Apartheid is arguably the most culturally significant event in South African history. The legal mass segregation of black and white South Africans for 50 years is a defining event for the people of South Africa. This event is hugely important in understanding the history of football, and the importance of football in South African culture.
The University of Cape Town in the late 1930s, when football had been removed at the collegiate level.
From about 1910 onward, football in South Africa underwent a radical change. Football was removed from almost all collegiate sports. This meant that the demographic of people playing football shifted from anyone in the country, to excluding white South Africans. The lack of football play at the collegiate level in universities in Africa such as the University of Cape Town, University of South Africa, and the University of Stellenbosch was increasingly evident(Hill).
This happened because of the excellence of white South Africans in rugby. As white South African rugby teams became more and more competitive with team from Britain, a more segregated viewpoint began to develop of the less successful football teams(Hill). It increasingly became the viewpoint of many white South Africans that football was not a sport fit for a white man to play.
Pictured above is Liverpool F.C. one of the British teams that the South African football team lost to.
Due to this belief, football became a game that was played almost always by black South Africans, and never by white South Africans.
Football in South Africa 