The 1981 Springbok Tour and the communication and participation in sports with South Africa in general was a topic of debate all throughout New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s. It was uncommon not to have one opinion or another, and the issue split families, communities and towns causing great civil unrest. People wore badges on their sleeves to show their allegiance with either side of the argument. It caused mass debate across dinner tables, playgrounds and work offices up and down the country.
PRO TOURRobert Muldoon (New Zealand's Prime Minister and leader of the governing National Party 1975-1984) was one of the key figures in the pro-tour movement. For those who supported the tour, the issue was primarily about the unwelcome intrusion of politics into sport and a desire to protect the traditional New Zealand values embodied by the national game of rugby. This was Muldoon's firm belief, shared and stressed by many other New Zealanders including some rugby players themselves. Some pro-tour people, perhaps naively, flipped the opposing argument about not communicating with South Africa because of their radical segregation apartheid scheme, arguing that rugby contact with a multiracial country like New Zealand could promote change for the better in South Africa.
Support for the Springbok tour was particularly strong in rural and small-town New Zealand. Many of these people were male farmers who were similar in age and perspective to Muldoon, having grown up during the depression and served during the war. In the Taranaki dairy town of Eltham, 50 lonely protestors were showered with eggs and bottles as they marched up the street in 1981. Many white Pakeha rugby players argued that the tour should go on as planned. They argued, along with Muldoon and the other pro-tour supporters that rugby is not a political matter and that the games would be beneficial to South Africans, rather than having an adverse effect in New Zealand. Doug Rollerson, the All Black first-five in 1981, was adamant that the tour should have gone ahead. When asked for a reflection on the tour in 2006, he still believed it was important to 'get them [Springboks] over here' and show them a multiracial society living in relative harmony. Above all, it was important to beat them, almost as a way of confirming apartheid was wrong. Historian Jock Phillips explains Muldoon and he pro-tour attitude by considering the values of men of his generation. They had grown up in depression and war. They believed strongly in the British Empire and the role of New Zealand men in armed conflict, and rugby was central to this culture. Its emphasis on physical strength and teamwork made it the perfect training for war. Muldoon was himself a war veteran, as were seven members of his first Cabinet. The so-called Rob’s Mob – older, male, blue-collar, often provincial, New Zealanders – supported Muldoon's outlook that the tour was not a political matter and therefore the Government and the Commonwealth should have no input in its cancellation. |
ANTI TOURFor many of those protesting against the Springbok Tour, the issue was about the immoral white rule in South Africa, but for others, the tour was also a timely reminder of New Zealand’s own unresolved colonial past. Many Pakeha New Zealanders were able to appreciate that the white supremacy in South Africa was wrong and saw cancelling the tour as a form of protest action to the way that blacks are treated, however as the protesters specifically attacked racism, Māori increasingly joined the protests. As they joined the fight against white superiority, they confronted non-Māori New Zealanders with the question: ‘If you campaign about race in South Africa, what about at home?’
These protesters, Pakeha and Maori attacked the NZRFU (New Zealand Rugby Football Union) for allowing Maori players to be demeaned by South African standards, and argued that by continuing contact with the country, they were condoning apartheid. Moreover, by allowing Maori players to be treated as inferior we were allowing South African racial attitudes to affect our own society instead of influencing theirs. Over half of the anti-tour protestors had a university degree and another third had university entrance. The educated middle class were a substantial influence on the anti-tour scheme, having been exposed to the international world of learning, they were articulate in their beliefs and how their issues could be rectified. The unions and working-class activists played an important role in anti-tour protest but the largest numbers in the streets were educated middle-class people, urban, educated professionals. In general, the anti-tour protesters were younger than those who were pro-tour. Many of the anti-tour protesters had grown up in the relatively prosperous years of the 1950s. Growing up with prosperity and peace had given them the freedom to challenge the old order. Their was a rising social consciousness of what was 'right' and 'wrong' and many traditional beliefs were being challenged and changed. This generation had come to political consciousness; marching against the Vietnam War, French nuclear testing and nuclear ship visits in the late 1960s and early 1970s and protest was not a new concept for them. Whilst most New Zealand rugby players viewed playing the Springboks as the pinnacle of their career, in 1981 two notable exceptions were test incumbents Bruce Robertson and the then captain, Graham Mourie. Both declared themselves unavailable for selection against the Springboks. Robertson had toured South Africa and was ‘embittered by the experience, both for the non-award of penalty tries for Springbok offences and his personal abhorrence of apartheid’. Because the politcal leaders of New Zealand were pro-tour, people involved in the anti-tour movement were described as stirrers and troublemakers. |