But the modern Olympics shared some of the exclusionary history of its ancient predecessor that disallowed women and slaves from participation, with women first being permitted to participate in the Olympic marathon from 1984.

The South African Review reported on the first Olympic Games in 1896 as an event that “the South African sportsman knows so little about”.

No Africans were represented. 

The 1904 Olympic Games was initially scheduled for Chicago but the St Louis World Fair’s physical culture director, James E Sullivan, convinced the International Olympic Committee to move the spectacle there.

Only a small number of European athletes attended the Games because of the high costs of the trip and accommodation. A quarrel between St Louis and Chicago city officials also dissuaded many athletes from attending. As a result, the Olympics were regarded as a side-show to the fair.

But South Africa was present, unofficially, at the 1904 Games, becoming the first African nation in modern day Olympic history to participate. 

The athletes in the marathon race on 30 August 1904 were Len Tau, Jan Mashiani and a settler athlete, BW Harris. 

These athletes have been forgotten by sport administrators and historians. 

South African indigenous Olympians need to be included in narrative writings.

The Jameson Raid of 1896, South African War (1899-1902) and post-war economic depression in 1904 were factors that prevented South Africa participating in the Olympics. 

This was the situation until 1908, when South Africa entered an all-white male team at the Stockholm Olympic Games under the organisation of the South African National Olympic Committee. 

The entry was a colonising venture because black people were excluded and the team was represented by a British Red Ensign flag with a Springbok in the corner, while athletes wore a green sweater with a Springbok symbol. South Africa’s Charles Hefferon won silver.

South African Kennedy Kane McArthur won the Olympic marathon in 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, and his Springbok teammate, Christopher Gitsham, won the silver medal.

Incidentally, when South Africa re-entered the Olympic Games in 1992, under an apartheid government, there also was no official national unity flag.

Much has been written about South Africa’s participation from 1908 till 1960 and then again from 1996 onwards. 

Modern media has published extensively that Josiah Thugwane was the first black South African marathoner to win a gold medal at an Olympic Games that year.

The 1904 Games coincided with the Boer War Show” as part of the Anthropological Fair in which various competitions were held for indigenous people of different continents. 

The ““Boer War Show” was also orchestrated by the South Africa circus entrepreneur Frank Fillis. South Africa participated as the “Boer Team” in the Olympic tug-of-war competition, held from 31 August to 1 September 1904. 

These participants, as well as Tau and Mashiani, were also part of the “Boer War Show” of the South African Boer War Company, with its racial problems, that lasted from 17 June until 2 December 1904. 

The Anthropological Fair was also a reflection of the eugenic and social Darwinism atmosphere of the time and visitors could view “6 000 photographs of unique phenomena, places and people from Africa”. Indigenous participants in the fair had events such as throwing stones at one another.

Pierre du Coubertin, who played a part in reviving the modern Olympic Games in 1896, condemned this abuse of the Olympic name as “inhuman”.

The marathon was a relatively unknown event to South Africans at the time. 

Tau and Mashiani thus had no coaching or training for this event. While running near the front, Mashiani was attacked by a large dog that chased him a mile off course.

Nevertheless, he finished 12th and Tau finished ninth. Harris dropped out after 24km. 

It was a race that took place in 32°C and very dusty conditions caused by bicycles and cars, resulting in most athletes withdrawing. This happened before the first official marathon in South Africa, held on 22 April 1908 in Cape Town. 

How Tau and Mashiani came to have a presence at the 1904 Olympic Games shows us the underside of colonialism and colonisation. Whereas the key figures in the “Boer War Show”, the Boer generals Ben Viljoen and Piet Cronjé, have been well recorded in formal studies and novels such as Boeresirkus, Tau and Mashiani remain obscure figures for modern readers. 

Yet, it is believed by some historians that they accompanied Cronjé to St Helena Island as part of the prisoner of war encampment and were his “messengers during the war (if true), their stamina have been legendary and widely known”.

Professor Floris van der Merwe has conducted detailed research on Tau and Mashiani’s participation in the marathon. 

