Museum traces struggles of South African players abroad

South African Darius Dhlomo darted from the dressing room and hid before his debut for his new Dutch team because under the apartheid regime he had left behind the blacks and whites were forbidden to change together.

That was back in 1958 when he was about to make his first appearance for Heracles. Three years earlier Steve Mokone, one of the first black South African footballers to play abroad, was told by his Coventry City manager to "get a job in a circus".

An exhibition in Cape Town organised to coincide with the World Cup presents the lives of South African footballers who played outside the country -- the racism and alienation they experienced in Europe but also the challenge they made to apartheid at home simply by playing with whites.

The lives of pioneering players such as Dhlomo and Mokone are shown alongside those of Lucas Radebe, who signed for Leeds United in 1994, and Bafana Bafana midfielder Stephen Pienaar, who plays for Everton in the English Premier League.

Soweto-born Radebe, who captained South Africa in the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, made 200 appearances for Leeds over nine years and was so popular at the Yorkshire club that part of a stand has been named after him at their Elland Road ground.

Among the personal histories are also tragic stories such as that of winger Albert Johanneson who played at Leeds more than 30 years before Radebe.

He was the club's top scorer with 15 goals in the 196364 season and in 1965 was the first black player to feature in an FA Cup final but he also suffered years of racist abuse and died a penniless alcoholic in a council flat in Leeds in 1995.

"We Leeds fans threw him bananas. We didn't know it was racist back then.. we thought he liked it in our ignorance," an unnamed Leeds fan is quoted as saying in the show.

"The idea of the exhibition was to look at discrimination in football but also more widely at prejudice in society, as what was happening in sport was a reflection of society's attitudes," said Virgil Slade, of Cape Town's District Six Museum.

"Each biography is intended to trigger thought and provoke discussion."

Among the profiles is that of Eudy Simelane, the openly gay former South Africa women's international footballer who was raped and murdered in 2008 in the Kwa Tembe township where she grew up -- a fate that highlights the violence faced by gays and lesbians in South Africa.

"We tried to avoid a black and white dichotomy. We wanted a balance and so we also include white players who experienced xenophobia abroad and women players such as Simelane," said Slade.