The African Confederation would object, he pointed out, particularly that targeted members were newly independent countries or those still to gain independence. It was also during the time when CAF had forged an alliance with the South American Confederation, in preparation for the 1974 FIFA presidential elections.

Although African associations boycotted the World Cup held in England in 1966 for a different reason, to CAF it was a twin strike that sent a strong message: “Africans are not and will not be pushovers.” The 1966 World Cup itself caused bitter disagreements long before the finals kicked off.

Fifteen African nations boycotted the tournament in protest against a 1964 FIFA ruling that required the champion team from the African zone to play off against the winner of either the Asia or the Oceania zone in order to gain a place at the finals. The Africans felt that winning their zone should be enough to merit qualification for the finals, all the more so since Africa, as a FIFA zone, had been recognised by the 1954 congress, a full ten years previously. The mass withdrawal of African countries comprised Algeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Tunisia, and the United Arab Republic (a union of Egypt, Syria and Iraq).

Meanwhile, South Africa, which had been idling since its expulsion from CAF, was placed with Australia and the two Koreas to play for the 1966 World Cup qualifiers. When South Korea boycotted the qualifying games in Cambodia, this left only North Korea and Australia to contest the qualifier since South Africa had been disqualified. North Korea won easily, thus qualifying for their maiden World Cup in 1966, where they reached the quarter-finals. (Incidentally, since that time they did not qualify again until South Africa 2010.) After the mass withdrawal by Africans, South Africa, which had always enjoyed strong support from FIFA, angered the Association by suggesting that a black’s only South African team be sent to represent the continent.

While CAF wanted South Africa expelled from FIFA and totally isolated from international sport, its efforts had paid off to a certain extent. At the FIFA Congress in Tokyo in October 1964, South Africa was suspended, as FIFA now acknowledged that the country’s racial policies contravened the anti-discrimination charter.

After the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (which was to reinvent itself as the African Union in 2001), CAF persuaded the OAU to do all in its power to call for South Africa’s total isolation.

Finally relenting, FIFA in 1963 sent a three-man fact-finding mission to South Africa, led by Sir Stanley Rous. The resulting FIFA report concluded that the national football federation had nothing to do with government-instituted racial discrimination, and recommended that CAF re-admit South Africa. The following year at a FIFA Congress in Tokyo, just before the 1964 Olympics, there was a counter-proposal calling for South Africa’s expulsion, put forward by Ethiopia, Egypt and Ghana, which had recently joined the association. The majority of the attendees opted for a suspension rather than outright expulsion. (It was to be another ten years before FIFA was finally persuaded that South Africa’s policies were unacceptably discriminatory.)

In January 1961, at the FIFA Annual Meeting held in Cairo there was heated debate when Sir Stanley Rous moved that South Africa’s membership be maintained. While Rous refused to give the official voting figures at a press conference, the Associated Press quoted “one well-placed source” as having said the vote was “11 to 6, with all the Afro-Asian members opposing.” FIFA later released a media statement saying, “FIFA cannot be used as a weapon to force a government to change its internal sports policy.”

More than a decade later, in January 1973, the FIFA executive committee agreed in a postal vote to allow foreign teams to participate in a “multiracial South African sports festival” to be held that March. Quoting Reuters, the Kingston Jamaica, Gleaner reported FIFA as having said the concession should not be “considered as the lifting of the suspension of the South African Football Association.”

Teams from Brazil, England and West Germany had accepted an invitation by the South African Football Association to participate, on condition that special authorisation was given by FIFA. FIFA said the authorisation had been given in the hope that the move would eventually be of benefit to non-white footballers and their organisations in South Africa. The Association also said that it would appoint a special delegation to visit South Africa at the time of the sports festival to investigate the situation in the country. The delegation was to file a comprehensive report and present it at the FIFA executive committee meeting on May 14, 1973, in Leipzig, East Germany.

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¹⁰ Bristol, England.

¹¹ Ethiopia did not attend the 1956 FIFA Congress but had representation in 1957 in Sudan when CAF was officially formed.

¹² Telephone interview with Dr Alegi.

¹³ Sports Historian Volume 21 No. 1, May 2001, The ties that bind: South Africa and sports diplomacy, 1958-1963 by Marc Keech.

¹⁴ The Star, January 9, 1963 as quoted by United Nations Unit on Apartheid, Notes and Documents, No. 16/71, April 1971 (http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/aam/abdul-2.html).