Through the good times and the tough times, when the country's politics was played out on its fields, football has always been a part of life in Johannesburg.

JOHNNY “Black Sunday” Masegela, one of the legends at Orlando Pirates football club, wishes he could turn back the clock to the good old days when he and his friends used to play on the streets of Soweto.

The ball was made of his mother’s stockings and some plastic bags, or if they were lucky they used a tennis ball, but Masegela still longs for those days.

“Playing football then here in Joburg was the most exciting thing because many people were migrating to the city and when we used to play there would always be spectators watching us. Back then we didn’t have boots or soccer balls and we played from the morning until late in the evening. We used to play the famous match, change three-drop-three (if a team scores three goals the match goes to the second half and is over when a team scores six goals). We didn’t know about watches but the good thing about this is that we saw many goals scored,” says Masegela.

“Everyone was a coach, there were no substitutions and we at times ended up playing for whole match. We used to do everything for ourselves and didn’t depend on anyone, which was good. Even though I started playing in 1967 football in Johannesburg has been buzzing since the early days.”

In fact, the history of football in Johannesburg is almost as long as the history of the gold rush town itself.

Long history of Joburg football
The beautiful game has been played in Joburg since 1888, two years after gold was found on the reef. At the time it was mostly amateur soccer but it was still very competitive, according to Johannesburg, One Hundred Years, a 1986 centenary publication. "In the hundred years since Johannesburg was founded, few sports have undergone such dramatic changes as soccer."

As different people made Joburg their home, clubs of various descriptions were formed, suggesting a very active sporting community. In 1896 Indian football clubs united to form the Transvaal Indian Football Association, says sahistory.org. Ten years later, in 1906, black clerks from KwaZulu-Natal who worked at the Simmer and Jack mine in Joburg, formed the Old Natalians.

It was just a matter of time before formal soccer bodies began to take shape. In 1929 the Johannesburg Bantu Football Association was formed; in 1932 the South African Football Association (Safa) was formed; a year later the South African Bantu Football Association and the South African Coloured Football Association were founded. Then, in 1935, blacks, Indians and coloureds pooled their bodies to form the Transvaal Inter-Race Soccer Board. New national competitions that electrified crowds of 5 000 to 10 000 people in Johannesburg and Durban became more frequent and popular.

In the late 1930s and 1940s more and more people migrated to the City of Gold and in 1937 Orlando Pirates, the first of Soweto’s big clubs, was formed. Moroka Swallows followed in 1947. This made black football matches more popular and saw large crowds attending.

In the 1950s African footballers were faced with bigger challenges. Securing playing fields from hostile white authorities was not easy at all. Whites were playing in their own club structures, feeding the "whites-only ” national team. Blacks were left to play the game among themselves, denied facilities and funding.

Yet despite the hardships these troubled times bring back fond memories for Bra Steve Ramashu owner of Mighty Solutions Football Club from Meadowlands in Soweto. Playing a football match back then was more exciting, he says. “Bandages were used as soccer boots and there were no proper soccer balls. I remember when I joined Sello Stone Callies and that was the first time I saw a soccer ball. Teams back then were formidable and the team spirit was always there as we played all day long,”
“And we had our own development without any facilities. We had divisions from A to F and we produced good players compared to what we have now. People enjoyed watching us play, the grounds were always packed with people standing on the touchline and sitting on top of their cars just to watch us doing some tricks”

Soweto teams
Football was very popular in Soweto with all the sections of the vast township having their own team, which would compete against other sections on weekends. The colourful history is reflected in the names of the popular teams: Rockville Hungry Lions, Rockville Santos, Blackpool, Sello Stone Callies, Shamrocks, Zebras and Roman Rangers.

