soccer women receive visas after a few more attempts

By Sabine Neidhardt

July 18, 2006: Despite pressure by the United States (US) embassy in South Africa rejecting visas applications with reference to Chosen Few – a lesbian soccer team from Forum for the empowerment of Women (FEW), three more visas have been approved just in one day after the team had left for the Gay games in Chicago, US.

With three more lesbian players (Penelope Nkosi, Sbongile Magubane and Katlego Mashiloane) joining, the total number brings to nineteen of the team in the whole.

Initially twenty players of the team were awarded with scholarships to attend the games, but the R760 visas application fee (of whom for some were paid up by an affluent gay couple from Chicago) had been their nightmare, which eventually cost one player to render up her scholarship.

This has been seen in the light of lack of support for black lesbians – athletes in particular by the South African government.

Although Nkosi, Magubane and Mashiloane will participate in the matches ahead of them, they desperately missed the opening ceremonies.

Twenty-three-year-old Nkosi – an already old-hand soccer player around Gauteng who has been yearning to stage such a spectacular play, is thrilled now to have the opportunity to represent the country in this year’s Gay Games, while competing with other queer soccer queens.

However she reprimands the US embassy; “They did not even bother to read the documentation and letters of support we had…they kept on asking us how can we afford this trip if we’re not working. They did not want us there.”

She added that the US embassy treated them like potential illegal aliens and not trustworthy applicants to enter the US.

Nkosi said they were only approved for visas the third time of application after they attached South Africa’s minister of sports and Chicago’s mayor’s permit documents, and there were no interrogations like the first and second time when they didn’t have the minster and the mayor’s documents.

But the three players have to come back and report to the US embassy in Johannesburg of their return.