SOUTH AFRICA: Bleached Bleachers

South Africans of all shades are ardent sports fans, but at sporting events, as everywhere else, the blacks and the whites are rigidly segregated. Herded into their Jim Crow section (generally about a tenth of a stadium’s capacity) at international matches, the non-whites frequently show their resentment by cheering loudly for any team not composed of South Africans. Three weeks ago, at a rugby match between the British Lions and South Africa’s own crack Springboks, the black cheers for Britain almost drowned out white enthusiasm for the local club.

This week the visiting British Lions are matched with another South African team, the Junior Springboks, at a game scheduled to—celebrate the opening of a vast new football stadium in Bloemfontein. But this time the cheers for Britain, if any, will be only sporadic. The city fathers of Bloemfontein voted to install no Jim Crow section and instead to ban all non-whites from the stadium. As is usual in South Africa, this was said to be in the blacks’ own interest: “The non-Europeans,” vouchsafed one Bloemfontein councilman, “derive the greatest benefit from taking part in sport, not watching it.”