What started as a breakthrough in mending religious tensions many years ago, has evolved into a unifying platform for many people across the globe. However, let us give you some context and a bit of background before we jump straight into it. Back in the year 2000, Sean and Brendan Tuohey travelled to Northern Ireland to serve as coaches in Basketball clinics during a summer camp. Upon their arrival, they realised that they came to a society which was divided by the hostility of two different religious groups. To their amazement, those religious tensions did not matter anymore whenever a basketball was placed on the court for the kids to play and have fun with. It was at that moment that the Tuohey brothers saw firsthand the unifying power of sports. The two brothers then began to use basketball as a medium to not only transform but to unify people of different religious beliefs and creeds.
During their time in Northern Ireland, a police commissioner they had befriended began to open their eyes to the power of what the very same concept could achieve in post-apartheid South Africa where the people were still divided. To cut a long story short, the Tuohey brothers formalised a non-profit organisation called PeacePlayers in 2001 in South Africa, which has now become a global network, and which has managed to achieve great social impact over the last 23 years.
Now that you have an idea of who and what PeacePlayers is, let’s dive into their most recent work.
July is Mandela month in South Africa and people from all walks of life use this period to focus on good deeds to commemorate and celebrate the legacy of the late Nelson Mandela. To play their part in this, PeacePlayers International came into partnership with FHI 360, a global research and resource mobilisation organisation, the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Sports Diplomacy Division and Brand South Africa. Their collaboration resulted in the PeacePlayers Global Exchange programme which brought together 30 young people from the United States of America, Northern Ireland, and South Africa for a 10-day programme jam-packed with basketball, leadership training and cultural learning in Durban.
The Global Exchange was a momentous occasion which made its mark on PeacePlayers’ history as the first time that their South Africa site hosted other PeacePlayers sites from around the world. The young people from other countries got a chance to experience South Africa’s rich cultural background, our cuisine and tourist sites such as the Nelson Mandela Capture site where he was arrested in 1962. Furthermore, the 30 young people volunteered in the PeacePlayers South Africa’s City-Wide tournament that brought hundreds of children from across Durban to educate and bridge cultural gaps through basketball.
In a highly athletic country like ours, one would wonder why basketball is the preferred medium out of all the different sporting codes that we have in our country. According to Nasiphi Khafu, the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at PeacePlayers South Africa, basketball is a neutral sport that most people seem to have some keen interest in. She further cited that historically, our local sporting codes have been perceived as segregated sports whereby a Rugby player would be naturally assumed to be a white South African and belonging to a certain community as opposed to the assumption that Soccer is a black sport. So, Basketball enables us to have these difficult conversations without foregoing the hurdle of preconceived racial stereotypes that still loom in South Africa. Furthermore, Basketball is an emerging sport that has the potential to develop and unearth talent that could compete on a global scale with markets that are much more familiar with the sport. As is, PeacePlayers South Africa is already running weekly core-programmes for children aged between 9 and 18 years old within the marginalised communities of Durban. They do so with trained facilitators and they employ coaches that help to develop and enhance the sporting talent found in these communities.
Nasiphi Khafu stated that as an organisation that is fully aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as outlined in the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a lot of work on the ground needs to be done. She believes that more support would enable them as an organisation to do more work that edifies Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and collaborate with implementing agents from different parts of the country. She further expressed how she hoped that more people and organisations understood the importance of funding sustainable projects as opposed to temporary events that have no direct impact on their beneficiaries.
We can all agree that PeacePlayers South Africa is raising our national flag high through their work. If you would like to partner and collaborate with them, visit www.peaceplayers.org and let’s build an equitable society together.
