by Larry Writer
One of those bundled into a paddy wagon was a 20-year-old South African rugby supporter named Les Swart. Outside the court after he was fined $45, Swart explained that he had attacked protesters at Perry Lakes Stadium because, ‘I got upset with all those people who were shouting, “Paint ’em black and send ’em back!” I’ve been all around Western Australia and have seen the way the Aborigines are treated. They are treated far worse than any black in South Africa.’ Then Swart threw his hands in the air and blurted, ‘I’ve had enough of Australia! I’m going back to South Africa.’
At Perth Airport on the morning of the Springboks’ match against Western Australia, Bob Hawke and his 14-year-old daughter Susan were about to board a flight to Israel when the ACTU leader was confronted by a man who accused him of being a communist for opposing the Springboks but not trying to prevent Russians from entering Australia. Hawke fixed him with his beetle-browed glare and snapped, ‘Thank you for that educated comment.’ Shortly after the Cathay Pacific flight took off, an anonymous caller telephoned the airport to say he’d planted a bomb on the plane. The aircraft returned to the airport. A two-hour search of the aircraft on the Perth tarmac failed to find any explosive device, and the Hawkes resumed their journey.
The unions had failed to prevent the Springboks’ landing in Perth, and the demonstrators were unable to stop the match against WA. Now, sensing pro-tour forces had seized the upper hand, Prime Minister McMahon released a statement on the Springbok tour that attacked the government’s opponents and made it crystal clear that law and order would be the key issue at next year’s federal election. Trade unions, McMahon said, were ‘using apartheid to mislead the public’. Their real motive was to ‘impose their views on the Government and the Australian people by force and intimidation’. McMahon was certain that the great majority of Australians shared the government’s view — ‘forcibly expressed by me’ — that apartheid was a repugnant political and social philosophy, but that apartheid had absolutely nothing to do with rugby union. ‘I hope the Springboks’ tour will continue to be treated for what it is — an international sporting event which interests a tremendous number of people.’ In supporting the tour, the PM continued, Australians would be protecting their worldwide reputation as sportsmen. Recent statements made, and action taken, by the Labor Party and the trade-union movement, ‘as well as certain unruly elements within society’, had left McMahon with no choice but to do whatever it took to ensure that ‘principles for the proper functioning of responsible government in Australia should be preserved’.
At 7.00 a.m. on 28 June, two days after beating Western Australia, the Springboks team and management crammed into four Civil Flying Services Navajo planes for their 2,133-kilometre flight across the Nullarbor Plain to Adelaide. On the way, the aircraft would put down for refuelling at Kalgoorlie, Forrest, and Ceduna. Springbok winger Syd Nomis would recall how it ‘was quite frightening … first you put all your baggage in the wings … and you get onto this light aircraft with all the massive forwards and I thought, “Hang on, this little plane can’t take off with this weight on board.” It was a hair-raising experience.’
Before the hatch on his plane slammed shut, team manager Lochner, possibly having borrowed Charles Blunt’s rose-coloured glasses, asked reporters to pass on to the people of Perth the Springboks’ thanks for their hospitality. ‘Everyone here has been magnificent. We expected trouble in Australia but we don’t think that will happen now after what we’ve seen in Perth.’
Today, Springbok stalwart Tommy Bedford shakes his head at the predicament he and his team found themselves in in 1971. ‘In Perth, the same thing happened to us as happened in the UK. When we arrived at the airport, did we walk through the front door? No, we were shunted off to side doors and rear entries. Did we travel as proud visitors? No, we had to fly in little planes that were cramped and uncomfortable and were always putting down to refuel. Surely, I thought, the UK tour would have taught management how to behave on tour and to articulate that we were here to play rugby, to enjoy being in a new country, and to see and learn from what that country could offer us in our state of isolation at the southern tip of Africa. But no, apart from a few terse comments from manager Lochner (whose only hint that there was anything amiss was to say how different it had been when he toured with the Boks in 1937) and [coach] Claassen, there was no attempt to seriously engage the media and therefore the Australian nation. Marais made some comments and soon the manager said he’d been misquoted. We were forbidden to speak. If we could have been seen as human beings, just a bunch of young footballers, we could have defused the ugly situation. As things were, because of the instructions we’d been given to keep our heads down and not engage in debate or argument or the like — as if nothing at all had been learned from the debacle of the demo tour of 1969–70 — we couldn’t refute all the terrible things that were being said about us, such as that we were fascists and racists, just like we had been called throughout the previous demo tour. This was just not true, we were sportsmen living the dream of representing our country at rugby. I wasn’t alone in opposing apartheid. We felt the whole world was against us.’
