"No normal sport in an abnormal society" - sports isolation and the struggle against apartheid in South African sport, 1980-1992

Abstract

There has always been the misperception that separate development in sports in South Africa was initiated by the introduction of apartheid as government policy in 1948. On the contrary, apartheid in South African sport had been practised long before the apartheid policy legalised separate development at all levels of South African society. Only since 1948 the practice of sport was governed by laws, whence a close correlation between sports and politics in South Africa developed. Since 1948 South Africa's position was unusual and perhaps unique in that sport became the object of civic struggle in the name of social justice, involving not just players, but the whole population.