Bhola Lethu: Football in Urban South Africa

Abstract

The above quote from a song entitled ‘Bhola Lethu’ (Our Football) by the widely popular 1980s South African group Juluka encapsulates the meaning that football has had for black communities in South Africa over the past several decades. Football is played and watched by more South Africans than any other sport. Although the literature on South African football is limited, it is possible to reconstruct elements of its history and to discuss its contemporary meaning in the popular culture of South Africa. For although cricket and rugby union have been promoted as possible unifying sports for the new post-apartheid South Africa, it is football that resonates most strongly with the great majority of black South Africans and also with some whites. The game has a long history in black districts and talented exports have travelled to Britain for decades. As early as 1939, Boksburg near Johannesburg was known as a hotbed of football talent, a place of less than 20,000 inhabitants which has contributed nine players to first-class English and Scottish football.

Ubani Ongathinta Thina

(Who can touch us)

Sisho Ngebhola Webafana?

(We mean as far as football is concerned boys?) from ‘Bhola Lethu’ (Our Football), 1984.

Further discussions of soccer in South Africa appear in John Nauright (1997).