South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, is shining a bright light on disability rights and inclusion through their Blind Premier Soccer League. The League is being backed by Light for the World, an organization that works for disability rights and inclusion in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda.
South Sudan is making a name for itself as an inclusive advocate for disabled individuals through their new Blind Premier Soccer League. The League is supported by non-governmental organization Light for the World, which focuses on disability rights and inclusion in South Sudan, as well as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, and Uganda.
Light for the World has a focus on eye health and working with underserved communities that don’t have access to proper care. They work to help people with disabilities overcome barriers, especially women, children, and communities that are underserved/impacted by disaster.
The league initially began holding matches in 2023, and is now made up of four teams. It’s based in Sudan’s capital city of Juba and its players are mainly in their 20s, with the youngest player being 15.
One of the captains of the Kator Blind Football Club is Jimmy Just Augustin, who went blind as a child in 2012. He discovered the sporting group in 2020.
“I’m very happy with this experience, because I never thought that I would play football again … I was thinking that I can never play any kind of sport again,” he said to CNN Sport.
“With disability, you can think, ‘I’m nothing, I don’t have something to do now, I’m useless.’ But currently, the activity is there, the (opportunity) to dribble the ball is there. I’ve got new friends, and this experience that I’ve got from blind football makes me very happy.”
“A disability is not an inability. If you are not seeing, it’s not that you are useless or not able to do something,” Augustin said, adding that he tells visually impaired people: “If you want to change your life, come and join blind football.”
Each team in the League is made up of five players, four of which play in the field while one is a goalkeeper. The outfield players “must be classified as completely blind – meaning they have very low visual acuity and/or no light perception,” according to CNN.
Players must wear eye patching and eyeshades to combat the amount of light or shadows they may be able to see. The goalkeepers are either sighted or partially sighted to provide important communications with their teams.
The ball itself used among the teams have sewn-in rattles so it makes noise as it moves, and the crowd is required to remain quiet throughout the game so the players are able to hear the ball as it moves.
The matches are 40 minutes and played in two 20-minute halves. The games “take place on 40m x 20m (or roughly 131.2ft x 65.6ft) fields which have walls all the way around to prevent the ball from going out of play, allowing for a faster paced game,” wrote Sam Joseph for CNN.
The International Blind Sports Association made blind soccer an official sport in 1996, and it debuted at the Paralympics in 2004.
Simon Madol lives in the Mahad refugee camp for Internally Displaced People in Juba. He told CNN that soccer was his “source of happiness and joy, but [I] was forced to abandon it when civil war broke out in 2013. [I] came across inclusive sports when approached by Light for the World at the IDP camp.”
Madol is now a coach and technical director in the league and also works with Light for the World as a Disability Inclusion Facilitator.
Light for the World cited that 1.2 million people have some sort of disabilities in South Sudan. Madol also discussed the struggles these individuals face in the nation.
“The main challenge is the attitude of the people, a negative attitude. Even at the family level, the community level, the level of negative attitude is always there, and this negative attitude leads to discrimination.”
“Ignorance is at the root of the problem, and can dissuade people from getting involved in sports, such as blind soccer,” according to Madol.
“Most of the institutions are not accessible … you can find that you want to go to the office, but because the doors are narrow – there are steps, no ramps – it becomes hard for you to go. Even in the schools, these things are also here,” said Madol.
The accessibility to the sport is still not as accessible as it could be, however Madol stated that the specialized ball that they use is not available to buy in the country, and instead is provided by Light for the World itself. This means the players can’t practice outside of their official training sessions.
“People are coming from far locations just to come and play this sport … Back in the day, they would only go from the house to school, from school to home. But right now, there is another thing, blind football, where you find new people, new friends, communicate, make more connections, do other things outside – you support each other,” he said.
Madol told CNN that “the aim is to involve teams from every state in South Sudan and spend time in different parts of the country to assess how blind soccer can be brought to the area.”
“We want this football to not just be played here in South Sudan only … not in Africa only, but worldwide.”
“I want more players, more of these upcoming generations to come and join. Because leaders come, leaders go. Today, we are the founders. And tomorrow, the next generation will come and take over from us,” he concluded.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
