Janine van Wyk: a life of smashing down barriers in South Africa

J anine van Wyk was never afraid to be different. As a child she was desperate to play football, even though none of the girls she knew wanted to join her. As a teenager keen to turn competitive, she headed out of her comfort zone in white suburbia to a black township (an area demarcated by the apartheid government for black South Africans to live in) because it was her only option, even though no one else was doing it.

Now 36, Van Wyk has captained South Africa for a decade and is Africa’s second-highest-capped footballer, male or female. In a country where racial tensions are never far from the surface, she is a symbol of how bridges can be built.

“White girls played hockey and netball but my love was always football,” says Van Wyk, who is now at the Greek club Ergotelis. “The nearest women’s team I could play for was in a township and as the only white girl it was difficult at first. I had to learn a different culture and background and a whole different language of the game. I had never seen such living conditions in my life. Some of the girls didn’t have any shoes or football boots and I was getting football boots every second or third month. It made me realise how privileged I was and what I had.”

Van Wyk’s club, Springs Home Sweepers, were 25 miles east of her home in Alberton, in Johannesburg’s south-east, in KwaThema. There she was spotted by Fran Hilton-Smith, a former South African Football Association technical director, and invited to enrol in a high-performance programme in Pretoria.

The idea was that the girls would be housed in a boarding-school environment, with an academic and sporting programme, and would return to their parents during the holidays. Van Wyk felt homesick. “I really couldn’t cope. I