Francois Johannes Cleophas

Loring decolonising themes in SA sport history Francois Johannes Cleophas

In an effort to understand how the absences of the colonial subject in sport were engineered and how colonial narratives became fixed in the literature and minds of South Africans, Exploring Decolonising Themes in SA Sport History: Issues and Challenges attempts a full-scale restructuring and rewriting of the history of sport in South Africa to include black South Africans, and thereby places them on the forefront of a colonial history. The book includes the articulations of academic researchers, professionals and retired sportspeople who were requested to explore their unique areas of interest in sport from the perspective of themes in South African sport history. They place themselves at the centre of discourses that dispel myths that blacks had no sport significance prior to 1994. The book ultimately challenges this spirit of the past where there was only one narrative - a white male sport tradition. Rather than adapting past colonial and apartheid narratives, this work seeks to fundamentally replace and supersede them.