CHAPTER 13
NO CHARITY IN THE CITY OF CHURCHES
When the Springboks arrived in Adelaide on Monday 28 June after their excruciating seven-hour flight from Perth, anti-apartheid demonstrators had to wait to let the tourists know their low opinion of them. To avoid the ugly confrontations that had taken place at Perth Airport, Commonwealth Police devised a ruse to ensure there was no early contact between the footballers and the 600 AAM and CARIS protesters, led by Bishop Crowther and Peter Hain.
The protesters had milled about at Adelaide Airport for four hours before the planes’ expected arrival at around 5.00 p.m. (Unlike in Perth, there were few rugby fans to welcome the Springboks; perhaps they’d got wind of the subterfuge.) At 4.30, a squad of police vans pulled up outside the terminal, leading the demonstrators to believe that the Springboks were about to land. Police got out and formed ranks. An Inspector Butcher called for calm on a megaphone.
However, instead of taxiing to a halt at airport arrivals, the Springboks’ four planes landed 800 metres from the airport buildings, at the edge of the main runway, and disgorged the South Africans into private cars, which sped them to the unprepossessing Mayfair Hotel on Tapleys Hill Road, a kilometre from the airport. Before the protesters realised they’d been tricked, the Springboks were unpacking their luggage and showering. The airport strategy and the name of the team hotel had been kept secret, despite campaigners monitoring Department of Civil Aviation broadcasts to the aircraft. That afternoon, the Springboks trained at Gleneagles Reserve.
Yet the protesters claimed victory. Local AAM convenor Kevin Moriarty, 20, whose day job was as a scientist, explained that the objective had been to deny the tourists use of airport facilities — and by their skulking out the back door, that had been achieved.
On finally learning that the players were at the Mayfair, around 400 demonstrators went to the hotel in time to greet the tourists on their return from training. With whistles and drums and shouting, they kept the footballers awake until dawn. One protester threw a large rock through the reception-office window. Staff were showered with glass. Captain Hannes Marais went into the street in his pyjamas to plead for quiet. The protesters shouted all the louder.
‘The Adelaide hotel was a small, single-storey place run by a bloke and his wife. It was the only hotel that would take the players,’ says Norm Tasker. ‘I was in a room with a big glass window, and all these people outside were yelling abuse and throwing things at the hotel. I put my mattress up against the window and slept on the floor because I was frightened the window would be broken by a rock, and glass would fly everywhere. At one stage in the middle of the night, I went out into the street and said to the cops, “I’m a citizen of this country and I pay my taxes. These people are keeping me awake and putting my safety at risk by throwing thi
ngs at my window. Can you please solve this problem?” They said, “No, sir, I’m afraid we can’t.” I said, “Why not?” They said, “Because these demonstrators have a right to peaceful protest.” I said, “Well, do I have a right to turn a hose on them?” Because the Dunstan Government was sympathetic to the protesters and opposed the tour, the demonstrators were allowed to do as they pleased.’
Flappie Lochner called a press conference, and this time he allowed Hannes Marais to face the media. If he was expecting Marais to parrot the line that the Springboks were delighted with the reception they’d received and were only in Australia to play football, he would have been alarmed when Marais, always his own man, departed from the usual anodyne script. ‘No,’ Marais launched right in when prompted by a reporter, ‘there are no plans to promote multi-racial rugby at club level in South Africa. It would be hard for an African to feel, and be, accepted, just as it would be hard for a white man to be accepted in an African club. Basically, I have nothing against playing with or against any man [but] we have a set-up that is part of South Africa. We are not saying anything against the present system. We have grown up with that system and we accept it.’ (When Marais’s words reached the National Party politicians and rugby chiefs back home, they issued a statement that Marais had been misquoted. Lochner denied that Marais had made the comments at all.)
