Finding a new identity for a township club – the case of the Mighty 5 Star in Stellenbosch

International audienceThis article analyses how football membership has been transformed in Kayamandi, a township situated on the outskirts of Stellenbosch in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It focuses on the rationales behind membership in the Mighty 5 Star, a Kayamandi amateur club created in 1972, in order to understand the changing interrelationships between the club and the neighbourhood. Based on participatory observations, written sources published by the club on the internet, as well as interviews, this article discusses the various membership processes between the club and the players from 1972 to 2011, characterising the social and urban rationales that have structured and organised them, and situating those rationales, whenever possible, in the history of the political and social changes in South Africa since 1972. The article illustrates how an imported football model can move into spaces hitherto organised around football models which expressed different interests on a local level. Moreover, it shows how north-south sports relations may, at an amateur sport level, transform the social rationales around and interrelationship with an urban territory