by Larry Writer
Boyce also re-examined his approach to the way Aboriginals were treated in Australia. ‘It was a reasonable argument to make that if I was so concerned about racism, why wasn’t I as concerned about the treatment of Aboriginals.’ Now Boyce wanted to know more about Aboriginal issues and felt a responsibility to campaign on behalf of Indigenous people who were suffering and being discriminated against. He read The Destruction of Aboriginal Society and Outcasts in White Australia by Professor C.D. Rowley, and was stirred. He began working on behalf of disadvantaged Aboriginals, and in years to come would spend much time with the Indigenous community at Moree, in rural New South Wales. ‘I had become increasingly aware of my ignorance of the present-day life of Aboriginal people and of their history. I was not aware of the massacre at Myall Creek, a stream that I had crossed many times when driving to see my uncle north of Delungra. In reading about it, the inland of New South Wales started to take on a new meaning. I also began to be interested in natural history and the flora and fauna of the natural landscape. I now believe it is impossible to talk about history, either Aboriginal or post–colonial settlement, without first exploring the impact of the natural environment on human development of the area.’
Boyce reconnected with the anti-apartheid campaigners John and Margaret Brink and became treasurer of their organisation, the South Africa Defence and Aid Fund (SADAF). The Brinks had been born and grew up in South Africa, and were among the minority of whites who opposed apartheid in the 1950s. As long as he lived, John Brink would never forget seeing his beloved black nurse returning home bloodied after a police beating. A quiet and humorous practising Roman Catholic, Brink joined the multi-racial Liberal Party of Alan Paton, author of Cry, the Beloved Country. When in 1960 Chief Albert Lutuli, Nobel Peace Prize–winning president of the African National Congress, burned his pass card in protest at the Sharpeville massacre and became a wanted man, he hid in the Brinks’ home. In the witch-hunt that followed the massacre, a national security blitz netted 18,000 people, Lutuli and John Brink among them. Brink served three months in prison despite not being charged with an offence.
On Brink’s release, he and Margaret and their four children migrated to Sydney, and, disappointed to discover that apartheid in South Africa received scant coverage here, they began increasing Australians’ awareness of apartheid’s evils by distributing pamphlets and raising money for political prisoners in South Africa. On 17 July 1963, the Brinks founded SADAF.
Operating from John Brink’s Anchor Bookshop in Sydney’s Bridge Street, SADAF was administered by the Brinks, Sydney barrister and future Liberal MP Edward St John, South African Derick Marsh (who had been jailed for his anti-apartheid activism in his homeland and would become a professor at La Trobe University and a noted Shakespeare scholar), and teacher and writer Helen Palmer, who had previously been a communist.
Although SADAF was a small hand-to-mouth organisation devoted to peaceful protest, the Brinks were abused at their vigils and fundraisers, and sent death threats by Australian proponents of minority white rule and apartheid in South Africa, such as the goons of the Australian National Socialist Party. SADAF campaigned against the visit to Australia in June 1969 of South African economic-affairs minister Jan Haak, and invited prominent overseas anti-apartheid campaigners such as Peter Hain, Bishop Edward Crowther, Robert Resha, Judith Todd, and Dennis Brutus to speak in Australia. The London-based, South Africa–born activist Hain was mobilising support in Britain to disrupt the 1969–70 tour of the United Kingdom by the Springbok rugby team and to have cancelled the 1970 tour of England by the Springbok cricket team (as it was known before being renamed the Proteas). It was Hain and Brutus who impressed on Brink and his acolytes at SADAF the value of hurting the South African regime through sporting boycotts as well as trade, diplomatic, cultural, and travel ostracism. Another SADAF supporter was federal Labor MP Barry Cohen, who, virtually a lone voice in his party, spread the anti-apartheid message in Parliament, and organised for Hain and Brutus, both spellbinding speakers, to be heard at trade-union functions, universities, and church gatherings.
