Pitched Battle
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‘As a direct result of the rugby demonstrations, the cricket tour was cancelled. That, combined with anti-apartheid activism and the validation of opposing racism by the seven respected Wallabies, created a climate in which Australians, many for the first time, thought hard about apartheid, and within a short time a majority did not want sporting or trade contact with South Africa, which was a major reversal in the opinion polls in just a year or so. A majority of Australians gave their blessing when Gough Whitlam made it the bipartisan policy of the Australian government to cut ties with South Africa and Gleneagles formalised our position within the Commonwealth, and cheered on when South Africa changed and rejoined the world community.
‘The anti-apartheid campaigners were unwittingly helped by the right-wing newspapers. They provided sensational coverage of every demonstration, every melee, every smoke bomb, and were indignant at our militancy. The AAM used the media to get our message to mainstream Australia, so, knowing I was always good for a quote, they kept interviewing me and I kept saying things, some of which stand up OK 44 years later and some of which, I realise now, were quite outrageous. But to their credit, the newspapers felt a need to background their articles by running think pieces on exactly what we were protesting about, so for the first time many Australians learned in their daily paper exactly what was happening in South Africa, and any decent person would have been appalled. Likewise, Bjelke-Petersen’s State of Emergency in Queensland was perceived here and overseas as a travesty. He won initially, but lost in the long run.’
After the achievements of 1971, Burgmann and the AAM continued to picket and hold vigils outside the South African Airways office in Sydney, and exposed companies trading with South Africa. They placed stickers reading ‘Made with Black Blood’ on products imported from South Africa. ‘Throughout the 1970s, the AAM transformed into something we called the Southern Africa Liberation Centre, still boycotting South African products but also lending moral and funding support to liberation movements in Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique.’
Does Dr Burgmann ever regret making life hell for the touring Springbok players? ‘I had no sympathy for the players at all until many, many years later, when I saw a documentary called Fair Play, which contained interviews with some of the Boks, and I realised how little some of them knew about apartheid in 1971, and that all they were interested in was playing rugby. Some may have been unwitting, cocooned from reality … I think, “Wow! We did give them a hard time,” but I was a young activist and most of Australia was against us in June, July, and August of 1971, and you have to be absolute about things. There can be no shades of grey to a committed activist. It was like in my anti-Vietnam activity when I didn’t think of the young men who went to war as victims. I thought then that they were 19, they were old enough to know better, and they were killing people they had no right to kill. I considered them war criminals. I felt they should have not gone to Vietnam like others who refused to go and were jailed. I don’t blame them now, but I blame the politicians who sent them. As for the Springbok players, I still don’t have sympathy for them. They were the elite white ruling class of South Africa … I thought, yes, they were young, but they allowed themselves to be picked in a racially selected team, and once you’re a member of a racially selected team, you’re a racist, and in the end that’s what counts. Any one of them could have refused to play, especially after those Australians withdrew from the Wallabies. But they all chose to. As I’ve grown older, and perhaps wiser, I’ve realised that some things that seemed certain when I was young may not have been quite so black and white and there were messy bits and grey bits. But apartheid, excuse the pun, was black and white. They were wrong and we were right.’
Although Roxburgh, Boyce, Abrahams, Darveniza, McDonald, Taafe, and Forman do not consider themselves heroes, Meredith Burgmann, characteristically, refuses to take a backward step. ‘They are heroes … to me. The anti-apartheid movement in Australia would have continued to struggle if not for them. We could never have achieved what we did without those men. They gave us strength, respectability, and credibility. Whenever I’m asked who I admire most in this world, I always say those footballers for the brave stand they took and who gave up representing their country at sport, something every kid dreams of, for a principle.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been written without the kindness of key people who experienced the events before, during, and after the South African Springboks’ rugby union tour of Australia in 1971, and who agreed to be interviewed. For giving so generously of their time, memories, and insights, I thank Dr Meredith Burgmann (who deluged me with her enthusiasm and righteous spirit, as well as her archival material from the protest front line, including her remarkable correspondence with Sir Donald Bradman). I thank, too, her reluctant ‘heroes’, the inspirational Rugby Seven, who made a stand against apartheid: former Wallabies Anthony Abrahams, Jim Boyce, Dr Paul Darveniza, Terry Forman, Barry McDonald, James Roxburgh, and Bruce Taafe. It was a true pleasure and a privilege to meet you, and to record your experiences, and I hope I’ve done your achievements justice in this book. John Myrtle, an unsung but influential veteran of the social-change trenches, contributed immeasurably by sharing his knowledge and opening to me his voluminous archives. John’s help throughout has been above and beyond the call. The contributions of Peter Hain and Sekai Holland, both legendary anti-apartheid campaigners, were invaluable. Springbok champion Tom Bedford confided to me what it was to be in the besieged Springbok camp circa-1971 and helped me understand the pressures the South African players endured as a result of their government’s policies. I am in debt to Geoffrey Robertson, who gave me kind permission to reprint his landmark Blackacre interview with the recalcitrant Wallabies. Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie, who was among those savagely beaten, took time out from his busy schedule to bring to life for me the high drama and violence when police charged demonstrators at Brisbane’s Tower Hill at the behest of his less enlightened predecessor, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Father Richard Buchhorn permitted me to quote from his eloquent and powerful correspondence. Illuminating anecdotes were offered by Norm Tasker, Geoff Wannan, David Vaughan, John ‘Rugby’ Ryan, and Brian Mossop. This book has also benefited enormously from my access to the notebooks of the redoubtable and, sadly, late anti-apartheid campaigners Peter McGregor and Denis Freney, which were passed to me by Meredith Burgmann and John Myrtle, loving keepers of their flame. I thank Jennie Fairs for her remarkable research. Blessings, too, to Wayne Davies for his photographs that transport you into the battle fields that for a while were our rugby grounds. Ian Heads, Tony Baine, Barry Ross, and Nicholas Gurney all introduced me to people whose involvement has enriched this book.
