Africanization of the game came about and how the power struggles of local and national football associations shaped the sport into a primary pillar of Black South African culture

A timely update released before the FIFA World Cup in South Africa during the summer of 2010, Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa, from its Origins to 2010 brings Peter Alegi's work forward from the original ending in his first edition up to 2010. The work adds to the historiography of South Africa as it examines the political and social context of football during the struggle against apartheid in the twentieth century. The book is divided into nine narratives in chronological order, some examining regions, others specific time periods, and then two devoted to the tradition of sport in South Africa from colonialism onward. Alegi focuses the reader's attention to the way football in South Africa brought relief from apartheid through the creation of sporting bonds that were created through competition, camaraderie, and collective action on the football pitch. A reader of South African history will quickly see the parallels between the characteristics of the struggle against apartheid and that of football: solidarity, teamwork, and cooperative strategy. The book attempts to show how the Africanization of the game came about and how the power struggles of local and national football associations shaped the sport into a primary pillar of Black South African culture during the 20th century. Alegi is a specialist in the field of sports in South Africa, specifically soccer. This is the updated version of his first book, originally published in 2004. Alegi uses the terms football and soccer interchangeably, just as they do in South Africa. This mixing of terms likely results from the twelve interviews that Alegi conducted personally, as well as the over twenty he used that were conducted by other scholars. Additionally, his use of the archives in South Africa and the newspaper collection at the National Library of South Africa in Cape Town greatly informed his study. Alegi himself notes that this continuation of his work on sport in South Africa was written in the revisionist school of South African historiography that started in the 1970s. The accounts that he incorporates illuminate the world of South African football in a manner that provides a first-hand account from players, managers, and organizers that any country would be lucky to have as part of its history. It allows him to take the reader on a journey of football from the colonial era up until the time just before the first African World Cup. …