Africa is known throughout the world through sports but little in known about what goes on inside the continent on this subject. This session fills this gap in providing perspectives and experiences concerning African sports in context of social and cultural developments during the postcolonial conditions in Africa. The first paper concerns issues and perspectives surrounding race and ethnicity in sports during post-independent period in South Africa as they connect with opportunity structures made available to the majority of the population. The second session paper concerns football in the Western African nation of Cameroon and examines practices of inclusion and exclusion within and outside Cameroon and provides perspectives and experiences associated with postcolonial conditions. The final session explicates how race and ethnicity influence Kenyan sports, with regionalization, urbanization and Christianization assuming prominent roles, and reveals perspectives people have about these divisions in sports.
Sport as both a means of leisure and competition have played a crucial role internationally in building bridges amongst deeply divided nations. South Africa is one of the nations that have been previously affected by the problem of sport discrimination. Segregation policy led to the situation where South Africa was excluded from international sport for many years. This led to a big frustration amongst South African sport persons because they could not compete internationally and as a result many talents went down the drain. The year 1992 marks the return of South Africa into international sport arena. The main focus of this paper is to explore some of the factors that led South Africa being excluded from international sport. Further, the focus will be on the re-admission of South Africa into international sport. Lastly, the focus will be on the current scenario in terms of sport development and problems in South Africa. These issues or problems are still prevailing even in the new dispensation for example, issues of ethnicity, racism, lack of recreational facilities which affects young sport person in both rural and urban settings, lack of sponsorships, the current debate or issue on quota player system in both rugby and cricket and others will be explored. Solutions to some of the problems will be suggested and finally it’s a conclusion. The research methodology employed in this research including amongst others, interviews, a questionnaire, secondary information from texts, internet, magazines and newspapers.
Based on anthropological fieldwork in Cameroon on the social and political significance of soccer the paper will analyze how Cameroonians perceive race and talk about it in sports. The paper will have two foci. On the one hand, it will examine the kinds of exclusions and inclusions that are practiced by Cameroonians based on supposed similarities and differences among themselves and within Africa and on the other hand, it will examine how Cameroonians view Europeans and especially the French and the kind of exclusions and inclusions practiced by them. The paper will conclude with a consideration of the extent to which these phenomena are comparable and will attempt to delineate the similarities and the differences between them.
The nation of Kenya is known to be the powerhouse of track and field aka athletics in global arenas. However, within Kenya there are other sporting activities, including football, rugby, cricket, volleyball, field hockey, tennis, netball and boxing that occupy center stage in athletes’ lives. In context of introduced sports and indigenous-based activities, sports development and promotion in postcolonial Kenya follows colonial apparatus for which regionalization, urbanization and Christianization play critical part in the extent to which sports participation follows ethnic and racial lines, and also gender divisions. The purpose of this paper is to present (a) historical perspectives on the colonial apparatus as implicated in the developments of sports along regionalization, urbanization, Christianization lines, including gender categorization and (b) on contemporary perspectives as they relate to race, gender and ethnicity in context of place, class status, education and religious affiliation in Kenya.
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