The most important football story ever told.`It is amazing to think that a game that people take for granted all around the world, was the very same game that gave a group of prisoners sanity – and in a way, gave us the resolve to carry on the struggle'. Anthony Suze, Robben Island Prisoner.This is the astonishing story of a unique group of political prisoners and freedom fighters who found a sense of dignity in one of the ugliest hellholes on Earth: South Africa’s infamous Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was famously incarderated. Despite all odds and regular torture, beatings and daily backbreaking hard labour, these extraordinary men turned soccer into an active force in the struggle for freedom.For nearly 20 years, these prisoners found the energy, spirit and resolve to organise a 1400 prisoner-strong, eight club football league which was played with strict adherance to FIFA rules.The prisoners themselves represented a broad array of political beliefs and backgrounds, yet football became an impassioned and unified symbol of resistance against apartheid. They refused to let their own political differences sway their devotion to the sport, which allowed them to organise and maintain leadership right under the noses of their captors.This league not only provided sanctuary and respite from the prisoners’ cruel surroundings, it kept their minds active and many credit it with keeping them alive. More Than Just a Game chronicles their story, the politics of the time, the extraordinary characters, their heroism and the thrilling matches themselves.
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Marvin Close. More Than Just a Game: Football v Apartheid
More Than Just A Game. Football v Apartheid. Chuck Korr and Marvin Close
Table of Contents
Preface by Sepp Blatter
Introduction
1 The Apartheid State
2 The Price of Resistance
3 The Struggle for Prisoners’ Rights
4 The Need to Organize Football
5 Football Establishes Itself
6 The Atlantic Raiders Affair
7 Growing Older with Football
8 Two Football Codes on One Island
9 Something More than Football
10 Football Struggles to Survive
11 The Arrival of the Soweto Generation
Epilogue Life After the Island
The Story Behind More Than Just a Game by Professor Chuck Korr
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Acknowledgements. Chuck Korr
Marvin Close
Copyright
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
To the men of Robben Island
and the free South Africa
they helped to create.
Title Page
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While Sedick awaited trial, a group of men who, in the future, he would count among his closest friends in prison, was also being targeted by the South African security services.
Lizo Sitoto was a bear of a man. He was unusual among the majority of black South Africans in that he revelled in playing a sport that many regarded as ‘the white man’s game’ – rugby. In the Eastern Cape, however, black sportsmen had long played top-quality rugby and saw the game as their own. Indeed, they took pride in claiming that, if they had been given a fair chance to compete, many blacks would be representing South Africa internationally as members of the Springboks. For Lizo and his soon-to-be fellow prisoners, Marcus Solomon and Steve Tshwete, as for many blacks, culture in the Eastern Cape revolved around the twin pillars of church and club rugby.
