Before the June 18 South Africa-Czechia match at the ongoing FIFA World Cup, South Africa’s captain Ronwen Williams responded directly to online attacks against the players and the team. The criticism, primarily from other Africans, was directed towards South Africa’s anti-immigrant and xenophobic approach to residents from other African countries. He said he hoped football could unite players and that they should “enjoy and have a wonderful time, and we leave politics to the politicians”. The incident reinforced the growing conditionality that marks African support for African teams, a shift that has become more visible in recent years.

Pan-African solidarity has long been a feature of previous sporting tournaments. Only a handful of nations participate in global competitions, and even fewer are competitive. That is why Africans have embraced previous deep tournament runs, from Cameroon (1990), Senegal (2002) and Ghana (2010) making the quarterfinals, to Morocco becoming the first African team to reach the semifinals in 2022. This solidarity has meant that even fans barred from travel by economic circumstance or visa restrictions could still count on the rest of the continent to show up in support.

But the 2026 World Cup, where a record 10 African nations are participating, has shown the limits of this solidarity and the growing willingness of fans to judge teams through politics. The continent went on to enjoy its most successful group stage on record, with nine of the 10 African sides advancing to the round of 32 and shattering the previous best. While teams such as Cape Verde, DR Congo, and Egypt drew praise for taking points off stronger sides, and Ivory Coast and Ghana for actually getting wins on the board, others have drawn vitriol and isolation as a result of their domestic politics. Their teams, apolitical as they and their players might be, have become proxies for their government’s policies in a way that shows how political judgement now follows teams onto the pitch.

South Africa has long been a symbol of African pride, from its efforts at post-apartheid reconciliation to its successful hosting of the first senior men’s World Cup on African soil in 2010. But it has also struggled to........

© Al Jazeera