Golden bulb covered with a dark cloth: memories of undocumented athletes in South Africa

Abstract

Sports in South Africa have evolved into an arena for self-discovery, a place of self-revelation. Through sports, particularly athletics, heroes emerged who not only achieved for themselves and their communities, but also served as golden bulbs, flickering lights of hope, inspiration, and motivation to the community. Despite the heroic roles played by athletes, sporting memories of unique and gallant characters remain self-stored, exposed to all natural disasters such as loss, rapid deterioration, inaccessibility, thus turning into golden bulbs covered in a black cloth. This qualitative study adopted oral testimony triangulated with content analysis to explore the memories of undocumented athletics heroes in South Africa. Snowball sampling was adopted to help locate historically excluded athletics heroes and sheroes. The study revealed that athletes' houses have been transformed into museums encompassing all of their running memories, displayed all over their living rooms, with only a few athletes overseeing forgotten historical memories of most legendary runners and, in some cases, without specialised handling, compounded by the fact that these archival memories are only accessible to those fortunate enough to be close to these legendary runners. The study recommends that these memories be included in the national archival system so that they can be accessed by the public, as a large portion of athletes' historical memories are unaccounted for and thus inaccessible.