Extra thanks to Meredith Burgmann, Anthony Abrahams, Jim Boyce, and John Myrtle for reading my manuscript for accuracy. Your safety net is hugely appreciated, although any mistakes in the text are my own.
My appreciation to Henry Rosenbloom, founder and publisher of Scribe Publications, for believing in this book and shepherding it through to publication, and to my editor at Scribe, David Golding, whose wise amendments and suggestions enriched this book.
Thanks and love to my family, Carol, Tom, Casey, Winston, and our special girl Maddie, who left us much too soon, but knowing, always, that she was loved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Brutus, Dennis, Sport and Apartheid (Current Affairs Bulletin), Department of Adult Education in the University of Sydney, 1970
Burgmann, Meredith (editor), Dirty Secrets: our ASIO files, NewSouth Publishing, 2014
Condon, Matthew, Three Crooked Kings, University of Queensland Press, 2013
Freney, Denis, A Map of Days: life on the left, William Heinemann Australia, 1991
Hain, Peter, Don’t Play With Apartheid: the background to the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign, George Allen and Unwin, 1971
——, Outside In, Biteback Publishin
g, 2012
Harcourt, David, Everyone Wants to be Fuehrer: National Socialism in Australia and New Zealand, Angus and Robertson, 1972
Harris, Stewart, Political Football: the Springbok tour of Australia, 1971, Gold Star Publications, 1972
Hickie, Thomas, A Sense of Union: a history of the Sydney University Football Club, Playright Publishing, 1998
Honan, Barry and Tasker, Norm, 1969 Wallabies in South Africa (40th anniversary reunion tour publication), 2009
Limb, Peter, A Shared History: the ALP, the ANC, and the Australian anti-apartheid movement, Labor International, 2012
O’Donnell, Penny and Simons, Lynette, Australians Against Racism: testimonies from the anti-apartheid movement in Australia, Pluto Press, 1995
Parker, A.C., Ringside View, Howard Timmins, 1963
Stevens, Frank and Wolfers, Edward (editors), Racism: the Australian experience: a study of race prejudice in Australia, Vol. 3: Colonialism and After, Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1977
Whitrod, Ray, Before I Sleep: my life fighting crime and corruption, University of Queensland Press, 2015
FILM
Four Corners, ABC-TV
Have You Heard From Johannesburg: Fair Play, directed and written by Connie Field, Clarity Films, 2010
Political Football, directed and written by James Middleton, ABC, 2005
Rugby in the Seventies, ABC-TV, 2006
The 7.30 Report, ABC-TV
NEWSPAPERS, PERIODICALS, WEBSITES
The Advertiser
The Age
The Australian
Blackacre (Sydney University Law Society)
The Bulletin
The Cambridge Companion to Cricket
The Canberra Times
Central Western Daily
The Courier-Mail
Daily Mirror
The Daily Telegraph
The Guardian
Griffith Review
Hansard
Herald Sun
Johannesburg Sunday Times
Johannesburg Times
Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of South African Studies
journal.pasa.asn.au
Neighbourhood News
Rand Daily Mail
Reuters
South African Digest
The Spectator
The Sun (Sydney)
Sunday Mail (Adelaide)
The Sun-Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Times (London)
The Toowoomba Chronicle
Tribune (Communist Party of Australia)
The West Australian
www.kooriweb.org
www.rugby.com.au
www.abc.net.au