SADAF had been operating for five years when John Brink appointed a young man named John Myrtle to the executive committee. Born in 1944, Myrtle would be a tireless force in the anti-apartheid protests against the Springboks in 1971. ‘During my schooling, I was an inept sportsman, but I’ve always had an obsessive interest in sport, also in politics and government,’ says Myrtle, who remembers his Armidale School team playing a crack Cranbrook School team captained by future Wallaby Anthony Abrahams — and surprising everyone by beating the more-fancied city boys. ‘I think we made them sleep in a freezing dormitory, and next day when it was time to play, Anthony and the Cranbrook boys were frozen stiff!’ Myrtle, who carried his youthful enthusiasms into adult life, was teaching science and maths at Marist Brothers Auburn when he met John Brink at the Anchor Bookshop and was inspired by the older man’s passion. ‘John and Margaret became close friends, and their influence on people such as me, with an interest and commitment to anti-racism, was considerable. The Brinks determined the direction of my life.’
Myrtle became a one-man publishing factory, writing, printing, and distributing reams of anti-apartheid literature. One sheet, entitled ‘Apartheid Is Not a Game’, contained the information that more than 100 blacks were executed each year in South Africa, that three non-white children died of malnutrition every 35 minutes, that a non-white’s average wage was $2.20 per week against $30 per week for whites, and that 15 times more money was spent on white education than non-white. ‘Some 900,000 Africans are convicted each year under the oppressive Pass Laws, which dictate where non-whites must live and what they must do.’
Apartheid, Myrtle averred, was the foundation of South African sport, and if Australia allowed the racially selected South African rugby team to tour, that was tantamount to condoning racism — and apart from the immorality of it, duchessing South Africa would tarnish Australia’s reputation at a time when other nations were refusing to trade, have diplomatic relations, or play sport with the racist regime.
CHAPTER 3
ANTHONY ABRAHAMS STANDS UP
As a boy, Anthony Abrahams’ only personal experience of racism was at school when two class members used his Jewish-sounding surname in, he says, a ‘relationship of competitive tension between myself and them … though they knew they were directing their anti-Semitic jibes to hit a weak spot — any weak spot — of someone whose culture and religion they knew very well was Anglican’. Abrahams also recalls that in summer, when the sun turned his olive skin a deep brown ‘in a mirror reflection of Australian society generally’, the two antagonistic classmates derogatively used the epithet ‘abo’ with the same aim of bringing him down. Abrahams wasn’t particularly fazed, simply mystified by their behaviour. He ignored their taunts, concentrating on his studies — and rugby, a game he loved to play. Abrahams contracted a form of anorexia, recovered, and had a growth spurt. Always a good rugby player, his newfound height and weight kept him at a high level as a vigorous second-rower and soaring line-out jumper. He captained Cranbrook’s first XV and was chosen in the Combined Associated Schools Firsts.
Along the way, Abrahams developed a firm moral code. At Cranbrook and then at the University of Sydney, where he took an arts-law degree, ‘Education was underpinned by strong ethical and moral tenets, and I absorbed those consciously and subconsciously,’ he says today. Intelligent and articulate, he did not shy from forcefully and relentlessly making known his views on issues of the day.
Abrahams’ form as a first-grader with Sydney University won him selection for Sydney and New South Wales from 1964 to 1968, and he was picked to play for the Wallabies against the All Blacks in New Zealand in a one-off test in 1967, in which he won praise for standing up to the fearsome Colin Meads. He was chosen for the first and second tests against the touring All Blacks the following year, but a chest injury forced him to withdraw from the latter m
atch.
Abrahams’ hatred of racism was ignited on a Sydney University rugby tour of the US west coast. It was early in 1969 — that landmark year of civil-rights demonstrations, anti-Vietnam protests, hippies, and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King — and Abrahams was 24. He recalls ‘a young American woman named Celestine Bohlen, who was involved in civil rights and whom I met at a cocktail party for our team. Celestine passed to me her advanced attitudes to the societal change that was going on at that time, which was a lightning rod to my own growth in that area. She became a journalist for The New York Times.’ Bohlen was the daughter of Charles Bohlen, a former diplomat and US ambassador to the Soviet Union, who, after being targeted in the 1950s by far-right red-baiter Senator Joseph McCarthy, was recalled and dispatched to ambassadorships in the Philippines and France.
