The photographs seek to show how sport, and more specifically football, is an important part of South African society at all levels, and an engine for change in the building up of a new nation.. In South Africa, football was initially played by the white population, creating the first team in 1879: Pietermaritzburg Country. At that time, they played only against government teams. In 1903, the all-white South African Indian Football Association was founded. It was only in the thirties that the first football association organised by and for blacks, was created. From then on, football would be played by whites and the “colored” population, Indians and blacks, but without mixing. At the end of the Fifties, as an act of defiance against apartheid., the S.A.I.N. was expelled from the very recent African Confederation of Football (1957). It signaled the beginning of clandestine matches organized between multiracial teams, symbolizing one of the most popular peaceful protests against the regime. From the Seventies up until the end of apartheid, multiracial teams and leagues fought with difficulty to make sure that football remained a rare, if not the only, institution where color of skin was not a cause for conflict. With the fall of apartheid, sport and in particular football, become officially “the principal vehicle for rebuilding the new, reunited South-Africa “. For the first time in the history of South Africa, the national selection, Bafana Bafana, was opened to players of all races. The team symbolized a new country, where black, white, mulattos all fought for victory together. In 1996, they beat Tunisia to claim the African Nations Cup. On the day of victory, a victory both historical and symbolic, South Africa was no longer a just territory inhabited by blacks, whites, or mulattos, it had now become a nation. As a South-African photographer friend said to me: “It was the first time that I felt proud to be South-African, never before had I understood the concept of a Nation”. During the tributes to the winning teams, something very unexpected happened: The main three leaders of the country, Nelson Mandela, the Zulu king Goodwill Zwelethini Bhekuzulu and ex-president Deklerk, put aside their differences to congratulate the players on this important victory.