Far beyond entertainment, sport has repeatedly demonstrated a unique ability to unite people across divisions of race, class, geography and generation. Arsenal’s 2025/26 Premier League triumph, alongside some of South Africa’s most iconic sporting moments, reveals how loyalty, belonging and shared celebration can foster social cohesion in an increasingly fragmented world.
Sport is often dismissed as just entertainment or escapism, and rarely considered a serious political phenomenon. Yet, throughout history and across continents, sport has achieved what constitutions, policy frameworks and political speeches often struggle to do, which is to bring people together.
It has fostered a sense of belonging across the fault lines of race, class, generation and geography. Some of us are old enough to recall when the Ivory Coast team, led by the legendary Didier Drogba, brokered a ceasefire in a civil war in 2005 after they qualified for the World Cup for the first time in their history. Now, Arsenal Football Club’s 22-year journey to winning the Premier League title offers us an instructive lens through which to examine one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the erosion of social cohesion.
When the final whistle blew, something extraordinary happened – not just on the pitch, but also in living rooms in Johannesburg, Kampala, Lagos, London and every corner of the world where there are Arsenal supporters. The celebrations reverberated in pubs across the world, and overflowed into the streets.
Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn
They were as loud in North London as they were in the streets of Nairobi in…