My article “Beyond Master Narratives: Local Sources and Global Perspectives on Sport, Apartheid, and Liberation” has just been published in The International Journal of the History of Sport (2020).
This article is a revised and peer-reviewed version of a 2019 keynote address I delivered at the “Global Histories: Sport and Apartheid South Africa” symposium at Penn State University.
Abstract
Drawing mainly on a set of oral and written primary sources situated in their proper historical and geographical context, this article explores how multiple forms of agency and memory shaped the history of sport, apartheid and liberation in South Africa. In doing so, it argues that a new revisionist history is needed in order to problematize the entrenched ‘master narrative’ of South African sport history, which privileges national redemption and patriotic heroism at the expense of more complex individual, local and global dynamics. The article concludes with suggestions for future research directions in order to assist a process of decolonizing sport history in South Africa.
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2020.1773434