It is this research that can be used to create a sport-historical narrative about them. Such a narrative must be one where the colonised subjects are placed at the centre of research. 

It is one, as described by the African novelist, Chinua Achebe, and quoted by historian and author André Odendaal, where “in the colonial situation, presence was the crucial word [and] its denial was the keynote of colonist ideology”. 

Therefore, my narrative differs from Van der Merwe, who asserts that “it seems that Tau and Mashiani’s achievements during the Olympic Games of 1904 had no immediate impact on the history of South African athletics”. Rather, their achievements are an indication of the state of black athletics in South Africa at the time. 

That same year, the South African governing bodies for athletics and cycling amalgamated to form the South African Amateur Athletics (AA) and Cycling Association (CA). In November the Orange River Colony AA and CA inquired about the participation of black people in competitions. The national body discouraged the provincial body from including such events in meetings. There would therefore have been no future career as athletes for Mashiani or Tau in South Africa if they returned home. 

But research by Douglas Coghlan, author of The Development of Athletics in South Africa: 1814 to 1914, has shown that black people in South Africa had reached a considerable level of athletic and cycling competition organisation finesse by then. 

Mark Leach and Gary Wilkins in Olympic Dream correctly state that Harris, Tau and Mashiani were unaware of the great historical moment they were making. Many settler writers downplayed Tau and Mashiani’s presence and misspelt their names and cultural identities. Writers referred to them as Zulus whereas Van der Merwe pointed out that a historical record of them shows they were Tswana. 

By 2024, usage of the term “kaffir” is outlawed and punishable. This was not so at the 1904 Olympic Games and the term was used in official programmes. 

What happened to Tau and Mashiani? No evidence exists other than a report that a number of black people had been fired from the Boer War Show in August 1904. They apparently then started working for a construction company in St Louis. The reason for their dismissal had been given as: “They had become sufficiently civilised to shirk work.” 

Tau and Mashiani leave a legacy of Olympic participation that begs us to ask: “What is happening to our sport civilisation in the 21st century?”

Francois Cleophas is an associate professor in sport history at Stellenbosch University.

Who were the first Africans to compete in the modern Olympic Games? The answer to that question reveals the surprising story of a 1904 marathon — and exposes the history of racism and white supremacy that characterised the Olympics in its early days.

The first modern Olympic Games was held in 1896 in Greece. This was at the height of European colonialism and there is no record of Africans participating. It was only after World War II, in the late 1940s, that African countries began to join the Olympic movement in significant numbers, as African independence took hold.

There exists, however, a little-known story of two black South African runners who competed in the first US-hosted Olympics, in St Louis in 1904. They were Jan Mashiani and Len Taunyane (Tau), who appeared along with a white South African runner — BW Harris —on the Olympic marathon programme. A Boer tug-of-war team from South Africa also took part in the Olympics that year.

A photo of Mashiani and Tau is housed at the museum of the Missouri Historical Society, which switched their names around in the caption, resulting in the two men being given the wrong identities for decades.

Mashiani and Tau did not officially represent South Africa at the Games. That’s because, in 1904, South Africa was not South Africa at all, it was a colony governed by Great Britain. This was two years after the South African War between Great Britain and two independent Boer republics.

Both sides used black South Africans in various roles, including running with messages. Which is how Mashiani and Tau enter the picture — along with their appearance at a world’s fair in St Louis that was tied to the Olympics. 

The fair presented “savages” competing in physical displays as part of its international exhibition of science and culture.

The story of Mashiani and Tau was documented by the South African sport historian, Floris van der Merwe. It is from this research that a reconstruction can be drawn about them.

For me as a sport historian who teaches this history, this reconstruction matters. Colonialism wiped out records of African sporting history and achievements. And African Olympic history has not been researched as extensively as American and European Olympic histories.

So, documenting African sport histories like this one is an important act of reclaiming black life — while discussing the ugly prejudices it has had to endure and rise above.

The 1904 Olympic Games was a far cry from what we will see in Paris in 2024. For one thing, events looked pretty different. One researcher writes: “The early games was a fascinating jumble of bizarre tournaments … that included swimming obstacle races, tug-of-war, hot air balloon contests, polo cycling and American croquet.”

