The role of sport in communities is not purely recreational. It creates a forum for the development of crucial community skills such as initiative, leadership, self-discipline, cooperation and conflict management. It is instrumental in shaping identity and building the community values of trust, respect, consideration and sharing, as well as engendering a feeling of unity and belonging. The strength of this sense of identity and unity was frequently used as a basis for collective bargaining in the days before the recognition of trade unions.

Sport also has the potential to build a framework whose codes can cut across the boundaries of language and culture. Evidence of it having done this in the past was buried and destroyed by apartheid and the Group Areas Act. And it is this untold story of the vigour of sporting codes in dispossessed communities which the exhibition uncovered in the hope of strengthening these values in our communities.

The collation of the Sports Exhibition has been a process of discovery , reconciliation and renewal. Its focus is the documentation and imaginative reconstruction of the sporting life and cultural heritage of various communities in the Western Cape Province who were affected by the Group Areas Act and apartheid system. Over the years the Sporting Codes have produced great stories, great players and great administrators. Numerous associations were dealt a severe, often crippling, blow as a result of established communities being uprooted and scattered. When these codes were destroyed, it was not only a material loss but a spiritual loss as well.

The District Six Museum and MEWUSA, along with community sports personalities, have worked together on this exhibition. Many workshops, well supported by representatives of the various sports organisations, have brought forward valuable suggestions for the exhibition. Collections, rich in photographs, brochures, trophies and other artefacts, have already been identified. Memories provide the potential for the collection of a rich oral history and for an innovative and creative construction of the past. In the process of this exhibition, the Museum crossed new boundaries in recounting history,with our partnerships, and in the creative displays we construct.