'Barbed-Wire Boks : the long shadow of the 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand and the United States of America

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In 1981, during the height of apartheid, the South African national rugby team, theSpringboks, toured to New Zealand and the United States of America. In South Africa, thetour was expected to reopen the doors to international competition for the Springboks after ananti-apartheid sporting boycott had forced the sport into relative isolation during the 1970s. Inthe face of much international condemnation, the Springboks toured to New Zealand and theUSA in 1981 where they encountered large and often violent demonstrations as those whoopposed the tour attempted to scuttle it. For the duration of the tour, New Zealand wasplunged into a divisive state of chaos as police and protestors clashed outside heavily fortifiedrugby stadiums. In South Africa, those bleary-eyed rugby fans who braved the early morninghours to watch the historic live broadcasts of the matches were greeted with extraordinaryscenes: rugby fields being combed for glass shards, fishhooks, and nails scattered by anti-tourprotestors; a pitch invasion at Hamilton forcing the cancellation of the Springboks' matchagainst Waikato; and the infamous Auckland test, dubbed the 'flour-bomb' test. While thetour matter polarised New Zealanders, there were only minor disruptions during the USA legof the tour as rugby was still a relatively unknown sport to most Americans. Although thetour events were a rude awakening to many white South Africans on the hostilities abroadtowards the apartheid regime, the country's racist policies remained unyielding. However, thetour had repercussions for South African rugby and reflected how desperate establishmentrugby had become to stave off total isolation. While the tour is frequently mentioned in workon the sporting boycott era, it is rarely assigned the significance it deserves. Using hithertountapped archival material this thesis concerns an in depth discussion on the 1981 tour, whatit revealed about South African rugby at the time, and in particular how the tour had a largehand in bringing about South African rugby's total isolation in the 1980s.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University