The 1904 games was also steeped in racism and reflected the eugenics culture of the day. The St Louis Olympics accommodated the St  Louis World’s Fair, which held various competitions for the indigenous people of different continents, under the title Anthropology Days.

Van der Merwe writes that while the Olympic marathon was scheduled for 30 August, “athletic events for savages” were planned for 11 and 12 August: “The unique spectacle of men deliberately throwing stones at one another was to be one of the features at the athletic meet … in which all of the ‘savage tribes’ at the World’s Fair will compete.”

Before competing in the Olympic marathon, Jan Mashiani (referred to as “Yamasani” by officials who could not pronounce his name) and Len Tau (referred to as “Lentauw”) participated in this “athletic event for savages”. Besides the stone-throwing battle, there was javelin throwing for accuracy, tree climbing, throwing the baseball, and various track and field sports including a one-mile (1.6km) race, which they participated in.

They did so as part of the South African War Show at the fair. Both had probably been messengers for the Boers during the war. Van der Merwe cites an account of the one-mile event: “From the start Lentauw set a killing pace for the first lap, running like an old-time professional followed by his countryman. Despite his lead of 20 yards, he kept looking back and lost valuable ground in the process. In the stretch he was finally passed by a Syrian and an Indian.”

Mashiani and Tau were probably Tswana speakers. But the country’s Zulu people were better known internationally. By 14  August it was reported, according to Van der Merwe, that entries for the Olympic marathon had been received from, among others, Zululand.

Van der Merwe believes that they had been used by the Boers under General Piet Cronje during the war in South Africa to carry messages — which is why they could move at a fast pace for long periods. He contests newspaper reports from the St Louis Post-Dispatch that “Leetouw” and “Yamasani” had been runners for the English army.

Today in South Africa, using the so-called “k-word” racial slur to describe black people is punishable by law. In 1904, the official Olympic programme notes “BW Harris; Lentauw, k… mail carrier; and Yamasani, k… mail carrier” on the marathon line-up. The white South African runner, Harris, had entered about a week earlier than Mashiani and Tau, so it’s possible that he persuaded them to take part.

The 1904 Olympic marathon was a gruelling race run over 40km in very hot (32°C) conditions — made worse by the dust generated by vehicles using the same road. 

The runners started in two rows, Harris in the front row and Mashiani and Tau in the back row. Harris dropped out, while Tau finished ninth and Mashiani 12th. One of them, it was reported, could have done better had he not been chased off course by a dog while running along a deserted road that formed part of the course.

Mashiani and Tau were the first two Africans to compete in the Olympic Games. (The third from South Africa would be Ron Eland, who qualified for the British weightlifting team in 1948 before emigrating to the US and later to Canada.)

In 1948 the South African government introduced apartheid, black South Africans were not able to represent their country at the Olympics. And because of apartheid, the country was banned from competing in the Games from 1964 until 1992.

Francois Cleophas is an associate professor at Stellenbosch University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Sports scholars are beginning to pay attention to ecological concerns. For example, The Sport Ecology Group, a community of academics, poses the question: “Imagine if all people understood and supported the environment with the same interest and passion they showed their favourite sports teams?”

One scholar, Ljubodrag (Duci) Simonović from Serbia, provides an analysis of sport in relation to the human, geographic and political-economic environment. According to Simonović, who is also a retired professional basketball player, capitalism is based on ecocidal terrorism where global capitalism is reducing the world’s population through, among other things, pollution, crime and disease so that, in the end, resources will left to be exploited by elites. He argues that capitalism can only survive if it destroys societies. 

Similarly, in order for capitalist sport to survive, it needs to destroy the communal forms of sport, such as local rugby, tennis or soccer clubs, that were built around the needs of people or communities.

Sport has evolved to a point where the majority of participants are consumers who watch on television screens the performance of highly trained human bodies that have been transformed by scientific experimentation through laboratory and dietary regimes. This scientifically sportified body has become the ideal of human existence and its success is determined by the ability to acquire the best of what capitalism has to offer — and display it.

