South Africa
where will south africa's 'soccer queens' be in 2010?
July 22, 2005: A symposium in Johannesburg is told how all forms of media coverage have been portraying soccer as a male only sport.

As South African soccer fans remain on a permanent 'high' since the announcement that the country would be hosting the 2010 soccer showpiece, all forms of mainstream sports media have been focussing on the sport and its 'Soccer Kings' with a fevered intensity.

However, as Zanele Muholi and Phumla Masuku of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW) recently stated at a symposium on soccer hosted by Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), the way the sport has been constructed and marketed has been in exclusively heterosexist. They argued that there is a male-oriented discourse which at best patronizes the existence of women soccer players, and at worst uses their presence as fodder for more insidious homophobic discussions.

FEW's roundtable discussion on South Africa's 'Soccer Queens' kicked off the two-day symposium in order to highlight the unique challenges that women soccer players-60% of whom identify as lesbian-face in a sport that celebrates men and masculinity. Muholi and Masuku focused particularly on the sexual, physical, and emotional abuses women soccer players endure if they want to pursue their dreams of playing professional soccer.

Muholi's anger was visible as she described not only the high rates of sexual harassment and intimidation that both heterosexual and lesbian players face at the hands of their mostly male coaches, but also the lack of support these women get if and when they go public with the abuse.

Additionally, Muholi pointed out that women soccer players are largely poor, do not get paid for their talents and play, and receive little to no private or public sponsorship for their clubs and teams. Unlike with their male counterparts, if they sustain injuries during a match, they do not have access to the necessary medical care which puts their abilities to perform and rise in the sport at a severe disadvantage.

Muholi and Masuku's research revealed that while lesbians play soccer for a variety of reasons that go beyond the love of the game to include finding a way to distress and to heal, the soccer field has became a very unsafe space for them. In fact, as Muholi commented, "women are expected to carry out sexual favours for their male coaches...harassment has led to pregnancy and while for most of the players despite the soccer field where they train is supposed to be used as subtle spaces where they keep away from the streets, distress, heal, they end up being ill-treated."

According to Masuku, who was a star player for the Soweto Ladies in the early to mid-1990s and who currently coaches the Chosen Few (South Africa's only all lesbian soccer team), women players are systematically excluded from mainstream professional soccer at all levels, because "the limited freedom of expression and of movement there. Women find themselves having to conform to some structures set by men's teams and at the end of the day they will never get the same recognition as male soccer players."

FEW's dissatisfaction with the mainstream soccer world initially started when SABC aired a search for South Africa's 'Sokka Kings'. As an all lesbian organization, FEW began to research and document the experiences and realities of the country's 'Soccer Queens'.

What FEW researchers Muholi and Masuku found were incredibly talented 'soccer queens' like Gloria Hlalele and Puleng Mbatha, both of whom were invited and shared their experiences during the symposium.

While they both started playing soccer at an early age, Hlalele was eight and Mbatha nine - they both remain marginalized in the soccer world.

It was Hlalele who started Soweto Ladies, the most recognized women's soccer team in the country in the early 1990s, and she also was a principal instigator in establishing Banyana Banyana, South Africa's national ladies team. Yet, in her "professional years" as a player, she has faced enormous gender and sexual discrimination that has left her without the resources and support to pursue her extraordinary talent as a soccer player.

In the 1980s, Hlalele was kept from playing professionally for a men's soccer team due to gender, despite the fact that she was much admired by the country's top players. She was also banned from playing for Soweto Ladies in 1994 because she publicly charged her male coach with sexual harassment when on tour in Sweden. Currently, she is being kept from coaching a women's team because of her sexuality. She firmly believes that it was only once her lesbianism was "discovered", that she was told she needed a certificate and education in order to continue coaching. This is despite the fact that she has trained some of today's most recognized and talented "soccer kings".

Puleng says her experiences in Alabama, USA, were different from what she was used to here at home. "Their players are treated decently and they are paid really well hence you find more women taking part in the higher ranks but here at home you find that women don't even get there because they are denied the chances at early stages. Women love soccer so much that they will sacrifice everything only to be ridiculed by male coaches but still play till their 30s. From there, there really is nowhere else for them to go. It 's the end"

Quite recently, the head honcho of South African Football Association (SAFA) women affairs, Ria Ledwaba, charged that just because women can play soccer doesn't necessarily warrant that they should ditch their matronly tendencies.

By Musa Ngubane and Sabine Neidhardt
Source: Behind the Mask