Sport in South Africa

One thing I’ve learned is that almost all South Africans are crazy about sports, even more so than many Americans, believe it or not. I was told this before coming here and I’ve definitely seen that it’s true. This was definitely a good culture to bring the World Cup into.

The most popular sports here are rugby, cricket, and soccer. Some other favorite sports are netball (which is kind of like basketball), tennis, field hockey, and track and field (which they call “athletics”). Like the U.S., South Africa has professional teams for its biggest sports based out of every large city. This time of year is the height of rugby season so I’ve become very familiar with the provincial rugby teams since everyone talks about them and my host family watches rugby on TV a lot. For example, Cape Town’s team is called the Stormers, Pretoria’s is the Blue Bulls, and Johannesburg’s in the Lions. The women I live with all grew up in Pretoria so they support the Blue Bulls, although they live in Cape Town now. People have all sorts of opinions about each other based on the teams they root for, very much like the U.S. Watching rugby with my host family and listening to people talk about rugby reminds me a lot of the way people act about college or pro football in the U.S.

Unlike the U.S., South Africa assembles nation-wide teams for rugby, soccer, cricket, and netball every year to play against other countries. They also give names to their national teams. The national rugby team is the Springboks (this was the team featured in the movie Invictus). A springbok is a small antelope-like animal found throughout South Africa. The soccer team is called Bafana Bafana, which is why that name kept getting thrown around during the World Cup. “Bafana Bafana” means “the boys, the boys” in one of the native African languages. The national cricket and netball teams are both called the Proteas, which is also the name of the national flower. One of the subjects that students are taught in primary school is called Life Skills, which is kind of like social studies. In grades 1-3 they learn about things like good citizenship, careers, community helpers, and national symbols – not to different from lower elementary social studies in the U.S. They also learn about sports in school, which happened to be the Life Skills unit my Grade 3 class has been working on since I’ve been here. The kids have learned about the difference between team and individual sports, sports equipment, the roles of different people at a sporting event (players, spectators, referee, etc.), and also the names of South Africa’s national teams. From listening to these lessons I’ve learned a lot myself about South African sporting culture.

In the U.S. a lot of young kids start playing sports on community recreational teams and then move up to travel teams or middle school and high school teams. In South Africa, all primary schools have their own sports teams for Grade 2 and up. Poorer schools like the one I’m working at offer barely any arts programs, and only for the older grades, but they have rugby, cricket, netball, and track and field teams for all ages and compete against other nearby schools. Sports are a huge deal in the schools. I’ve gotten a small glimpse of this during my time at the school because my mentor teacher is the coach of the Grade 3 boys’ rugby team. Four boys from her class are on the team and the rest come from the other three Grade 3 classes. They practice every Monday and Tuesday afternoon after school and they all get so excited for it. They played their first game last week against the Grade 2 team (since the other schools they’re supposed to play against keep canceling the games). The Grade 3 team won, mostly because they’re bigger and have practiced more, but all of the kids were so excited just to get a chance to play. The gym teacher, who was the referee, wanted to play the game before the school day ended, so for the last hour of the day my mentor teacher and I trooped her whole class out to watch the game. Since she was on the field coaching, it was my job to keep the young spectators under control. (Which was quite the task.) They were almost as excited as they players. I had a lot of fun that day.

Grades 2 and 3 playing rugby

Our group leaders from MSU have made sure we’ve been treated to some South African sports experiences as well. A couple weeks ago they took us to an indoor sports center to play action cricket. They split our group into four teams and paired up the teams to play against each other. Contrary to popular belief, cricket is actually very different from baseball and it took a while to get the hang of at first. Thankfully we had Corvell, his brother-in-law Johnny, his sons Dayle and Dominic, and his nephew Jesse playing with us to help us out. Even so, I was pretty confused for a long time. I didn’t finally get it down until almost the end of the game and then it was time to leave. Oh well.

Indoor cricket

Last Friday we got tickets to see Cape Town’s “minor league” rugby team, called simply Western Province, play a game. The games for the minor teams don’t fill up that much so we were able to get really good seats close to the field. I still don’t really know much about rugby, but surprisingly I was able to follow along pretty well. It’s enough like football that it kind of made sense. I’m amazed that the players don’t hurt themselves more often since they don’t wear padding and helmets like football players. Apart from Spartan football I’ve never paid much attention to sports back home, but I’ve actually found learning about the sports in South Africa to be very interesting. I’m glad I was able to experience a little bit of this part of their culture.

