Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

Eviction of black farmers raises questions about readiness for land reform

 

The eviction of farmers from their profitable farming enterprises by “rogue officials” of the department of agriculture, rural development & land reform has resulted in claims of more than R2bn being instituted against the department, according to the 2019/2020 report of the auditor-general.

Farmers who have lost hundreds of thousands of rand as a result of the evictions told Business Day the “dubious eviction orders” go against the government’s plans to release 700,000ha of state land on 30-year leaseholds to black farmers. The 700,000ha is land acquired by the former SA government for the consolidation of the homelands and which, after 1994, remained in the hands of the central government...

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