Large concentration camps would be needed to house those New Zealanders opposed to apartheid sport, he retorted, urging the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, to “pour his vitriolic condemnation” on Don’s statement.
Isbey pointed out Muldoon had signed the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement on behalf of New Zealand, joining other Commonwealth leaders to discourage sporting contact with South Africa and support an international campaign against apartheid.
It was an era during which Māori and Pasifika players were banned from touring South Africa simply because of the colour of their skin. Now, 46 years after Don’s remarks, the Māori All Blacks are set to receive an apology for being excluded during those apartheid years.
South Africa Rugby president Mark Alexander has revealed plans to host the Māori All Blacks for two matches in South Africa next year.
“We intend to use this occasion to formally apologise for the discrimination they endured and to honour those who were excluded and marginalised here at home,” he was reported as saying by Cape Town-based journalist Mark Keohane.
“We must also acknowledge that the injustice of apartheid extended beyond our borders. The Māori All Blacks – a team rich in heritage and pride – were denied the right to tour South Africa for decades, simply because they were not white,” Alexander said.
“That exclusion was a stain on our history and it is long overdue that we confront it with humility and remorse.”
It is an acknowledgement and apology that is indeed long overdue. Anti-apartheid protesters did their best to stop the 1981 Springbok tour and convince the sporting world to turn its back on South Africa.
But it would be another 13 years before black and mixed-race South Africans won the right to vote. That year, 1994, a then New Zealand Māori side toured South Africa for the first time and Nelson Mandela, released from prison in 1990 after 27 years, became the country’s first black president.
Although progress to abolish apartheid was painfully slow, the thousands of Kiwis who got behind mass protests in 1981 proved Don was out of touch. Crowds of determined anti-tour protesters clashed with enraged rugby supporters clutching tickets to games; footage of New Zealand police wearing visored helmets and swinging newly introduced long batons made headlines around the world.
During the final test match at Auckland’s Eden Park, Marx Jones, piloting a light plane, swooped low and dropped flour-bombs on the pitch.
Anti-tour demonstrators invaded Hamilton’s Rugby Park, forcing the abandonment of the Springboks–Waikato match.
When news of the protests reached Mandela in Robben Island Prison he was quoted as saying, “the sun shone through the dark corridors of the cells” that day.
Don, who was also a member of the then NZRFU council, was unrepentant, saying in 2006: “I think I speak for all sports in New Zealand, when I say we didn’t then and we don’t now, inquire into the politics of any nation we were playing against, either home or away”.
The mixed-race Springboks team now touring New Zealand, and playing against mixed-race Kiwis, are unlikely to agree.
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