1 December 2009 / REUTERS, JOHANNESBURG
World soccer’s leaders meet this week on an island notorious for its once brutal prison but where the game offered relief and hope for hundreds of anti-apartheid activists.
FIFA’s executive committee will hold a meeting on Thursday on Robben Island which lies in the middle of Cape Town’s Table Bay and was for more than 18 years the jail that housed Nelson Mandela. It will be a symbolic gesture on the eve of the World Cup draw in Cape Town and highlights how football was played by political prisoners jailed on the island by South Africa’s old apartheid government. The existence of soccer leagues among the prisoners was not documented until the publication of “More Than Just a Game” by Chuck Korr and Marvin Close in 2007. The book, which has since been made into a feature film, details the exploits of the Makana Football Association, a group created by inmates. Among the leaders of the group was South Africa President Jacob Zuma, once a defensive player and later a referee.