Like Western Australia, South Australia had a Labor Government, led by Premier Don Dunstan, a flamboyant man (he once famously wore pink hot-pants into Parliament) who was more at home in a theatre or an art gallery than a grandstand — and irrevocably opposed to apartheid. Dunstan assured rugby fans that the Springboks’ game against South Australia would take place and they would be ‘protected from law-breakers’, but refused to officially recognise the Springbok visit to Adelaide. His Government raised no objection when unions representing security guards and railway, tramway, liquor-trade, meat-industry, and postal workers blackballed the visit. He also ordered police to be gentle with protesters. Dunstan would write in Australians Against Racism: testimonies from the anti-apartheid movement in Australia that he was placed in a difficult position when the Springboks came to Adelaide. Personally, he objected to the visit, but the McMahon Government had sanctioned the tour, so he had to uphold the right of those who wished to see the South Africans play to do so. ‘They had their rights like everyone else,’ he noted. ‘You don’t fight apartheid and fascism by using the methods of apartheid and fascism.’ Those who wished to protest could, so long as they did not interfere with the enjoyment of spectators. The premier did not attend the match.
The Dunstan Government and the unions were slammed by South Australia’s Opposition leader, Steele Hall, who said that the decision not to officially recognise the Springboks was in keeping with Labor’s ‘philosophy that people should receive motivation by way of ultimatum’. Hall accused Dunstan of hypocrisy. ‘[He] is quite happy to make friendly approaches to China [and] he has welcomed the Moscow Circus … and yet he intrudes into the internal politics of South Africa.’
While the Springboks were tossing and turning and grinding their teeth at the Mayfair Hotel on their first night in Adelaide, an anti-apartheid meeting was in progress at Adelaide’s Central Methodist Church, convened by the Rev. Roderick Jepson, at which Peter Hain, Bishop Crowther, Jim Boyce, Sekai Holland, and president of the New Zealand Race Relations Council Jim Gale addressed a full house comprising a broad cross-section of Adelaideans. Bishop Crowther, who had been officially welcomed by Premier Dunstan, was sure the Adelaide demonstrations would be more effective than those in Perth. This time, ‘we will be better organised and there will be many more of us. I look forward to peaceful and meaningful demonstrations by people who really care about racism.’
As the Springboks prepared for their match against the South Australian team, the Adelaide Advertiser’s letters-to-the-editor pages reflected the hearts and minds of the people.
Howard Brock of Blackwood begged, ‘May no one contribute towards what could be the blackest Wednesday Adelaide has yet known [Wednesday being the day of the Springboks versus South Australia match].’ Brock hoped that anti-apartheid demonstrators and their opponents would ‘be appreciative of the freedom we all enjoy to afford expression of differing views on vital issues … Surely no one wants violent confrontation with resultant broken bodies, bloodied heads and even death?’
Adelaide-based federal Labor MP Chris Hurford wrote that because Australia was one of the last nations to maintain sporting contact with South Africa, and because of Australia’s White Australia Policy and poor Indigenous-rights record, we were thought of overseas as a racist country. The anti-Springbok protesters were helping to ‘save our reputation … Leadership by the ALP and trade unions and by six Australian rugby players who toured South Africa recently has been taken up by many other people of all political parties who oppose apartheid and all it stands for. We can’t and wouldn’t force others to follow us. But we do maintain the right, for instance, of workers to withdraw their labour from something they find abhorrent. It is true that the South African Government is not the only one [whose policies we find objectionable]. But South Africa has a sports culture. Its people are affected when their teams are cut off from the world circuit and bring pressure on their Government.’ To those who accused the demonstrators of hypocrisy for not objecting to tours by representatives of other repressive regimes, Hurford rejoindered that, ‘Unlike South Africa, Iron Curtain countries couldn’t care less if we rejected their circuses or ballet companies.’
