Today in History: South Africa was readmitted to Fifa
The readmission came only four days before the first match after isolation.
After nearly 30 years of exclusion from Fifa, South Africa was readmitted to the Federation on 3 July, 1992, five days before our first match after readmission.
In May 1955, a Fifa committee had ruled that the South African Football Association (Safa), representing only the white minority, was not a ‘real national association’. A 1956 Fifa commission of inquiry upheld this decision. However the commission accepted Safa’s argument that the racial separation of sport was South Africa’s ‘tradition and custom’.
Fifa’s preferred approach was to encourage Safa to merge with the South African Soccer Federation (SASF), which represented Black football clubs. However, Safa was determined to maintain its racial policy and exclude all other races from representing South Africa in international sports. Safa managed to retain its membership of Fifa by renaming itself Football Association of Southern Africa (Fasa) and removing all its racial clauses from its constitution. Fasa also used co-option to get membership of Black clubs to support its claim that it was a non-racial association.
Direct government intervention to keep racial separation in sports drove Fifa to put more pressure on the South African government by threatening that the country would be suspended from the organisation if it did not stop intervening in football. In 1958, more pressure was put on the South African government to deracialise sport, but the government remained unmoved by the growing international pressure against apartheid sport.
In 1961, South Africa was expelled from Fifa. However, in 1963, South Africa was readmitted to Fifa but was expelled once more after proposing to send an all-white national team to play in the 1966 Fifa World Cup™ and a black national team to play in the1970 Fifa World Cup™.
South Africa was readmitted for a second time on 3 July 1992. In the light of international recognition, the new Safa organised a post-isolation match with the Cameroonian national team.
Only four years later, South African football’s finest moment came when the country managed to win the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, ousting Tunisia by 2–0 in the final.
You can relive the moment here:
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