This thesis explores the effects of employment of local community members by sport-for-development organizations. Development scholarship focuses on the process of social change rather than the practice of it. At the same time, social-movement theory offers some insight into the outcome of participation in protests and movements. To date, no one has connected the two fields to gauge what the consequences of participating in development efforts via employment are, especially for members in disadvantaged communities. I argue that these development projects have a series of unintended personal consequences on employees—depending on their roles—that range from boosts in confidence, heightened senses of responsibility, and an increase in civic duty. Additionally, gender appears to impact the importance that employees give these benefits in their everyday life. This thesis further focuses on the mechanisms that enable such personal development, including measures of community involvement, organizational commitment, and self-understanding as the theory of change. My research is based on thirty-one staff interviews across three sites of Grassroots Soccer—a sport-for-development organization that uses soccer to provide HIV/AIDS education and mobilize communities throughout South Africa.

Since 1994, South Africa has been involved in resolving numerous conflicts throughout the continent, including Lesotho, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, the Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan, and Libya. Through a mixed methodology of discourse and textual analysis, historical analysis, and field interviews, this thesis investigates how South Africa has capitalized on its own domestic experience to develop and legitimize its foreign-conflict intervention strategies. Employing the constructivist theoretical lens of national identity and role conception, I argue that South Africa rhetorically utilizes its own domestic history to justify its foreign-policy prioritization of diplomatic, peaceful intervention over the use of force, with an emphasis on inclusive dialogue, power-sharing, and reconciliation. I then conduct a historical analysis of Pretoria’s behavior to assess whether it matches its rhetoric, and argue that while South Africa often adheres to its policy of non-violent peace processes, it has increasingly resorted to military intervention. Finally, I examine the influence of the soft power or moral authority that South Africa gained from its domestic peace process—in contrast with economic and military hard power—on Pretoria’s conflict intervention strategy and legitimacy. I conclude by posing the possibility that a shift in soft and hard power dynamics can explain recent changes in South Africa’s foreign-intervention approach.

South Africa’s poor population is characterized by a relatively deep division between the working poor and the unemployed. Some use the term “underclass” to refer to the unemployed, while others argue for the importance of the interconnections between the two groups. At the same time, unions have become increasingly bureaucratized and closely affiliated to the neoliberal state. Attempting to break away from their state-affiliated union, workers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine were attacked by South African police, resulting in the deaths of thirty-four mineworkers. This was the largest instance of state violence since the fall of apartheid, and has become a point of political significance and a rallying cry for those who oppose the ruling government. This research looks at three grassroots organizations of unemployed activists around different communities in Johannesburg, and examines the impact that Marikana had on their relationships with worker groups. I argue that the violence at Marikana caused unemployed activists struggling for basic services to identify with mineworkers against an unresponsive government, even though the two groups’ interests remained unchanged, and to some extent, divergent. At the same time, activists see Marikana as a strategic turning point in South Africa and see cooperating with the Marikana mineworkers as tactically important. The shift in identity and strategy among the unemployed poor came as a result of the violence at Marikana—unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa—and imply that effective linkages can be formed between these two categories of poor citizens.