Potent Pastimes

The unifying theme that runs throughout this book is the different ways in which sport and leisure practices during certain historical eras were connected with wider concerns in Afrikaner society and how they contributed substantially to shaping the Afrikaner world of sport and leisure.
Social history has until now proven to be the most suitable point of departure to pursue the wider connections between sport, leisure and society or explore the interconnections between sport and leisure on the one hand and Afrikaner political and cultural projects on the other. While standard nationalistic interpretations of Afrikaner political history have withered away since the advent of the African National Congress in 1994, in rugby the story of the fame and glory of the Springboks and their grounding in Afrikaner historical memory has carried on largely uninterrupted.