Yet studying and correspondence courses were not the only pastimes in the prison. Most of the prisoners were young and learned to find their fun where they could. Their ingenuity knew no bounds. They made dice from stolen pieces of soap, playing cards from scraps of paper, and chess pieces from lumps of driftwood salvaged from the shingle beach next to the quarry. Men from the Eastern Cape such as Marcus showed their fellow inmates how to play draughts, while inmates from the Transvaal introduced the game of ludo.
The prisoners did not expect the authorities to tolerate any of this. The regime did not want prisoners to enjoy a single moment on Robben Island; they were to have their spirits broken at every possible turn. Any attempt the inmates made to alleviate the tedium of the prison routine was cruelly stamped on. Regular searches were carried out and cells shaken down. The guards took sadistic joy in breaking up players’ games, and anything that the prisoners had created out of debris or for their own pleasure was immediately destroyed.
A cellmate of Tony’s had spent countless hours carving a pattern on to a prison-issue spoon. During a search, one guard shook the man’s bedding and the spoon fell on to the concrete floor. The warder picked it up, rolled it around and around in his hand and, clearly admiring the delicate and intricate carving, smiled, snapped it into little pieces, and then cast the pieces to the floor. Other prisoners suffered the same fate when they were discovered to have found ways to manufacture personal items from driftwood and pieces of slate.
There was only one game it proved virtually impossible to stop. It was simple to set up and easy to hide from the warders. Football-mad Tony Suze had only been on the island a short time when he and fellow fans of the game got the idea to bundle up and bind together a couple of the men’s shirts to create a makeshift football. If the guards came to search the cells, it could be quickly pulled apart.
Soon, the long, dull evenings were enlivened by enthusiastic cell games. Bedding was pushed to the sides and short five- and eight-a-side mini matches took place, one prisoner acting as look-out.
As time went on and more and more football players of a high standard came on to the island, the more passionate these matches became but still, in 1964, it was all completely ad hoc. In those early days, when Sedick, Tony, Lizo, and Marcus were on the island, it seemed utterly inconceivable that the regime would allow the prisoners to play organized sport – but it would not be too long before the men who had been brought together from across South Africa to serve their sentences on Robben Island would dare to dream.
3 The Struggle for Prisoners’ Rights
‘Sport was a human right. We prisoners had the right to spiritual and physical development.’ Isaac Mthimunye, Prisoner 898/63
For decades, football had been by far the most popular national game in non-white South Africa. Throughout the Twenties and Thirties an extensive web of black and coloured leagues had sprung up around the country and, as more blacks moved into the urban areas during the Thirties and Forties, a number of now-legendary clubs were born – the Orlando Pirates, the Mokone Swallows, and the Bucks among them. The players, though largely unpaid, became superstars and role models in their own neighbour-hoods, achieving on the pitch and bringing joy and self-respect to their communities off it.
By the Fifties, unlike white South African football supporters, black fans could also bask in the reflected glory of having their own world-famous football star – the legendary Steve ‘Kalamazoo’ Mokone. Though he had to leave the totally segregated South African leagues to make his name, and wait months for his international passport to be granted, Steve Mokone was an inspiration, even to black South Africans who had little interest in sport.
Mokone was already a national star playing for the Bucks club when scouts from England’s Coventry City Football Club persuaded him to play in Britain in 1955. Though he thrived on the pitch, he became disillusioned by the racism of English fans. Non-white faces were rare in British sport at that time, and the abuse heaped upon Mokone during matches by both players and fans was relentless.
After three years he moved to Holland to play for the premier-league Dutch side Heracles and, as their star striker, raised the club’s game, leading them to finish near the top of the Dutch Eredivisie (premier division) for two high-scoring, breathtaking seasons. He was so loved by the Dutch fans that a street in Amsterdam was named after him.
In 1961 Mokone made his most important move – to Torino, in Italy, where he became the first black footballer in the world to earn the then phenomenal salary of £10,000 a year. In his first game for the Turin club, Mokone immediately proved his value by scoring all five goals in his team’s 5-2 victory over Verona. Before long, the Italian sporting press had dubbed him ‘the Maserati of soccer players’.
Back home, black South Africans kept a close eye on his international success, and in their own amateur football league were themselves enjoying something of a golden age. In the early Fifties, matches in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Pretoria were attracting crowds of ten thousand; by the end of the decade, top black teams like Bush Bucks, the Wanderers, Zulu Royals, and City Blacks were regularly drawing attendances double that.
In 1956 the coloured Western Province team played a rare one-off friendly against the white Western Province side. The all-white team was the best in its league, having just won South Africa’s Currie Cup – a competition black and coloured teams were banned from entering. Captained by future cricket international Basil d’Oliveira, the coloured team trounced its white rivals 5-1. After eight years of apartheid, this win represented more than just victory on the field, and the rejoicing was epic.
Throughout the decade to follow, top English sides such as Manchester United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Tottenham Hotspur toured the country regularly. Their players might have been white, but at least they weren’t white South African, and the non-white sections of the South African stands echoed with roars of encouragement urging the English teams to put one over on apartheid’s players – and the black and coloured spectators weren’t disappointed. Occasionally, however, they had to pay the price of their support: it wasn’t unheard of for a non-white head in the crowd to be batoned and beaten by the security forces who policed the matches.
As it is throughout the world, football was central to the lives of many young South African men. Wherever there was an open space, inevitably, before long, there was a kickabout, so it wasn’t surprising that among the almost two thousand political prisoners who joined Tony, Marcus, Sedick, and Lizo on the island in the course of 1964 and 1965, there were many dozens of talented young players itching for a game.
Dimake Malepe was one of them. At just sixteen, he was one of the youngest prisoners on the island and also one of the best footballers. Before arriving at Robben Island, he played full-time in Cape Town and was soon nicknamed ‘Pro’ by his prison comrades. Others who were to make their mark early on were cousins and fellow trialists Mark Shinners and Dikgang Moseneke, who arrived on the island together, goalkeeper Sipho Tshabalala, and tough defender ‘Big Mo’ Masemola.
Indres Naidoo, too, although not himself a football player, would take on an important role in the prisoners’ crusade for the right to play. Imprisoned for sabotage, Indres had endured heavy torture while in detention but had never cracked. The authorities had a particular interest in him because most of the members of his family were active members of the ANC and well known to the security police.
The casual cell kickabouts that started in 1963 provided a vital diversion from the brutality of the prison and brought some much needed fun into the prisoners’ lives. The men may have been committed freedom fighters but they derived the same sense of achievement and release from football as any young man in any circumstances anywhere – and, again as with young men anywhere, the games became increasingly competitive.