Adelaide’s Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Lutheran church leaders united to oppose the tour. When the archbishop of Adelaide, the Most Rev. Dr J.W. Gleeson, asked South Australians to examine their souls and decide whether they could find any justification for welcoming all-white sporting teams, newspaper correspondent L.P. Grady praised Adelaide’s church leaders for exposing ‘the evil inherent in apartheid, its degradation of human dignity’. The South African government openly using segregation in sport to uphold white supremacy and domination, he claimed, ‘is just the visible part of the iceberg; the cold and deadly weight of tyranny which in silence crushes the coloured multitudes of South Africa. Should Australian Christians then welcome such a segregated team? In my view, it would be wrong to do so. Like any other country, we are not entirely free from racialism here, but two wrongs never made a right, and to tolerate apartheid is wrong.’
Valerie Hands of Whyalla believed South Africa’s rugby players shouldn’t be punished for the sins of their government: ‘The very idea of discrimination between black and white is abhorrent to a Christian but in the whole question of South Africa’s political philosophy there are so many shades of grey which Australia, from this distance, cannot possibly understand. As Christians and non-Christians, and as Australians, let us welcome our friends from South Africa as members of a sporting team, not as ambassadors of apartheid.’
Bruce Adams of Glenelg East wrote to The Advertiser on 25 June. ‘Every serious-minded Australian will feel apprehension and repulsion at the South Australian Cabinet’s measures to refuse public transport facilities to the visiting South African rugby union team. It reveals to what length some men in public office will go to deprive others of freedom of movement on political grounds. I never thought I would see the day in Australia when a difference on political philosophy would invoke a ban on public transport. So often in the name of freedom is freedom denied.’
More than 100 demonstrators were lying in wait on the morning of 29 June when the Springboks’ bus arrived at Adelaide Town Hall for a civic reception. Some tossed smoke bombs under the bus. At the function, Flappie Lochner once more thanked his hosts for ‘being so kind to us’. The players then reboarded their bus and set off to the Barossa Valley for an afternoon’s sightseeing and wine-tasting. There have been more relaxing excursions. Sixteen kilometres out of Adelaide, police cars with sirens blaring overtook the bus. There’d been a call that a bomb was o
n board. By now well-used to bomb scares, the players resignedly disembarked and stood disconsolately on the roadside while police searched the vehicle and found nothing. They continued on to the Valley and then to a reception by the Womma Park Supporters’ Club, which was interrupted by demonstrators who turned up to blow whistles, chant, and set off firecrackers. On the return journey to their hotel that evening, the team bus was harassed by students on motor scooters, some of whom came perilously close to falling under the bus’s wheels.
At an evening reception for the team at a rugby club in the suburb of Elizabeth — Elizabeth, 32 kilometres from Adelaide CBD, was the only place in South Australia where clubs and pubs would serve them liquor — the mayor, L.M. Duffield, who by strange coincidence was a cousin of Bob Hawke (their mothers were sisters), took pot-shots at his relative. Over the chants rising from the street outside the club, Duffield told the footballers that he was ‘alarmed and terribly concerned that in Australia there are signs of a growth of dictatorship far worse than your country is being accused of. Australia has fought for its cherished freedom, the freedom to speak, the freedom to worship, and among other things, the freedom to compete in sport. Our reputation is built on friendliness and generosity. This may not be very evident to you at the moment, but I want to assure you that there are many who deplore this breakdown to our reputation.’
Later that night, when the team was delivered to the hotel, the footpath outside was jammed with protesters. At one point, the electricity supply to the hotel was cut. The damage done to the power line also plunged neighbouring homes into darkness. In the melee outside the hotel, police sergeant Norman Orford suffered a broken leg when struck by a car while trying to keep the peace. Tomorrow, the footballers would be playing South Australia, and once more the noise made by the protesters cost the players sleep. Now Lochner let his exasperation show. He sighed to reporters at the hotel, ‘Our men are not getting enough sleep, but nobody complains, we take things as they come and we can’t do anything about it anyway.’