SOCCER STORIES, SOUTH AFRICA

SOCCER STORIES

SOUTH AFRICA

(ITALIANO: una storia sudafricana che ci viene raccontata dal fotoreporter s4c Alfons Rodriguez (Barcellona) e che intreccia temi sociali quali integrazione sociale e razziale, lotta all’aids ed alla discriminazione sessuale. Ancora una volta lo sport, il calcio (alla vigilia dei Mondiali sudafricani) è la cornice per storie importanti)

Three ways to use the football to improve the social situation of the lowest and affected classes of the South Africans.  A very different point of view from the one that is going to be of the country during the celebration of the World Cup 2010.

Just less than one month from the World Cup, South Africa only lives for the football. There is no corner of the country without clocks that participants peel the countdown, vests and flags of the teams, balls of all the imaginable sizes or “vuvuzelas” – the long trumpets of plastic that they deafen in the local fields-. But the most popular sport among the black South Africans comes being used for years in projects that seek to improve the life of the most disadvantaged.

In Gaansbai, close to the bay where tourists of the whole world pay fortunes for seeing  the white sharks, an initiative supported by the Foundation Marcos Senna will keep away 4.000 minors of the streets of Masakhane’s wretched suburb to transmit values of living together and healthy habits.

In Gugulethu, township near Cape Town,  a match it is played between two teams of lesbians, group that finds in the sport a refuge opposite to  aggressions of which it is an object – that the terrible corrective violations include-. Alexandra, Johannesburg’s black township, will receive during the World Cup one the Football for Hope Festival, supported by the FIFA, who will bring together 32 teams of street football of five continents. A communicator prepares young men and women from the suburb to cover the event as journalists, while a project: Football for local Hope teaches to prevent  the infection of the VIH to the children of the  most affected country by  AIDS of the whole planet.

Three different histories in which soccer opens a door for the hope, beyond winning or losing a match.

BY ALFONS RODRÍGUEZ