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It was a moment with an emotional and historic charge. This year Nelson Mandela returned to Robben Island, where he was imprisoned for 18 years, to mark his 89th birthday and watch a remarkable sporting organisation being honoured for the part it once played in helping his fellow inmates to survive.
Forty years after detainees formed the Makana Football Association inside the island fortress, the club was officially recognised by Fifa, the sport's international governing body. Now the little-known story of how prisoners set up their own league under the noses of the warders is to be told in a feature film.
The players, many belonging to the banned African National Congress, had spoken out against racial discrimination or committed violent acts of defiance against the apartheid regime. Following the strict Fifa rules of a football league, they say, helped them cope with years of imprisonment without trial in the island jail off Cape Town.
The film, More Than Just a Game, which is to be released in South Africa in the next few weeks, celebrates the achievements of the players and the success many found in later life. Among the organisers and footballers involved were South Africa's future distinguished constitutional court judge Dikgang Moseneke and several ANC Cabinet ministers, including the late national hero Steve Tshwete. Inmates who secretly followed matches from the prison's isolation wing included Mandela himself, Walter Sisulu and President Thabo Mbeki's father, Govan Mbeki.
Chuck Korr, an American sports historian and visiting professor at England's De Montfort University, who co-produced the film with acclaimed South African film-maker Anant Singh, discovered the Makana Association's dog-eared documentation by chance in an academic archive in South Africa.
He found details of a three-division league and records of trophies and fines for infringing the rules.
"It is amazing. They followed every rule in the book," said Korr. "They were re-creating the mundaneness of the outside world, I think partly to comfort themselves."
More Than Just A Game stars Presley Chweneyagae, best known for his performance in the Oscar-winning Tsotsi, and tells the story through the eyes of five political prisoners, Anthony Suze, Liso Sitoto, Marcus Solomons, Sedick Isaacs and Mark Shinners, who all spent their youth imprisoned on the island.
"We played soccer on Robben Island with such passion and such detail - it was another way of survival," said Suze. "Somehow we found a Fifa book there and played according to Fifa rules. In a situation that sought to undermine us, it gave us hope. It is amazing to think a game that people take for granted all around the world was the very same game that gave a group of prisoners sanity and in a way glorified us."
At first, the men played covertly in their cells using balls made of paper, cardboard and rags. Then, in 1965, after sustained lobbying, the authorities allowed prisoners to play outside on Saturdays. The teams built their own goals and threw off their prison uniforms to put on team colours.
A binding constitution was drawn up by Suze and the referees even took Fifa exams, said Korr. Team managers organised fixtures by writing formal letters to each other, although they might have been in neighbouring cells.
"They loved football, of course," said Korr, "but it was also a way to show they could run things. It was about dignity and survival."
Prisoners in the isolation wing were able to follow the progress of teams through a secret communication system and they found a way to actually watch many of the games, until the authorities built a wall that blocked their view.
FROM PRISON TO POWER
WALTER SISULU
One of the fathers of the modern South African state as founder member of the ANC Youth League. Sent to Robben Island in 1963. He died four years ago.
DIKGANG MOSENEKE
Born 1947, served 10 years on Robben Island. Helped to set up the Makana Football Association. Now a judge in the Constitutional Court.
STEVE TSHWETE
He served as Sports Minister under Nelson Mandela and died in 2002. After the ANC was banned, he went underground. He was captured in 1963 and sentenced to 15 years for sabotage. Mandela said he made his "incarceration a building stone for the future".
- Observer
