Rugby, racism and ethnic unity

(First published on Fin24 and in City Press, South Africa)

South Africans were united, perhaps as never before — and that includes1995 — by the 2023 rugby world cup. As a result, the final game — along with the score, the closest possible to a draw — made for a fitting celebration of the 50th anniversary of the event that triggered the beginning of the end for official racist rugby.

That trigger was the almost last minute cancellation of the proposed 1973 Springbok tour of New Zealand. It followed strike warnings and protests from a coalition of trade union, student, religious and anti-racist groups who came together in the capital, Wellington, in 1972 to form a national Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM).

The conservative, and adamantly pro-tour National Party (NP) reacted by threatening action against “political strikes”, apparently being dismissive of the establishment of the AAM. Yet that Wellington gathering represented a fair cross-section of New Zealand society.

On the ground, the major and most vociferous activist group was the student-based Halt All Racist Tours organisation. And it was HART, headed by Trevor Richards, that invited United Nations diplomat, Dr Barakat Ahmed to tour New Zealand in 1972 to argue that racism should have no part in sport.

Ahmed argued that while New Zealand had “a very good voting record (in the UN) on apartheid”, it had “one mental block — about rugby”. This was the “block” the AAM sought to remove.

So the aim expressed at that national gathering, which included on the platform prominent All Blacks Chris Laidlaw and Bob Burgess, was to ensure “normal sport in a normal society”. Above all, to see South Africans united and New Zealand sporting codes, notably rugby, refusing to obey racist diktats from Pretoria.

Among New Zealand activists it was widely known — and resented — that, even in pre-apartheid years, South Africa had barred Maori players, including the almost legendary fullback, George Nepia, from touring South Africa. And, unlike most South Africans living in the apartheid bubble, many New Zealanders were also aware that a South African Rugby Union (SARU), with a non-racial constitution and headed by Abdul Abbas, existed alongside Danie Craven’s segregationist SA Rugby Board.

As a result, it was not organised labour that posed the only potentially strong bloc opposing the Springbok tour. Yet the tour issue played only a small part in the election campaign of November 1972 that saw the Labour Party take over after 12 years of NP rule.

And, although strongly lobbied, Labour in power showed no signs of moving against the New Zealand Rugby Union’s decision to invite the all white Springboks to play New Zealand’s All Blacks on home soil. But the AAM groups kept up campaigning around the country and Barakat Ahmed’s speaking tour was followed by one by Frene Ginwala, later to become the first speaker of South Africa’s post apartheid parliament.

It was Ginwala’s tour that highlighted a local gender issue: scheduled to speak at a marae (Maori meeting house) in the Waikato, it was discovered that only men were, by tradition, allowed to address meetings. The solution: adopt the apartheid policy used in 1963 when Japanese were declared effectively, “honorary whites”. So it was, for that weekend, that sari-clad Ginwala became an honorary man.

In the meantime, weekend training camps for demonstrators also became regular features after the internationally recognised American master of passive, non-violent resistance, George Lakey arrived. He was invited by the Society of Friends (the Quakers) to train local trainers in the techniques of non-violent resistance.

Contact was also made with SARU and with the agreement of Abbas and the SARU membership, an invitation was extended to tour New Zealand. Predictably, passports of SARU players and officials were either denied or revoked. But although these facts were relayed to Labour’s prime minister, Norman Kirk, he still appeared publicly, to be unmoved.

However Kirk consulted widely and asked a few members of the AAM, myself included, to “try to keep things calm”, while assuring us, in confidence, that he would call the tour off, which he did with only weeks to spare. The New Zealand public was divided to such an extent that, by 1978, I was able to demonstrate how fallible political analysis can be.

Even with an NP government back in power I wrote that “no politician would be stupid enough to allow another Bok tour” because of the upheaval that would cause. The near civil war that erupted in 1981 showed how wrong I was, at least about politicians.

Apartheid diktats have now long gone and recent weeks of often ecstatic unity have provided a glimpse of the sort of ethnic togetherness the Kiwi campaigners hoped for. And this also came in the wake of the 50th anniversary of the “Durban moment” of 1973 that launched a modern and militant trade union movement which played a major role in unseating apartheid.

For me, it’s a high note all round after 27 years and more than 1,000 Inside Labour columns. A good time to announce that this is the last of regular such commentaries from me.