Abrahams found UC Berkeley, where Jim Boyce had been before him, the most radical of American universities. He witnessed student strikes and demonstrations, and learned about the protest movement and extreme activists Stokely Carmichael, the Black Muslims, and the Weathermen. At Berkeley, Abrahams realised that committed, idealistic people prepared to fight for their beliefs can mould public opinion and force change in politics and society.
Abrahams knew he had a strong chance of making the Wallaby team to South Africa in June, and the prospect of visiting the country of apartheid concerned him deeply. If selected, should he go? Would playing against the Springboks be condoning the South African regime and apartheid? ‘One part of me wanted to make myself unavailable, as a protest against apartheid, but I couldn’t deny that there was a part of me, as a rugby man and a proud Australian, that wanted to take on the Springbok players in their backyard.’ Like Jim Boyce, at that stage Abrahams believed that rugby played in the right spirit, maybe even a series victory over the vaunted Springboks, would kick a goal against tyranny.
Conflicted over whether to tour or not, Abrahams read magazine and newspaper articles about South Africa and such books as Leo Marquard’s The Peoples and Policies of South Africa and John Laurence’s The Seeds of Disaster: the inside story of South Africa’s astonishing racial propaganda both at home and abroad. Then he aired his qualms with his Sydney University teammates and friends James Roxburgh, Paul Darveniza, Barry McDonald, and Terry Forman, all of whom were also Wallaby candidates. He knew they were like-minded souls. All had been on the Sydney University rugby team’s California tour, and each, with the exception of the then apolitical McDonald, had been changed by the experience. As Terry Forman recalls, ‘Our consciences were awakened in California. We saw the student activism and became aware of a groundswell of change that emanated from young people who wanted to change the conservative old ways and make the world fairer. Jim Boyce introduced us to key activists. We saw the hippies and the dope. We arrived in California in grey trousers and blazers, and came home in bell-bottom jeans, moccasins, beads, and had long hair. It was a big change of life for us, and this was just before we went to South Africa.’
Anthony Abrahams remembers ‘sitting with Darveniza, Roxburgh, Forman, and McDonald on the bank at Sydney University after training when we talked it all through, tossing up whether we should tour or not. I told them that after a lot of soul-searching, I was on the verge of making myself unavailable. The other guys opposed apartheid — of course they did, how could anyone support it? — but they wanted to play for Australia against the Springboks. This was understandable. They said they were going to tour if they were chosen. If I pulled out of the tour, I’d be on my own.’
Paul Darveniza recalls vividly that powwow on the oval bank. ‘Ant told us he was withdrawing from the tour to make a statement against apartheid. I knew apartheid was basically wrong, but knowing something and feeling it after you’ve witnessed it firsthand are two different things. We said we needed to visit South Africa to see what was happening before we could take any kind of informed stand. I think that after listening to us and talking to informed people, Ant began to agree with us. With hindsight, to be honest, the best protest I could have made was to play against Wales just before we were due to depart and then drop out of the team for South Africa that night … But I wanted to play rugby. So I’ve got no qualms about that.’
James Roxburgh knew enough about South Africa to understand that he still had much to learn. ‘I had strong views about South Africa because I read a lot … What John Brink had written, the books of Alan Paton and [South African anti-apartheid activist and politician] Helen Suzman, very powerful stuff. But it was all secondhand. How can you have firm feelings about an issue you’ve never experienced firsthand? We had no doubt that apartheid was rotten, but we needed to see apartheid in action, see for ourselves the links between apartheid, the South African government, and rugby. In the end, we told Ant we would tour and see what happened after that. To be honest, I wanted to tour, and it was easier to tour. I worried that if I was picked for the Wallabies and I turned my back on the tour, it might create waves, and the trip was one of the best things that the amateur code of rugby offered its players in terms of seeing a different part of the world and playing against the best in the world. We’d also been told how much we’d enjoy the South African hospitality and what a beautiful country it was. There was also the situation where, if we signalled our intention not to go to South Africa, the ARU might not pick us and we’d look stupid, and if we waited till we were selected and then withdrew we’d be accused of grandstanding.’