Sport has also become a space where the individual mind is destroyed and, as Simonović states “where a new fascist horde is created”. All of this adds to the creation of the lonely individual and abstract citizen who is glued to the virtual representation of sport, alienated from the game and left with a distorted image of it through the bombardment of marketing and media images. It is a concern, therefore, that the spectator sports market is expected to be the fastest-growing segment in a post Covid-19 world. 

Sports scientists should start thinking and talking about this, even though their survival, as full-time researchers, might be determined by the profit-driven interests of big funders. Current emphasis in social sport studies is on symptoms of societal issues, such as drug abuse (another result of rampant capitalism), and not on the political underpinnings of inequalities.

Government and non-governmental organisations’ focusing on short-lived sports development programmes for underprivileged citizens, creates an illusion of organised capitalist sport as being good. What this means is that out of a much larger talent pool only two or three athletes are identified and possibly end up playing international sport, while the rest must be satisfied with a T-shirt or maybe a weekend camp. 

The local community eventually does not even see these athletes perform in person, but have to fork out a pretty penny to watch them on a pay television channel.

Of course, development programmes are necessary but not the kind that ignores the root causes of inequality. 

Thoughts for a new vision

What we need now are social sports movements conscientised around the dictum: “An injury to one is an injury to all.” 

In the past, economically poor communities created their own sports structures based not on profit but on human needs. These sports structures — such as the sport clubs and federations founded during apartheid that organised themselves under the South African Council on Sport (SACOS) — did not look towards the northern hemisphere models for support. They could now serve as models for 21^st century progressive sport movements that do not want to operate in a social or political vacuum. In fact, progressive sport structures cannot be successful in the current narrow capitalist-nationalist ways because, as Simonović asserts, there are no nation states anymore, only multinational concerns in a world riddled with racism, social inequality and environmental degradation.

Progressive sport movements cannot ignore that an estimated 820-million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811-million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row, according to the World Health Organisation. Most people would not be able to afford the costly diet consumed by a successful, professional, commercial sportsperson.

They should also operate outside the realm of political parties who move attention away from the importance of ecological concerns. This is a difficult task because people respond to their immediate needs which are lulled by short-lived national victories, such as the World Cup, or the seduction of a city hosting a mega sport event, regardless of the economic fallout in the medium to long term.

Consider the environmental damage of such events that in themselves leave horrific carbon footprints: people fly from all over to attend the matches at the giant stadiums that use water and electricity even when they are empty. Consider, too, how small, centrally located and well-used stadiums with minimal carbon footprints are replaced by massive white elephants on the edge of towns and cities. These mega venues are mostly empty, but have much higher maintenance costs.

What is needed is author Arundhati Roy’s vision, explained in the Financial Times, of the post-Covid portal to be taken seriously by scholars. Such a world moves beyond financial profit-seeking mega events and multinational sport corporations. It is a world where business people do not work hand in hand with the politician under a veil of consultation. 

We also need a profound rethinking of the meaning of sustainability because the global commercial sports model does not appear to be environmentally sustainable, let alone build social sustainability.

Sports heroes

Progressive sports movements should also reconsider the concept of hero-making. Sports stars who ostentatiously display material possessions in a society struggling with inequality should not be regarded as more important than those who create a better world, such as dirt collectors, shelf packers, teachers, nurses or conservationists. The neoliberal capitalist “sport hero” has managed to carve out a financial profit-making space for him/herself and in so doing has come to represent an image of capitalism with a human face. In this way a capitalist authoritarian order becomes entrenched in the minds of people. This marketing ploy also allows for narrow identity politics to flourish.

What we should do is teach our children about the value of playfulness in sport as opposed to the attainment of tangible rewards. Simonović claims that sport is important for producing an emancipated ecocidal consciousness within children from an early age instead of encouraging the instrumentalisation of the body by reducing it to a technical mechanism. We need a consciousness (concientización in Freirean terms) that is of a priori political character that can sustain people-centred organisations over the long term. This can be achieved through scholarly sport research that is committed to fundamental social change, radical politics and environmental issues. After all, sport ecology matters in the 21^st century match of the day.