Home and School

I’ve been living with my host family and student teaching in the school for a week now, so I thought I would write a little bit about my life in this environment. I live with my mentor teacher Sunet Kellerman, her younger sister Rika, and their friend Janci. All three of them are in their twenties and moved to Cape Town from Pretoria (the capital city of South Africa in the north west part of the country) about two years ago. They moved here basically to get a change of scenery and start careers in a different part of the country than where they grew up. All three of them are white Afrikaners, the cultural group that had very high privilege during apartheid. They have a very nice townhouse in Kenridge, another suburb of Cape Town, near to the city of Durbanville where our guest house was. They’re all very nice and we get along well. They have introduced me to a few of their friends in the Cape Town area also. Everyone I’ve met has been very nice, interested in hearing about life in the U.S., and willing to tell me all sorts of things about South African culture and society. The only slight difficulty is that all of them speak Afrikaans as they’re first language and often speak that language when they talk to each other. Everyone speaks English fluently so they have no problems talking to me, but they sometimes switch to Afrikaans in large group settings and I can’t really participate in the conversations. When that happens I find myself paying attention to changing tone of voice, body language, etc. I can actually guess a lot about emotions or context, even if I can’t understand the words. It’s kind of cool, actually.

They’ve also taken me to church and Bible study since I’ve been here, which I’ve liked a lot. Religion, especially Christianity, has a much stronger role in society here than it does in the U.S. Separation of church and state doesn’t really exist here. For example, every morning at the school we begin with a Bible reading and prayer. It’s also interesting to see young people close to my age speaking very openly about their faith. It’s something that I’ve found to be very rare in the U.S. You really have to know where to look to find people comfortable discussing their faith. People are much more open about it in South Africa. In other ways, living with these women is exactly like living with young professionals in the U.S. We go to the movies, go out to eat with friends, go dancing at clubs on weekends, and sit at home watching TV and talking.

In contrast to my home life, the school is a very different world. I work with Sunet in a 3rd grade class at Eikendal Primary School in the nearby suburb of Kraaifontein. The school has grades 1-7, which is typical for most South African primary schools. (Kindergarten is offered some places in South Africa but it’s not required.) Class sizes are larger here than they are in the U.S. and my class has 34 students in it. In the upper grades, classes can sometimes have more than 40 or 50 students! The students in the class are all coloured and black, as are most of the teachers. My mentor teacher is one of only two white teachers at the school. Most of the students come from poorer families and often come to school with not enough supplies and torn or dirty clothes because the families can’t afford to take care of things as well as they should. All South African schools require students to wear uniforms, but often in the poor schools kids only have one piece of each uniform item. Regardless, the kids are adorable and are truly grateful for everything their teachers do for them. They get so excited at even the smallest praise. They have so much enthusiasm and I love working with them.

The school building itself is also very interesting. It’s constructed kind of like a hotel with outdoor corridors. The classrooms all open to the outside and there are outdoor staircases leading up to the second floor. In front of the classrooms and connecting the different wings on the ground floor is a raised sidewalk called the “stoop.” Between the wings of the school is a large enclosed courtyard area and there are large open spaces in front and behind the school as well. There’s no playground, but during the break periods or “intervals,” the students run around and play in the open places around the school. There is no set lunch period at the school. There are two 15-20 minute intervals during the day that serve as a combined lunch/recess for the kids and staff.

The language difference can make things interesting sometimes when I’m teaching. The class is entirely taught in English, but most students in the class learned Afrikaans or Xhosa as their first language at home and really only started learning English when they came to school for the first time. Most of them speak English well enough to communicate in class, but many struggle to write in English. I always have to remind myself to speak slower and choose my words carefully when explaining things to them. When I talk to them I always have to make sure that I don’t use vocabulary that’s too difficult for them and speak slowly enough so they can understand my accent. Overall, I’m enjoying my home stay and school experience. Things aren’t always easy, especially at school, but I love the opportunity to learn and experience new things.