Undoing Maradona: Subalterns of Sport for Development.

Even before Abongile was born, his father named him Maradona. Such prophetic naming holds within the lingering desire of an oppressed man to rid himself of his subalternity. While the charm of professional soccer stirs such emotions, the traction of sport among the poor is used as a 'hook' to attract them to development programmes. Branded as sports-for-development-and-peace, SDP projects are widespread across South African townships. Ethnography of an SDP project-in-the-making involving Abongile/Maradona is presented to examine how individual aspirations find expression in projects of collective development. The history of the agrarian labour economy of the Western Cape provides the scaffolding for the social relations and altruistic motivations over which this project unfolds. Despite explicit claims to attract at-risk youth, SDP practices entice those convinced of sport's moralizing potential. SDP discourse represents the visions and ideologies of those wanting to develop the inferior (sub) others (alterns), while obscuring the predicaments of those being developed. As fate would have it, Abongile could not become as 'good' at soccer as Diego and SDP's moral politics would not have him be as 'bad' as aspects of the real Maradona's personal life. As a subaltern of SDP, Maradona is undone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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