COMMENT

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed teaching and learning in higher education. Overnight, universities around the world have had to migrate from face-to-face engagements to online learning.

The Covid-19 crisis is similar to a war situation where emergency regulations are in place and everything is determined by one single ongoing event that disrupts all forms of social intercourse. Nobody can determine in advance how long the disruption will last, which makes the immediate future inherently uncertain.

In South Africa, classroom pedagogy and online teaching and learning take place in a society that has been classified, according to a recent research-based study, Inequality Trends in South Africa, as the most unequal in the world. This finding was made three months before a national lockdown began on March 26. This means South Africans entered the lockdown period in unequal economic conditions and now experience it as such. 

It warrants an explanation of what it means when privileged universities put in place pedagogical tools such as online teaching and learning until there is “a return to normal”. We need to acknowledge that the certainty of the “normal” prior to the outbreak of the pandemic is a cause of the unfolding social problems today. 

Should we not ponder over the huge economic inequalities highlighted in the Inequality Trends study and consider a new route for teaching and learning methodologies at universities that are based on considerations of social inequalities?

A recent training information programme offered to researchers at tertiary institutions by an international consortium provided progressive scholars and the public much insight into the challenges faced by this new way of teaching and learning in the most unequal country in the world. There are undoubtedly benefits to the new forms of pedagogy. 

For example, online teaching and learning must ensure lecturers are aware that they are operating in a divided world: rural and urban; men and women; dominant and under-class culture; students with upmarket computers and students who do not even have food to eat. More so than before, both students and lecturers can use new ideas of what it means to be productive. They could determine their own pace and location of teaching and learning. 

Besides the social and economic problems inherent in remote teaching, lecturers and students also face personal challenges. Whereas face-to-face interactions enable both to determine each other’s emotions, online teaching and learning limits this. In this new world, lecturers and teachers should be cognisant of speech tone and try to sense how others will interpret them. 

This is especially necessary in the world of binaries. How the lecturer and student communicate will ultimately determine how knowledge is transmitted and accepted. It might be useful for both to provide the context of their social environment and immediate physical surroundings (for example, I am looking after a sick family member or the children are noisy). This is especially valuable if students are in economically poor environments. Lecturers and students also have teaching and learning preferences. Some prefer writing, while others prefer talking. It is necessary to make allowance for both ways of communicating.  

The new teaching and learning environment makes lecturers and students more knowledge workers than knowledge producers. They are monitored more on their ability to master the latest technological devices and programmes than on their capacity to produce knowledge. The progressive lecturer will, however, ensure that cutting-edge research-based knowledge is presented to students who, in turn, will use standard texts in their field for primary knowledge acquisition. Lecturers and students should be conscious of the importance of balancing time allocation between logistics and subject content. This means the lecturer must also be a good manager who provides feedback, timetables and stimulates collaboration with other institutions, especially for those who are in economically poorer areas. 

The excessive demand on technical skill training in online teaching and learning is also underplayed against value acquisition. Yet, values such as integrity, honesty and trust are essential elements for successful online teaching and learning. Given the competitive nature of undergraduate courses in recruiting postgraduate students, a high premium is placed on mark-based performances. To qualify for places in postgraduate programmes, students will find that online assessments are easy targets for plagiarism and sharing of answers. To counter this, institutions need to formulate new ideas about what it means to be successful in an academic environment.

 Hopefully the new world of teaching and learning will be one where everybody has equal rights to learn and teach. 

As South Africa’s Springbok rugby team vies for victory in the 2019 Rugby World Cup tournament, it is worthwhile to reflect on the historical substance of sports unity since 1994.

South Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994. In mainstream history and school textbooks this represented a turning point that brought unity to South African society. But the danger of honing in on a single event blurs the broader social and political landscape that led up to the 1994 moment and subsequent developments.

