South Africa Football History

The Long Road to the World Stage

South African football has advanced through decades of denial and disadvantage, through the liberation struggle, to a point where it is now recognized as the country's number one national sport.

There are 1.8 million registered players in South Africa. Football attracts the highest television audiences and the greatest number of spectators, week after week. These are the measures of success. Since the formation of the united South African Football Association (SAFA) in 1991, soccer has made immense strides, establishing a strong infrastructure to channel the people's historic passion for the game, emerging from the days of oppression into a golden era of glory and prosperity.

During the past 12 years, South Africa has established itself as a positive, constructive member of the soccer family, entering teams in every South Africa reach far back into the 19th century, when the game's official structures reflected the racial divisions in society at the time. The "whites-only ” Football Association of South Africa, later to be known as FASA, was formed in 1892, but the SA Indian Football Association (SAIFA), the SA Bantu Football Association (SABFA) and the SA Coloured Football Association (SACFA) were only launched in 1903, 1933 and 1936 respectively.

Amid a blur of acronyms, South Africans played soccer as they lived, apart. A so-called Inter Race Soccer Board did organize a few games between these racial associations during the 1940s, when there was no law against mixed sport, but any creeping integration was halted by the introduction of formal apartheid laws in 1948.

The geography of South African soccer was set in stone, with whites playing in their own club structures, feeding the "whites-only ” national team, and, sentimentally and psychologically, being geared towards Europe. Meanwhile, blacks were left somehow to play the game amongst themselves, denied facilities and funding.

In 1958, FIFA officially recognized the white body, FASA, as the sole governing body of soccer in South Africa and the National Football League was launched in 1959 as the country's first entirely professional club league. It was reserved for whites.

This information was provided by the South African 2010 Local Organising Committee.

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