ABSTRACT
It goes without saying that South Africa is place where race has impacted every area of social, cultural, political, and economic life from the time of initial European settlement in 1652. The history of segregation and apartheid has been chronicled and researched by countless scholars, yet many gaps still remain in our understanding of how segregation and apartheid shaped social institutions and how stereotypical and stylized conceptions of race and ethnicity have been used to promote products, teams, events, and celebrity. We argue that an engagement with the social constructions of race and ethnicity in South Africa is necessary before we examine how they intersect with framing athletes and playing styles within sport. In other words, we advocate both for the writing of sport into the histories of sport and ethnicity in South Africa and for a writing of the histories of representation of race and ethnicity into histories of sport in South Africa.