More directly, Walter Mignolo, a prominent scholar of decolonial theory, reminded his audience at a recent conference that when the colonised take over the state, past complexities can be reproduced without question. The result is that power relations that favour the privileged remain intact.

Since 1994 South Africans have been constantly bombarded with the much publicised words of Nelson Mandela:

Sport has the power to change the world; it has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite like little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there only was despair.

But criticism against the notion that “sport has the power to unite like little else does” has become unpopular and has, to borrow from Neville Alexander,

scored a duck or very low innings in post-Apartheid society.

South Africans no longer, as they did prior to 1994, dare speak truth to power. Instead there is silence about racism and class divides in sport and almost a denial that there was vicious racism in sport prior to 1994.

This raises the question: Does the nature, basis and purpose of unity in the pre-1990 anti-apartheid sports movement correspond with developments after 1994?

To answer these questions it’s useful to consider two types of unity – principled and ad hoc. Principled unity endeavours to unite people around a common outlook and how they intend achieving their common goal. Clarity of ideas and practice is crucial. With ad hoc unity one may discard their allies once the short term goals have been achieved.

I argue that the sports unity that was achieved in South Africa during the last decade of the 20th century was an ad hoc or temporary tactical unity.

The history

After the unbanning of the anti-apartheid political organisations in 1990 a new sport political elite emerged. It was made up of the apartheid sport federations and individuals from within the sport liberation movement. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the new elite favoured the establishment or apartheid sports federations. Lured by the prospects of jobs, and the high life, former outspoken anti-apartheid sports critics began promoting unity while side-lining the South African Council on Sport. This was the internal non-racial anti-Apartheid sports organisation.

And when some officials of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee returned to South Africa from exile, they sought the political support of the establishment sports federations, ignoring the South African Council on Sport. Not surprisingly, the sports moratorium was lifted without the South African Council on Sport’s consent.

What followed was a scenario of extraordinary unity sports ventures. For example, South Africa participated in the 1992 Olympic Games and organised a cricket tour to India with the Apartheid government still in power.

In this period (1992-1994), the country was represented solely by players from apartheid sport federations. National and provincial non-racial school sport federations were abandoned while white school sport derbies continued and thrived.

Although it was clear to many, nobody dared to state that the unified sports teams were nothing more than apartheid teams playing under the banner of a yet to be democratic sport structure.

Many South Africans were lulled into believing that white people, who had benefited from apartheid sport, would be willing to share their gains in meaningful ways with sports structures of the non-racial movement.

What the South African Council on Sport demanded was a moratorium on international sports contacts until development at grassroots level had reached a satisfactory level. But many activists capitulated and gave in to the demands of the new sport political elite for international participation under new unified sports federations.

Bitter fruit

South Africans are reaping the effects of this ad-hoc sports unity. School sports in the townships, the historically racially segregated areas of black working classes, are either non-existent or at an extremely low level, while middle to high fee-paying schools offer learners a variety of sports opportunities. For black students to achieve sport success, they have to attend middle to high fee-paying schools.

It is therefore not surprising that the vast majority of first team players (black and white) in the Protea cricket and netball teams come from these schools. The same applies to the Springbok rugby team.

There is no sports organisation outside government that speaks on behalf of the poor and marginalised communities and their sports structures and organisations.

The type of unity that was forged between sports organisations in the 1990’s has inevitably meant that there’s no urgency about addressing social inequality in society.

It is wasteful energy to seek out opportunistic racist culprits and collaborators to blame for the current state of inertia in sport within the country’s economically poor areas. What is needed now is a principled sports unity that is forged from grassroots upwards to national level. Sports clubs need to be formed for purposes of healthy participation, enjoyment and competition at all levels.

In addition, sports clubs need to become part of critically-minded social movements that deliberately downplay virtues of excessive monetary gain and the ‘win at all costs’ approach. This is nothing less than a call for a new progressive sports movement that works for equality and peace based on mass participation and social justice.

Otherwise, 25 years down the line South Africans will still be in search of a sports unity that is both principled and practical.

Francois Cleophas, Senior Lecturer in Sport History, Stellenbosch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.