After sounding out his teammates, Abrahams, whom Roxburgh describes as ‘endlessly intellectual’, sought the opinions of those whose views on apartheid he respected: John Brink, Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins, judge Roderick Meagher, president of the Council of Civil Liberties Bob Hope QC, and the two master solicitors in his law firm, Bruce Gollan and Bill Linton. ‘With the exception of Perkins and Brink, everyone said I should tour to personally experience apartheid at work. To remain in Australia would be to stick my head in the sand. Withdrawing from the tour would have been the foolish gesture of a person who forever after could be accused of not knowing what he was talking about. So I decided that I would go to expand my knowledge of apartheid and be a more credible opponent of it. John Brink was afraid that once I was in a team environment, I would fall for the South African government’s spiel to shield the Wallabies from the realities of apartheid and that would be the end of my activism. I told him there was no chance of that happening. Later, after I did what I did, John conceded that I had made the right decision and nobody could ever accuse me of simply paying lip-service to the anti-apartheid cause.’
Abrahams was duly selected for the Wallabies and — the day after turning in a powerful performance for Australia against Wales at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 21 June 1969 — flew out to Johannesburg as a member of the 30-man team, which was captained by breakaway Greg Davis, managed by Charlie Eastes, and coached by Des Connor. Selected, too, were Abrahams’ Sydney University teammates Roxburgh, Darveniza, Forman, McDonald, and Rupert Rosenblum. Also in the team were Bruce Taafe, John Hipwell, Jake Howard, John Ballesty, Peter Reilly, Dick Cocks, Stephen Knight, Roy Prosser, and Phil Smith.
(Rosenblum, unlike his fellow Sydney University player Abrahams, never entertained withdrawing from the squad. Before he was selected, he told The Bulletin that he had read about apartheid and the South African police state and opposed both, but he wanted to play football for Australia and if chosen he’d be on that plane. ‘I keep sport separate from politics. Right, I am playing [against] a racially selected team. So what? Therefore I am condoning apartheid? That’s wrong. It’s the “therefore” that’s wrong. You play [against South Africa] because they’re the best … I think Rupert Rosenblum withdrawing from the Wallaby team, if selected, will have nil effect, nil minus nil, on South African policies.’ Twenty-two years later, in 1991, Rosenblum told SBS’s Dateline program that, despite his opposition to apartheid, ‘Rugby was more important to me when I was in my 20s than the principle
of someone having a vote. I’m not sure that I’ve changed today, that I wouldn’t [think] the same again. I probably would. Because I played rugby from the age of nine. I wanted to play for Australia. That was very important to me, and the people in charge of rugby said to me, “You can go to South Africa.” I wasn’t going to say no.’)
The 1969 Wallabies included young men influenced by the events of their time, who had lived through the Vietnam and civil-rights eras; the sexual revolution; and the advent of feminism, free speech without censorship, the Pill, and Indigenous rights. The University of Sydney, alma mater of Abrahams, Roxburgh, Darveniza, Forman, and McDonald, was a particular hotbed of liberal thinking and activism. In Charlie Eastes and Des Connor, the ’69 side had two fair and tolerant leaders, whereas the ’63 Wallabies had been administered by conservative rugby men in manager Bill McLaughlin and coach Alan Roper. ‘There probably wasn’t a single member of the 1963 team with longish hair, but there were quite a few in our team, including me,’ says Anthony Abrahams, who sported a luxuriant mop.