There will be no penalties and no offside. Friendship, respect and fairness count more than goals. That is something on which both teams agree. The young players sit on the ground and negotiate the rules. The game with no referee begins. The strong wind swirls the red sand around the football ground in Soshanguve, the largest township near the South African capital Pretoria. That doesn’t put off the large number of young football enthusiasts. It’s the day for street football. The participants – children and juveniles – have come to the event that the local youth forum has organized with support from the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ). Their number grows week by week.
The Youth Development through Football (YDF) project is getting young people off the streets. The townships have many problems – crime, violence, AIDS and a high rate of teenage pregnancies. “We utilize young people’s passion for football and combine it with educational measures,” emphasizes Gerald Guskowski of the GTZ. Football thereby becomes a path to peace and the renunciation of violence and a tool to combat drugs, poverty and AIDS. “Our activities give these youngsters new prospects in life,” says Guskowski. That’s how it was for Calvin Magubane. He was expelled from university, became a member of a gang and no longer had any idea of what to do with his life. “Street football gave me new self-confidence. Now I know who I am and where I want to go,” says Calvin. Today he organizes street football for the youth forum in Soshanguve. “I want to be a model for the younger players that I coach and help them to overcome the social injustices. We discuss problems very openly.” Meanwhile Calvin also works as a coach for the Gauteng Sports Council. He has saved money and wants to complete his sporting studies. Learning for life is what street football is all about. “We hope the children and young people will take home with them the positive social behaviour they have learnt on the football field,” says 21-year-old Mpho Ramela, himself a highly talented player and one of the youngsters’ coaches.
Working on behalf of the German Federal Government, the GTZ began its activities in the field of Development through Football in South Africa in 2007. Since then it has had a number of successes with street football projects. Together with its main partner, the South African Department of Sport and Recreation, the GTZ chooses local partner organizations that are already active in this area and supports them in developing their activities. Ideas and experiences are exchanged through an international network. In 2007, projects initially began in the South African provinces of Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape as well as in Pretoria. New projects are currently being set up in Western Cape and in townships in the Johannesburg region. At the beginning of 2008, the first projects were also begun in Ghana, the host country of the 2008 Africa Cup. The GTZ plans to expand its activities to a total of ten African countries. Soon fairness will be winning among youngsters playing street football in Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique.
www.za-ydf.org
