The FIFA 2010 World Cup, it might be argued, has already had an impact on South Africa; certainly in terms of infrastructure and hopefully also in terms of economic progress and social relations. Peter Alegi discusses these and other football-related issues from his academic and historian’s perspective with Orli Bass of the Centre for Conflict Resolution and Jenny Crwys-Williams of Talk Radio 702:

Orli Bass and Peter Alegi discussed the World Cup’s impact on South African cities and infrastructure and the contribution that Africa has made to the world’s most popular game. The meeting also considered the extent to which South Africa will be able to make the event a truly African World Cup.

• Read the complete article CCR

• Listen to the CCR discussion here

Radio 702 Podcast with Peter Alegi

Peter Alegi Interview [ 42:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Book details

• Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa, from its Origins to 2010 by Peter Alegi
  EAN: 9781869141820
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Image courtesy Dreamstime

“Not many people know that the history of soccer in Africa is longer than the history of modern soccer itself,” says Peter Alegi to the host of WBEZ’s Worldview radio programme in Chicago, USA. “The first documented matches took place in 1862 in what is today South Africa, in the cities of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth” – a full four years before football acquired the codified rules we all recognise in London.

Alegi, who is currently in South Africa to do academic research, spoke by phone just a few days before the opening of the 2010 World Cup. You can listen to his chat on the evolution of the beautiful game inside our borders here:

Podcast: Peter Alegi on WBEZ Chicago

Peter Alegi on WBEZ Chicago [ 50:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Not playing? Listen at WBEZ home

Meanwhile, a similarly-themed article was published in the New York Times yesterday:

But the white monopoly on the club game would not last out the century. In 1896, Mahatma Gandhi, then a young lawyer in South Africa, was among a group of Indian men who helped found the Transvaal Indian Football Association. Alegi considers it “most likely the first organized football group on the continent that was not run by whites.”

Gandhi would not be the last future leader to use soccer as a training ground. And the black communities and other indigenous people in Africa would gradually take control of the ball and the phenomenon, embracing the imported game, even sometimes — as in Algeria and South Africa — using it as a tool against their oppressors. Along the way, soccer would grow into a pan-African obsession, perhaps the closest thing to a common currency that this vast and vastly diverse continent possesses.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa, from its Origins to 2010 by Peter Alegi
  EAN: 9781869141820
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• African Soccerscapes: How A Continent Changed the World’s Game by Peter Alegi
  EAN: 9781849040389
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Photo courtesy Afripod

Author Adekeye Adebajo, mainly known for his acute analyses of world politics, switches gears for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and offers insight into the character of the “African at heart” soccer superstar Didier Drogba, a self-proclaimed “apostle of peace, a bond between the north and the south”. Can the Ivorian realise his dream of lifting the cup?

He then stepped up to drill a spectacular free-kick into the corner of the net. Always the man for the big occasion, Drogba had also scored the only goal in the defeat of Manchester United in the FA Cup final in 2007.

He then stepped up to drill a spectacular free-kick into the corner of the net. Always the man for the big occasion, Drogba had also scored the only goal in the defeat of Manchester United in the FA Cup final in 2007.

• Read the complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• Gulliver’s Troubles: Nigeria’s Foreign Policy After the Cold War by Adekeye Adebajo
  EAN: 9781869141486
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Photo courtesy Jamati

This May from UKZN Press!

How did South Africa, a former pariah of the world, come to host the 2010 World Cup? Peter Alegi’s Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa, from its origins to 2010 tries to answer this question by telling the story of football in South Africa and how it was transformed from a British colonial export into a central aspect of the black experience. An immensely informative and vital account, it explores the Africanisation of the game with the introduction of rituals and magic, and the emergence of distinctive playing styles.

• Read the book’s introduction; see the Scribd.com book preview below

Using archival research, interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, adverts and photos, Laduma! chronicles the impact of indigenous sporting traditions such as stick fighting, and the power struggles between different football associations and white authorities. Soccer influenced class and generational divisions, shaped masculine identities, and served as a mobilising force for township and political organisations.

This new, updated edition of Laduma! embodies sporting history at its best and will be of interest to ardent soccer fans as well as general readers and scholars seeking to inform themselves ahead of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

About the author

Peter Alegi is an associate professor of history at Michigan State University. He is an editorial board member of the International Journal of African Historical Studies and book review editor of Soccer and Society. He teaches courses in South African and African history, and the comparative history of sport. With Peter Limb, he co-hosts “Africa Past and Present”, a widely accessed academic podcast about African studies. Currently Peter is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Book details

• Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa, from its Origins to 2010 (2010 edition) by Peter Alegi
  EAN: 9781869141820
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!