The thesis evaluates the significance of sport's contribution to the end of apartheid by locating sport in a network of international relations. Sports diplomacy is identified as a relatively low-cost, low-risk but high profile tool of diplomatic policy. It is argued that the profile of sport in South Africa made the apartheid system particularly susceptible to sports based protest. The study makes a case for a degree of theoretical fusion to provide an appropriate context within which to analyse the unique nature of the Anti-Apartheid campaign. As an international issue, the politics of the Anti-Apartheid movement are substantially encapsulated within a pluralist framework. It is acknowledged that to rely totally on such a framework would risk failing to capture the multi-layered nature of the conflict over apartheid. An adapted version of hegemony sport theory is therefore used to conceptualise the South African social formation and the practice of sport therein. In the absence of quantitative measures, two measures of significance are proposed. First, the capacity of sports based protest to influence the policies of international sports organisations and international bodies such as the United Nations and the Commonwealth. Second, the ability of sport to prompt responses from the government and in doing so, for sport to act as a prototype for more politically significant measures that paved the way for the transformation to democracy. Attention is paid to the processes through which sport became a globally visible feature of the Anti-Apartheid movement. It is argued that the global profile of sport contributed to a more coherent understanding of apartheid policies and in tum prompted policy actors to penalise (white) South Africa in the form of international isolation from sport. The research for the thesis has been conducted part-time since February 1994. It necessitated a research visit to South Mrica in the summer of 1997, and involved primary and secondary data collection, and elite interviewing in both South Mrica and the United Kingdom. Unpublished data sources in Pretoria and Cape Town, and South African newspapers have been used extensively. It is concluded that domestic sports protest highlighted the injustices of apartheid to the international community and contributed to establishing a non-racial ideology that is the foundation of democratic South Africa. International sports sanctions, in the form of the sports boycott of South Mrica, provided a form of cultural diplomacy to state and non-state actors alike that fulfilled an important symbolic function and served to maintain the profile of the Anti-Apartheid campaign as an important global social movement. The accelerated readmission of South Mrica to international sport was an example that sports sanctions were also designed to promote change in addition to their punitive intent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:285306 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Keech, Marc |
| Publisher | Staffordshire University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds