Thandokazi Silosini
The Misty Mount youth have a deeply rooted passion for the game of pool as a sport. In this article I show how playing pool in Misty Mount is evolving beyond being a tavern pastime into a beloved sporting culture. This enduring love for the game has led to the growth of a strong pool community, with players from ten surrounding villages in Ward 9 coming together to celebrate their shared passion for the sport in their weekly Sunday tournaments. In this article, I explore the rich sport culture in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape, and the emergence of pool as a sport in Misty Mount. In doing so, I also demonstrate the relationship between sport and gendered livelihood strategies that emerge from the Misty Mount pool tournament.
The Eastern Cape has a rich sporting culture and history. Some of South Africa’s favourite and most popular sports have strong ties to the Eastern Cape. The province can be divided into three sporting regions linked to rugby, cricket, boxing and soccer. The Buffalo City region is notorious for its culture of boxing with East London as the boxing capital of the country. Many of South Africa’s champion boxers who have competed on the world stage are a product of East London Boxing Clubs. Even the late great Tat’uNelson Mandela is known as a formidable boxer as a result of his time in East London. The Internationally acclaimed film Knuckle City (2019) narrates the story of the East London Township of Mdantsane through boxing and shows how the sport is a part of the fabric of the city as young men from Mdantsane take to boxing like turtles take to the sea.
Further west, when you cross the Fish River into Sarah Baartman District all the way to Nelson Mandela Bay, the Frontier County boys take to rugby as their favourite pastime. It is no wonder that some of South Africa’s best rugby players come from the Eastern Cape including the captain of the National Rugby team, the springboks, Siya Kolisi who is from Port Elizabeth. On this side of the Kei river however, Soccer is the popular sport of choice. Young boys in rural areas play soccer from childhood. Even the school sport programmes have soccer as the most common sporting code played in schools. Over the years the Department of Sports Recreation Arts and Culture has worked with local schools and village soccer teams to support the many soccer teams that play with each other across the rural areas of the Eastern Cape. The government even sponsors and encourages the elderly to participate in sports for their health such as the old women’s soccer tournament of Mhlakulo, Tsolo.
At its peak, Mthatha was arguably the capital of Eastern Cape football. With its own soccer club, the Mthatha Bucks nee Bush Bucks Football Club and two Soccer Stadiums, the Mthatha Stadium and Rotary Stadium in Ngangelizwe Township. The Golden Egg Stadium was demolished and replaced by the Mthatha Plaza shopping mall in 2007 and the new Mthatha Stadium was built to be launched in time for the 2010 FIFA world cup that was hosted in South Africa. Despite its historic affinity to football Mthatha as a sports venue is not used often. However, the culture of sport and soccer lives through the many young men across the rural areas of the former Transkei including Misty Mount.
It is common cause that sport is one of the best ways to engage young people and keep them out of trouble. Often when strategies to combat drug use and criminal activity among the youth are discussed, investing in sport and recreation activities is highlighted as a possible solution. Indeed, many soccer teams and sporting events have been started in rural areas for this very reason. I noticed an interesting sporting culture in Misty Mount where pool is a popular unifying sport for the youth. Although many, including myself, thought of pool as a bar/tavern sport because of its popularity in such establishments, in Misty Mount, it seems to have a greater significance other than being a favourite pastime at the local taverns. The young men of Misty Mount and other surrounding villages have taken their casual games at local taverns where they hang out and formed a competitive tournament wherein their skills are displayed and money is made not only by the players but the local communities as well.
Figure 1: Youth gathered for pool tournament in Misty Mount (Taken by Thandokazi Silosini August 2024)
Young men from the ten surrounding villages including; Misty Mount, Cambridge, New Bright, Mhlabeni, Church of God, Mdlankomo, and Ntlaza meet at a tavern to compete against each other in a pool tournament. In October 2022, the young men from Misty Mount and a few surrounding villages in Ward 9 began coming together as groups from these villages to play against each other. Each village has a team of players representing that village. All ten teams must pay R200 to participate. R100 goes toward the prize money which is taken home by the winning team and another R100 goes towards paying the hosting tavern for each week. The team from the hosting village only pays R100. This means that each week R1900 is collected, with R900 being used to pay for the venue and R1000 which is the prize money that the winning team takes home.
The tournament takes place weekly. Every Sunday teams and supporters from each of the participating villages meet at the chosen tavern for that week to play. The tournament venue rotates to a tavern in one of the participating villages each week. The tournament participation fee of R1900 is not the only money that is made during the tournament. Tavern owners, spaza shop owners as well as the hosting village folk (primarily women) also get an opportunity to make money when the tournament comes to their village. Nomvelo’s Tavern is the hosting venue when the tournament is being held in Misty Mount. This means that every tenth Sunday Nomvelo’s tavern receives R900 for hosting the people's tournament.
Furthermore, the influx of people who come to the tavern to participate, watch and or just enjoy the festivities of the tournament means that Nomvelo receives an influx of business that day. Moreover, the tournament also has opened up livelihood opportunities for people in the community as they are able to have stalls where they sell food and snacks at the tournament. For the most part it is women who usually have stalls where they sell food and snacks like fried liver, Russians, potato chips, chicken feet and more. Mam’ Nothusile is one of the women in Misty Mount who has a stall wherein she sells fried chicken livers, Sheep liver, and chips.
The Misty Mount pool tournament is an example of an organic grass roots formation with massive potential for growth. The young men of this area have taken an activity that otherwise would go unnoticed and used it to create an opportunity for making a living for the many idle young men and the women to have a marketplace. Every tavern has a pool table and every village has a tavern or three where a lot of young men spend time. It is easy to see how playing pool would easily remain a peripheral activity that gets lost in the daily mundane details of rural living. However, the pool tournament displays the way in which the young men in Misty Mount, Libode have organised themselves around the sport and created the opportunity for the display of skill and flow of money for the community.
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