Robert James Adonis has spent nearly four decades watching students walk through the doors of UCT’s Sports Centre. As a facility attendant for more than two decades, he has become a steady presence in the lives of athletes and recreational players alike. What he has observed is progress mixed with persistent shortfalls. “The more money you pump into clubs, the more results you will get,” he said, reflecting on the gap between well-funded and under-resourced sporting codes. “They get sponsors; they get support. That’s the difference.”
Adonis sees talent among black and coloured students that remains underdeveloped. “There is talent in our black children and our coloured children,” he said. “We are supposed to look after them.” Yet he also recognises something deeper than competition in what happens at the Sports Centre. Students arrive stressed from lectures and assignments, and sport becomes a refuge. “There’s a reason why sport is here. When they come and play sports, it helps them.” For Adonis, the facilities are spaces of belonging, not merely venues for winning.
As South Africa marks the 50th anniversary of the 16 June 1976 student uprisings, voices across UCT’s sporting community are grappling with a question that connects past and present: how much has sport advanced transformation, inclusion and access since apartheid? The answers reveal a landscape of significant change alongside stubborn barriers.
Edwina Brooks, now director in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor, arrived at UCT in 1990 as the country entered political transition. Nelson Mandela had just been released from prison, but apartheid’s institutional legacy remained pervasive. “It was a completely different place,” she recalled. “We were in the minority as black students, and many aspects of campus culture felt alienating. You didn’t feel like you were at an African university.” A social work student who graduated in 1994, Brooks found community through sport. She competed in athletics before becoming one of the pioneering members of UCT’s women’s football team, a sport largely absent from university campuses in the early 1990s.
“There was very little women’s soccer at universities in the early 1990s,” she said. “A few of us got together and helped start the team.” The early years brought crushing defeats, sometimes by margins of 17 or 18 goals against established Western Province League clubs. Yet the team persisted. Supported by volunteer coaches and driven by a desire to create opportunities for women, they gradually built competitive strength. More importantly, they became part of a broader movement for sporting and social transformation.
“We felt like we were part of a transformative process,” Brooks said. “Football was already having conversations about reunification and sport for all. It felt meaningful to be involved in that.” Today she sees a vastly different university, with changed student demographics, expanded opportunities for women athletes, and the formal dismantling of apartheid-era barriers. “We’ve definitely come a long way,” she said.
Associate Professor David Maralack, chairperson of UCT’s Sports Council, grew up in Steenberg during the 1970s and 1980s in a society where political gatherings were restricted and apartheid fragmented communities. “Sport clubs became places where people could gather and engage with community issues when there were very few opportunities to do so,” he said. These clubs served as community hubs where people developed leadership skills, organised collectively and built solidarity. Sport, he argued, was the one thing that allowed communities to integrate and fostered a collective spirit.
As a student during apartheid, Maralack experienced the contradictions directly. Racial barriers limited access to facilities and opportunities, yet sport remained one of the few spaces capable of bridging divisions. “We still identified ourselves as UCT students, even when we weren’t always allowed to participate equally,” he said. He credits his generation’s resilience as a key lesson. “We trained in the streets, on beaches and in forests. We didn’t wait for perfect facilities. We worked with what we had.”
Today he channels that philosophy through Athletics for Community Transformation, a volunteer initiative supporting talented athletes from disadvantaged communities. “We’ve had young athletes competing at national championships without proper equipment,” he said. “Sometimes all they need is a pair of spikes and an opportunity.” Maralack advocates for stronger development pathways, expanded scholarships, improved high-performance programmes and deeper partnerships with alumni and sponsors. “Sport can be a powerful branding asset for UCT, but more importantly, it can change lives.”
Phelo Ngobese, Student Sports Union vice-chairperson, third-year Bachelor of Commerce accounting student and netball player, represents a generation benefiting from opportunities previous generations fought to create. She believes UCT has made significant strides toward inclusion. “From what I’ve seen, sport at UCT offers a very wide variety of sporting codes,” she said. “We have about 36 official sports clubs, which really speaks to inclusion because there is something for everyone.”
The university has created pathways for both elite athletes and recreational participants. In netball, high-performance pathways exist alongside social leagues that welcome players regardless of ability. “If you’re really trying to be a student-athlete, there’s a high-performance pathway. But there are also social leagues where there is no discrimination based on ability. If you want to play for the love of the game, you can do that too.”
By contrast, access remains uneven across sporting codes. While some sports are relatively affordable, others require significant financial commitments beyond the reach of many students. Water polo, yachting and other water sports exemplify this divide. “Some sporting codes have high affiliation fees, and those fees don’t cover all the costs incurred during the year,” Ngobese explained. “Students often have to pay significant amounts out of their own pockets.” For many students reliant on NSFAS funding, those costs create real barriers.
“There are significant barriers to entry, not because of the colour of your skin itself, but because of the effects of apartheid and the fact that historically black families often don’t have the same disposable income as those who predominantly participate in some of these sports,” Ngobese said. She believes transformation cannot be measured solely by participation figures. “It’s about whether students can actually afford to stay involved and compete.”
Despite their different generations and experiences, Brooks, Maralack, Ngobese and Adonis share a conviction: transformation is not an event but a continuous process. Brooks sees the legacy of 16 June in the courage of students who continue to challenge inequality. “The legacy of 1976 gave us courage,” she said. “It taught us to ask questions, challenge injustice and imagine a better future.”
Maralack believes the resilience of earlier generations remains vital. “If we can combine that resilience with opportunity, support and a sense of collective purpose, the future of UCT Sport is incredibly bright.”
Ngobese hopes her generation can build a more visible and accessible sporting culture that attracts greater investment. “Our mission has been to increase visibility and engagement,” she said. “We believe that by getting the word out about sport at UCT, we can attract sponsors and show people that UCT Sport is something worth investing in.”
For Adonis, the work remains unfinished. “We fight for our rights, and we’re still fighting today,” he said. “My feeling is that we’re supposed to be in a better environment; in a better system.” He holds firm, though, to what sport means for students who arrive stressed and leave restored. “Students come first. You must give freedom and space to the students because it’s important.” Whether the next fifty years deliver on that promise is the question UCT Sport has yet to answer.