ABSTRACT
This chapter describes sociopolitical processes and experiences in a particular time and place as access to sports and spaces for sports was negotiated. It discusses the spatial and social landscape of sports facilities in the town of Rawsonville and provides an overview of the historical and political organization of sports in South Africa. The chapter draws on different ways of organizing, and different meanings attached to, access to the sports fields. It examines the complicated and messy ways in which identity politics has shaped the sporting landscape of Rawsonville. With the institutionalization of apartheid from 1948, racial separation in sports participation and spaces took on an aggressively rigid and repressive form. Sports policies under apartheid all forms of organized sports with national and international recognition and significance as a reserve of those racially classified as whites. While there were separate sports federations administering sports for each racial group, the “official” sport meant that administered and participated in by whites.
