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July 12, 2010
South Africa: The Ugly Underside of World Cup Soccer Mania
By Linn Washington
While the images of the World Cup are all sweetness and light, depicting a post-racial South Africa, the bitterness of apartheid in the country's sport history was buried, along with two of its soccer legends, heroes in the fight against racism who were kept in the shadows during the festivities.
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By Linn Washington
Soweto, South Africa Less than seven miles from the carefully crafted glitter of Soccer City, the host complex for the World Cup, two legendary South African football players told fascinating often fearsome stories that powerful people want suppressed.
Two days before the recent World Cup championship match won by Spain "Smiley" Moosa and Nkosi Molala spoke at a community center in Soweto discussing their lives under apartheid and that ugly era's lingering legacy on South African society.
Moosa and Molala both made their marks on South African soccer in the 1970s.
Under apartheid's rigid racial categories Moosa carried the classification of Indian while Molala was African designations barring these talented players from South Africa's then whites-only national team.
Moosa holds the distinction of being the first non-white ever to play for an all-white soccer club in South Africa.
Moosa's skills and light skin color earned him that short-lived elevation, later snatched back by apartheid restrictions. Continuing discriminatory practices caused Moosa to file a lawsuit against horse racing authorities where he now works as a race announcer.
Molala, lauded for his fancy footwork, holds the distinction of being the first South African soccer star ever imprisoned for political reasons.
Molala spent seven years in the infamous Robben Island prison that held Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president and Jacob Zuma, that nation's current president. Molala lost an eye during an assault by South African police following his 1985 prison release, effectively ending his soccer playing career.
Despite their once star-status Moosa and Molala both said they have been excluded from the World Cup spotlight that has raised the international stature of South Africa, the first African country to host the Cup since the inception of that international event in 1930.
"We are the pioneers and we are pushed aside," said Moosa, whose professional soccer career began at age 16 and lasted until he was 39.
Molala noted philosophically that, "History is always the history of those in charge. It is so political."
Moosa and Molala, both in their late fifties, remain active in the sport that defined their lives.
Moosa, a critic of the caliber of soccer in South Africa today, coaches and often plays soccer outshining players half his age.
One of Molala's many endeavors is training inmates to be soccer referees, an anti-crime initiative for both the prisoners and underprivileged youths they would work with.
Dave Lindorff, winner of a 2019 "Izzy" Award for Outstanding Independent Journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).