Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Solidarity doesn’t just go across space, it also goes between times, and I think it’s perfectly possible to remember the struggles of the past and feel a sense of solidarity with the people who fought against apartheid even if you weren’t born then.
Nicely put.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Paul Campbell,
There were other (older, initially less radical) anti-apartheid organisations than HART – Trevor started one (COST?)
CARE, or Campaign for Racial Equality.
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On Twitter, I’ve been debating the point with Graeme that rugby and the 1981 tour need to be seen in a different context than any other element of the various international sporting boycotts imposed on South Africa.
Race and South African rugby first became a controversial issue in New Zealand in 1921.
And the “No Maoris, No Tour” protest of 1960 predates all the international boycotts.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I think this is a really good and important point. The number of people who look back at history, and think they’d have resisted some oppression vs the numbers at the time who actually resisted it are almost invariably different.
It's clearer, and less theoretical than that. The demarcations in the New Zealand public were stark. Jock Phillips summed up the conflict as one between "old and new New Zealand". Specifically:
• the struggle between baby boomers and war veterans
• city versus country
• men versus women
• black versus white
• ‘Britain of the south’ versus independent Pacific nation."City versus country" had a particular importance in political terms. Muldoon exploited the distortions of FPP to "win" the election with fewer votes than Labour. (We often forget that the Kirk government did block a Springbok tour in 1973, after being presciently advised by the police that such a tour would "engender the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known".)
If you were a young urban liberal -- ie, the kind of person I saw being schooled on Twitter this week -- in 1981, you'd have been against the Tour. If you were a Young Nat, perhaps not. Kevin Hague led protests as a university student, Michael Laws campaigned in favour of the Tour as a university student. You were in one tribe or another.
There was also a fairly large group -- people like my father -- who were led to quietly oppose the Tour by their own conservatism. They could see how disruptive and divisive it would be.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Hilary Stace,
She studied the tour at secondary school as something historical and about other people.
We studied South Africa as part of the secondary school History syllabus. I've long thought that was a really good thing.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Kracklite,
I remember strongly that my dad, who had been in the Kiwis (League, not Union) and toured Aussie, France and Britain in the late 40s and wary 50s finally came to oppose the tour because in his words, it was “tearing the country apart” (not “the protestors”). National unity mattered more to him than rugby, which had been his pride and passion. If he was able to think about it with that depth, then others can too.
My father, a naturally conservative man, had come to the same conclusion some time before the Springboks arrived. The neighbours, big in the local rugby club, went the other way. It was unnerving hearing them declare the anti-Tour Christchurch Star a "communist newspaper".
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Tauroa copped a bit of flak prior to the tour, to the point of being tagged as “Kiwi Touroa”, by advocating that it go ahead. On his return from a hosted propaganda visit to South Africa he changed his mind.
Ah. Thanks.
Interesting to see the Mayor of Auckland alongside him at the front of that march.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Russell Brown,
"I was 19 years of age and had lots of other things going on at the time."
I turned 19 two days before the aborted game in Hamilton. I'd been to the same school as John Key and I was in my first year as a cadet reporter. I marched, when I wasn't stationed in the newsroom monitoring the bloody radio.
I'd played rugby for years and was covering a club rugby game in Christchurch for the Star when the news from Hamilton came through on transistor radios. I vividly recall people on the sidelines expressing shock and anger -- and quietly rejoicing as they spluttered.
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Mr Key was also questioned about his stance on the 1981 Springbok tour. He has previously said he could not remember whether he was for or against the tour.
He told reporters this morning: "I'm not going to go and revisit that because if I do I'll spend all day talking about it and I can't be bothered."
He added: "As I've always said, I didn't go to protest against the tour and I didn't go to any of the games. I was 19 years of age and had lots of other things going on at the time.
"I'm strongly opposed to apartheid, but I'm not going to make up stuff that wasn't the case 30 years ago and try and reinvent history because it's inconvenient for the left."
I don't even know what that last part means.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Alec Morgan,
I would not want the likes of ... Hiwi Tauroa
Are you sure about that? Here's a picture of him leading an anti-Tour march in 1981.