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Football Through Our Eyes

New timeline - Timeline

The first known matches took place in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth in 1862 between White
civil servants and troops. African, Indian, and Colored football associations and leagues arose in
Kimberley, Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town between the 1880s and 1910s. Football's
'intrinsic worth' supplied great entertainment while also providing temporary escape from police
harassment and grinding poverty. It offered excitement, unpredictability, and new adventures;
sport created popular discourse and generated emotional attachment. Football's socio-historical
significance is not a recent phenomenon, as the impressive growth of football over time

demonstrates.
New national events included the Bakers Cup (1932), the Suzman Cup (1935), and the Godfrey
South African Challenge Cup. Matches between Indians, Africans, and Coloreds grew in
popularity as well. The inherited institution of British football was gradually changed to suit
local customs and traditions during this time. Religious expertise and magic, as well as various
spectatorship rituals and local playing techniques, were all part of the Africanization process.

The rise in attendance at Black soccer matches in Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town in the
late 1930s and 1940s was largely due to the significant increase in the number of Africans
travelling to cities to find employment in the war-driven manufacturing development. Football
became a popular pastime among the growing number of squatter settlements' residents. People's
lives were given purpose by it. Friendships and camaraderie among team members and
spectators grew as a result of the event. Football became an arena of action where Black South
Africans could pursue more social exposure, position, and prestige than was available in the
segregated South African society according to the idea of "advancement by merit," which
underpins sport. Male-dominated football teams, competitions, and organizations allowed people
denied basic human rights to adapt to industrial conditions, cope with urban migration, and
establish alternative institutions and networks on a local, regional, and national level. The game
had the ability to both reinforce and obliterate differences based on race, class, ethnicity,
religion, age, and gender, and so acted as a mobilizing force for local, township, and national
levels.