In 1951 the South African African Football Association, the South African Indian Football Association and the South African Coloured Football Association came together to form the South African Soccer Federation, which opposed apartheid in sport. In 1952 Safa, representing whites only, was admitted to FIFA. Four years later Safa changed its name to the Football Association of Southern Africa (FASA) and under pressure from FIFA deleted “the racist exclusionary clause from its constitution”, according to SAhistory.org.

In 1958 the South African Bantu Football Association affiliated with FASA and FIFA subsequently officially recognised FASA as the sole governing body of soccer in South Africa. The following year the National Football League (NFL) was launched as the country's first entirely professional club league - but it was reserved for whites.

In the same year, 1959, Orlando Stadium in Orlando East, Soweto was opened with a capacity of 24 000.
Shortly thereafter, in 1961, FIFA suspended FASA, forcing it to include several black players within its structure. In frustration, black, Indian and coloured officials in the anti-apartheid South African Soccer Federation formed the anti-racist professional South African Soccer League.

Football supports sports boycott
From 1961 to 1966 the anti-racist South African Soccer League demonstrated that racially integrated professional football was hugely popular. Supporters' clubs formed around the country, with women playing an active role. (Women's football started in the early 1960s, but gained acceptance only after the end of apartheid.)

Politically, the sports boycott movement that played an important role in the fall of apartheid relied heavily on the support of football players, fans and organisations.

Isolated from world football from 1961 to 1992 (with a one-year reprieve in 1963), South Africa maintained tenuous links with the major changes that revolutionised world football in the 1970s and 80s. The belated advent of television in South Africa sparked football's commercial boom.

Sponsorships increased substantially and top players began to earn a living wage.

Many of South Africa’s top players emerged from the dusty township playing fields of Johannesburg during these times.

Jomo Sono, founder of Jomo Cosmos FC, Patrick “Ace” Ntsoelenge and Kaizer Motaung all played in the North American Soccer League in the United States. Sono played with Pele and Franz Beckenbauer at the New York Cosmos and Motaung returned home to form Kaizer Chiefs, another team based in Soweto but with a following that reaches beyond South Africa’s borders.

Cracks in the edifice of apartheid emerged in the mid-1980s. Club owner Kaizer Motaung teamed up with Abdul Bhamjee and Cyril Kobus to form the National Soccer League (NSL). Breaking ties with its predecessor, the National Professional Soccer League (controlled by George Thabe), the NSL adopted non-racial principles and backed the sports boycott movement.

Unity process begins as apartheid ends
Beginning in the late 1980s, as the African National Congress and the National Party laid the foundations for a negotiated end to apartheid, antagonistic football associations discussed the formation of a single, nonracial controlling body. This “unity” process accelerated in the late 1980s and led to the creation in December 1991 of an integrated South African Football Association.
Soccer City was built in 1987 just outside Soweto with seating for 80 000 football fans, making it the largest stadium in the country.

In 1991, with the apartheid system beginning to be demolished, a new non-racial South African Football Association was formed. Domestic soccer was reorganised along non-racial, democratic principles at last. In July 1992 South Africa re-joined international football by hosting its first fully representative international soccer match at King's Park Stadium in Durban. The South African national team, later to be dubbed Bafana Bafana (the boys), defeated Cameroon 1-0.

In 1995 local heroes Orlando Pirates made history by becoming the first team in the country to win the African Champions League. “It was just two years after I stopped playing for Pirates and was at Wits University at the time. It was a good thing to see and sometimes I whished to be part of the team at the time,” says Masegela.

The following year the country hosted the African Cup of Nations and the national team went on to become champions of Africa after beating Tunisia 2-0 at the Soccer City. In the same year the Premier Soccer League was launched. Five Joburg-based teams – Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, Jomo Cosmos, Bidvest Wits and Moroka Swallows – are currently involved in the PSL.
In 1997 South Africa qualified for the 1998 World Cup with a 1-nil victory over Congo at the Soccer City, but the team went out in the first round of the World Cup in France the following year.

And who can forget Saturday, 15 May 2004 when South Africa won the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup™?