The Springbok team would, however, remain white.
The concession about Maoris was too much for some of Vorster’s supporters and contributed to the split in the NP that led to the founding of the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party in 1969. Later in the same year it also became clear how unpopular South Africa’s racist laws and sporting policies actually were when the Springbok touring side of 1969–70 was met everywhere they went in Britain with levels of protest they had never encountered before.
Thousands of protestor overwhelmed the Springboks’ matches to signify their stand against apartheid. Peter Hain, a South African expatriate, was one of the protest leaders. The protestors clashed with the police, made a racket outside of the Springboks’ hotels, and threw sharp objects like nails onto the playing fields. There was fear for the players’ lives.
White South African propaganda, especially from the radio commentator Gerhard Viviers, tried to dismiss the protestors as worthless hooligans who were paid to demonstrate. Some of them didn’t even wash their (greasy, and of course long) hair, listeners were told match after match, and supposedly didn’t even know what or who they were protesting against. Such emotional statements tried to lead the attention away from the true issues. Many knew better.
For some the price of friendship with South African rugby started becoming too high. Even age-old traditional rugby friends started to back away from contact with South Africa. The match against Scotland in 1969 was South Africa’s last for nearly 25 years against the Scots. The one against Wales was the last for almost 24 years. A Springbok team would be welcomed in England again only in 1992.
Such pressure led to more small concessions. In 1971, Roger Bourgarel, the French wing, was the first black player allowed to come to South Africa and play against the Springboks. (He also forced certain people who believed that black people were not good enough to compete with white people to swallow their words when he flattened their great hero Frik du Preez on the corner flag.) But small concessions were no longer nearly enough.
The Springbok tour through Australia in 1971 was the major proof of this. The protests were even greater than those that left the Springboks astonished in 1969–70. Unions refused to handle the Springboks’ luggage on airports, clashes between protestors and the police were an everyday occurrence and matches were interrupted by protestors storming the fields. A state of emergency was declared in the state Queensland. In addition, six Wallabies declared publically that they were not prepared to play against the Springboks. Among them was the wing Jim Boyce, who in 1963 saw the effects of apartheid first-hand as a member of the former Wallaby touring team in South Africa. Jim Roxborough also changed his point of view about South African rugby after his experiences on the Wallaby tour in 1969.
Such opposition from players was no longer strange by this point. The All-Black scrumhalf Chris Laidlaw regularly made public statements to express his opposition to South Africa’s racial policies after the tour of 1970. Welsh players such as Carwyn James, John Taylor and Gerald Davies also refused to play against the Springboks. In 1968 Davies experienced apartheid first-hand as a member of the Lions touring team. It caused him to decide that he would stay out of South Africa in 1974, when the Lions – despite increasing opposition at home – came to tour in South Africa once more.
After the Australian tour, the doors for South African sport began closing ever faster. The Springbok cricket tour to Australia was cancelled and Gough Whitlam, Australian premier, broke all sporting ties with South Africa in 1972. The Springboks and Wallabies would only compete again in 20 years. The Springboks were only welcomed into Australia in 1993. New Zealand was also no longer prepared to host the Springboks in 1973.
In the ranks of white South African rugby, new plans were being made to defuse this situation. Dr Danie Craven, president of the South African Rugby Football Board (SARFB), was no radical reformer. His plan was never to try and implement radical change in South African society or to undermine the political system. He did realise, however, that without concessions, South African rugby would only grow more isolated. It was necessary to include people of colour as players within the limiting framework of the apartheid laws and the rules of white rugby. The South African Rugby Football Federation (for coloured players) and the South African Rugby Association (for black players) worked with Craven.
The South African Council on Sport (SACOS), which campaigned since 1973 for non-racial rather than multiracial sport, and the South African Rugby Union (SARU) did not want to lend legitimacy to the minor reforms that were still based on the principle of segregation and led by the white rugby bosses. SARU organised its own competitions and chose its own representative teams. Any contact with the SARFB and its affiliates was taboo. SARU could suspend players or officials merely for watching matches of the SARFB-group. For example, Rob Louw, a white Springbok, was occasionally denied access to the pavilions of a SARU match. Players of colour outside the SARU-affiliates were dismissed as ‘token’ and ‘honorary whites’. Insults such as ‘traitors’ were also used. SARU also believed in the slogan: No normal sport in an abnormal society.
How can you, SACOS and SARU rightly asked, be good enough to play with whites but not to have a few drinks with them after the match or to stay in the same hotel? Unless you humiliated yourself by asking the government to temporarily be declared an ‘honorary white’.
Teams like the (coloured) Proteas and (black) Leopards were ‘rewarded’ at the beginning of the 70s with tours to England and Italy. They also played against the English touring team of 1972 and the British Lions in 1974. A representative, multiracial South African team only played against an overseas opponent in 1975 when Morné du Plessis led South Africa’s fifteen-man team onto the Newlands field to play against the French touring team. A similar team played against the All Blacks a year later when the New Zealanders’ tour coincided with the widespread protests by black youth in Soweto schools. The New Zealanders’ tour also led to a massive boycott of the Olympic Games in Montreal by African countries. A year later, there were mixed Springbok trials for the first time. Black and coloured players were taken into representative teams that played in the inauguration of the new Loftus Versfeld fields.
But the Springbok team stayed white for the test against a world team on the new Loftus in 1977.
The first international tour by a multiracial South African rugby team came two years later. This South African Barbarians team consisted of eight white, eight coloured, and eight black players. At the time it was seen as a major breakthrough for multiracial sport in South Africa and some were of the opinion that it paved the way for the British Lions tour of 1980 in South Africa. A multiracial South African fifteen-man team went up against the Lions again in that year. Errol Tobias also played in a multiracial Junior Springbok team that played against a Barbarian team. Hugo Porta, the famous Argentinian fly-half, was his opponent. The spectators in Pretoria left no doubt about their opinion on the winner of this clash: Tobias got a standing ovation for his top-notch playing. Not long afterwards, the last bastion of white South African rugby began to topple when Tobias became the first black Springbok in 89 years. Craven had finally managed to get his way after he previously had to give way under pressure when he wanted black representation in Springbok teams. (If one follows the racial classification system of the apartheid government, Tobias would be the first coloured Springbok. The liberation movements generally termed everyone under apartheid as ‘black’, until they also began to think in more divided terms.)
Tobias was a member of the first Springbok touring team to travel internationally in six years; a team that had to go by the back routes of South American rugby to play in countries under the rule of dictators such as Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay, and which came up against an Argentinian team twice that disguised itself as the Jaguars for political reasons.