The product of a ‘bar-room promise’ (xviii), Ashwin Desai stitches together ruminations of a coloured working class in Wentworth: The Beautiful Game and the Making of Place. Written as much to inform as it is for those who informed, the book is replete with stories of shipwrecks and accidents; writers, entertainers and philanthropists; rappers, breakdancers and music bands; gardens and flowers, petrochemical pollutants and toxins, madhouses and tattoos, trophies and sore losers, stadiums and mascot dogs, and metaphors. And central to all these is the beautiful game of soccer.
The beauty and pain with which people speak of soccer in the book is what makes it such a compelling study of subaltern sports. This is not a simple story of soccer saving a people forced together into a collective by the structural violence of racial discrimination and slow violence of working-class poverty. Instead, soccer serves as a conduit to reinvent oneself and tell a different story about the place and its people. As Desai puts it,
at the exact time that so many neighbourhoods were being destroyed under mass relocation programmes, quest for identity had to find surrogates. Soccer Clubs were formed. Patches of turf were secured as a bleak landscape was turned into expressions of skill and desire to win trophies as well as developing the talents of a new generation. (1)
Despite limited resources and opportunities to shine at the highest levels of the sport, Wentworth had its soccer legends, great players, committed coach-managers, scouts with keen eye for talent, and fanatical supporters. In a context where sports history is distorted by the recognition of talent according to the colour of skin, Desai records the struggles, passions and achievements of a subaltern group, in their own terms.
Desai opens his first chapter with a question – how to tell a story? – describing the lay of the land, the people and the relationships that make up his research materials, methods and context. In so doing, he shows ‘how to’ conduct ethnography of subaltern sports in the real world and what is at stake in doing so: ‘it can make or break a reputation, if not your head’ (xviii). In his quest to excavate the ‘“little” stories that get lost in the narrative of gangs, drugs and the alienation of the new’ (16), Desai takes his readers through the challenges embedded in such interpersonal research. ‘There is no “one” history siphoned into a museum’ and the ‘storytellers’ that a researcher relies on freely ‘mix fact and fiction, myth and truth, tomorrow with yesterday’ (116). Desai’s writing exhibits the kind of care, attention and sensitivity required to deal ‘with deep emotions as much as fading and selective memories’ (2). Ultimately, this book is a meaningful engagement with the complexities and contradictions of real life, human relations and people.
One set of contradictions that Desai illustratively works through is to do with the very way in which soccer is revered for its potential social work. As he reflects: ‘It is one thing to wax lyrical about the power of soccer to create opportunities for young people. But what about those young men with hoods pulled low, hanging on the corners of flats and streets?’ (165). This question of ‘what about’ is best embodied by Wentworth’s most admired soccer legend, Gary Goldstone. Goldstone is quoted in his own words:
It was a terrible life. What kept me sane was the soccer. If it wasn’t for the soccer, I don’t think I would be around today to talk. Life was just meaningless in a sense. But I was committed to the soccer. Training. Every day. Very fit. We used to start training at six o’clock in the evening. We used to finish training at half past eight at night. But I would only reach home at half past eleven. I must detour along the way… Austerville. Have a smoke. Eventually get home. That was the lifestyle. The one good thing that I thank God for is that my children don’t know that lifestyle. They were all small. They only hear from the people. ‘Yes, Graham was a rascal, but he could play wonderful ball.’ (71–72)
What does soccer do for those ‘rascals’ who cannot ‘play wonderful ball’? The contradiction, of course, is in the fact that soccer becomes a part of the ‘lifestyle’, not a way out of it. Desai holds together such tensions, between the words, expressions and actions of people, leaving readers undecided about the social role of soccer. In a world looking for simple solutions to complex problems, this unsettledness is a particular strength of the book.
In the second and third chapters, Desai traces the origins of the most successful soccer club in Wentworth, Leeds United, and all the social networks and friendships developed during its making and its success. Life stories of his ‘storytellers’ as well as those who these storytellers speak fondly of provide a sense of continuation, rather than a beginning or an end. To use Desai’s phrasing, through the ‘many lives of Gary Goldstone’ (66) and of so many others, we learn about the many lives (meanings and purposes) of soccer in Wentworth. Linking a sport to the concept of place-making, something with obvious parallels yet largely overlooked, Desai offers a novel way to theorise sports in the everyday. He opens up a broader line of inquiry into how sports play into defining a place. Consider the following quote, again in the words of Goldstone: ‘When we played we were more than Leeds, we were Wentworth’ (213).
While the ‘origins of the team’s name are contested’ (30), Desai shows how Leeds embodies Wentworth. The prowess and achievements of the soccer club, making legends of the great players, and its fanatical supporters, all become part of the stories people tell with pride and glee. New soccer clubs take the place of the old, old ones re-emerge, names and ownerships change, and so do the meanings attached to soccer and its role in Wentworth. Chapters 4 and 6 discuss these dynamics: ‘If Leeds United took all before them in the 1970s, then Cherrians kept Wentworth’s flag flying as apartheid crumbled’ (139). Take for example Lorna Richardson, sister of one of Leeds United’s great players, Dennis Petersen. She is the ‘owner of Young Cavaliers and former chairperson of the Leeds Supporters’ Club’ (147). Desai situates Lorna’s tragic personal life story to add weight to what it means to own and support soccer in Wentworth, as Lorna shares:
For us, Cavaliers is not just about the soccer. Yes, we’re passionate about soccer. But, it’s also about the upliftment of these young boys with so much potential, who are from dysfunctional homes, families – a lot of them. Poverty – a lot of them. And just giving them love. We help them in their personal lives as well. (158)
In other words, this book is about those brave enough to stake their belonging to a place of suffering. Desai even reclaims ‘Leeds United’, better known as the name of a famous English soccer club, for the South African Wentworth:
In Afrikaans, leed means suffering, affliction and grief. In dumping Coloured people in places like Wentworth all those decades ago, the architects of the Coloured condition ensured that years of suffering would unite those it dispossessed. The collective suffering eventually pushed the white minority from power through struggle. But in Wentworth, some of them responded with more than just suffering and struggle. They responded with a devotion to building a soccer culture and style of play that at once imagined a community and captured the imagination. (214–215)
Referring to Benedict Anderson, Desai adds sports as an element of ‘imagined communities’, crafting of belonging to a place. The extract above succinctly summarises the spirit in which this book is written: an attempt to show what a sport can tell us about human condition and its relationship to a place.
For my course on the anthropology of sports in Africa, I assign this book to explore the themes of identity and place-making through sports. I imagine my South African students will hear the tones, moods and accents of Desai’s informants as they read the lengthy quotes in the book. Given the place that sports hold in South African society, I imagine students will be able to access similar sporting stories from their own communities and learning to interrogate the deeper meanings these may contain. Written in accessible language, ethnographically rich and historically grounded, Desai’s Wentworth has all the makings to inspire students to probe questions relevant to their own positionality in South Africa and in the world.