Rugby, national pride and the struggle of Black South Africans for international recognition, 1897-1992
Hendrik Snyders
What the paper says
Representing one's country in the international arena is a high honour, and also a means through which national identity are expressed. For nearly a century, Black South Africans, as a result of the country's long history of racial and ethnic separation and its concomitant separate racial sporting structures, were excluded from international competition and restricted to competition for domestic and ethnic honours. Not content with their position, they actively attempted to break out of their ethnic straitjacket and establish themselves on the international stage. Rugby players in particular fought relentlessly for merit-selection. After initially trying to accommodate the ethnic sports status quo, they turned protest into active challenge and joined the political campaign to isolate and exclude racially-based teams from international competition. This article, in addition to recording the history of this struggle between 1897-1992, also contextualises and analyses its successes and failures, inherent contradictions and shifts against the background of the broader political struggle.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.00 × 0.4 = 0.00 |
| M · momentum | 0.80 × 0.15 = 0.12 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.