Innocence lost on the Demo Tour

The 1981 Springbok tour divided New Zealanders. Twenty years later they are still licking their wounds, reports Grant Shimmin

The man in Hamilton in 1999 should have given me a clue, but I suppose I glossed over it. After all, we had a cricket tour to cover.

Thinking back, though, he must have been planning it for a while, knowing a team from South Africa was coming. I mean, he wouldn’t be driving around with an 18-year-old rugby match programme in his car, on the off-chance of meeting a South African, would he?

But the day we got to Hamilton, 133km south of Auckland, for the national cricket team’s tour match against Northern Districts, he arrived at the motel where team and touring media were staying, programme in hand. It was for a game that had never taken place, the second match scheduled on South Africa’s last major rugby tour before isolation, against Waikato at Hamilton’s Rugby Park on July 25 1981.

We scanned the team list, “Gypsie” Pienaar and all, but it never struck me how that one man’s action was a small measure of just how profoundly the “Demo Tour” had affected New Zealand, dividing Kiwis up and down the long, slender country.

When it happened, I was a 14-year-old schoolboy, a blinkered child of privilege in apartheid South Africa, and like many of my ilk, all that really concerned me was the rugby, two freezing 4.30am starts a week for seven heady weeks. My carefree attitude, combined with the one-sided television news reports of the time, meant I had no idea.

I do now, because I live here and the media in New Zealand at the moment are full of it. Friday is the 20th anniversary of the arrival of Wynand Claassen’s squad in this country and the eventful 1981 tour is being revisited in a way reminiscent of how the major catastrophic events of the apartheid era are sometimes commemorated by the South African media.

Wellington’s Evening Post has spent the whole of the past week reliving those dramatic weeks under the banner “1981 A Nation Divided”, and the events have also been the subject of at least one television flashback, with all the major protagonists interviewed. Clearly, this was no ordinary rugby tour. In the modern era, it was the closest New Zealand has come to a Sharpeville or Soweto of its own, and it seems unlikely any who lived through it will ever forget.

That may be a little surprising. After all, the tour, as controversial as it may have been and clearly still is, never saw casualties on the scale that any of those major white-police-versus-black-protester confrontations produced in South Africa. Indeed, there were no deaths, although a number of injuries were certainly inflicted.

But it’s clear that for the New Zealand of the second half of the 20th century, a peace-loving nation rather minding its own business thousands of kilometres from anywhere of note (except Australia), the clashes that marked the tour seemed to represent some kind of loss of innocence.

The biggest surprise to many, on both sides of the divide, appears to have been the violent nature of many clashes. Somehow, that hadn’t been in the plan, and it seems many had not even conceived of the violence, Kiwi-on-Kiwi, that numerous photographs republished this week bear stark testimony to.

There had been some violence after more than 400 protesters managed to get through a gap in the fence at Rugby Park before the Waikato game and congregate, arms linked, on the pitch, although it was the threat by a man who had stolen a light plane from Taupo, 142km to the south-east, and was threatening to crash it into the grandstand, that eventually forced the game to be called off. Skirmishes broke out between protesters and disgruntled rugby fans as they drifted away from the ground.

But matters really escalated in the following week after it became clear the belief of anti-tour protesters that getting that game called off might bring the tour to a shuddering halt was unfounded. Crisis top-level meetings in the capital, Wellington, ended without the hoped-for decision from prime minister Robert Muldoon and his Cabinet to halt the tour.

What followed was inevitable. Having set out their stall by going beyond a peaceful demonstration to actual interference with a scheduled match, the various groups with acronyms like Hart, Care and Cost opposed to the tour could hardly back away from further action.

The police, on the other hand, were determined to do their job better than they had at Rugby Park. The man who commanded the so-called Red Squad assigned to protect the touring party, inspector Phil Keber, told the Evening Post they had been embarrassed by the protesters’ victory.

“As a policeman on the field I was humiliated; but that night, more than anything in the world, I wanted the tour to go on to show the public that the New Zealand police could and would do better.” Keber said hundreds of police volunteered for tour duty after the Hamilton showdown.

So an irresistible force, in the form of the protesters, seemed sure to confront an immovable object, the police, still clad in those days in Bobby-style helmets and with truncheons as the strongest means of pressing home a point, before too long.

It turned out to be just a few days. The Wednesday after Hamilton, the leaders of a protest outside Parliament decided to march to the residence of the South African consul-general, a move police had been expressly instructed to prevent. The inevitable confrontation followed, with blood flowing.

Of course the tour went on, and I bit my nails and bellowed angrily at the penalty that Allan Hewson dispatched to win the series for the All Blacks. I feel a bit embarrassed about that now, knowing people were risking serious injury to protest a political system, the evils of which I hadn’t fully grasped, while I watched the rugby.

At least they can draw some satisfaction, 20 years later, from the fact that change has come.

@Take the Winter Palace

Coach Harry Viljoen’s Springbok revolution needs to start bearing fruit and soon

Andy Colquhoun

They called the Bolshevik revolution “10 days that shook the world” which may be two more than it takes the Springboks, comrade, if the game they are playing in coach Harry Viljoen’s imagination is translated to the field over the next two Saturdays.

If Viljoen can secure the victories he needs to give him breathing space it will be with a personnel who have a resonance that could go all the way to the 2003 World Cup.

The assumption to the outside centre berth of Boland’s prodigiously gifted Marius Joubert, Butch James’s return to flyhalf and the arrival on the bench of the equally exciting Johann van Niekerk next to Conrad Jantjes and Neil de Kock point the way to the next World Cup. And all these under the potentially vibrant leadership of Bob Skinstad offer the hope that the future starts today.

All we need now is for the All Blacks to see it that way as well. To deliver us into the Promised Land the youngsters (and you can toss in Dean Hall and Lukas van Biljon to that mix as well) will have to survive a rugby cauldron the like of which they have never known.

This fixture still ranks as the most visceral clash on the rugby calendar even though Australia may hold every pot there is on offer in the rugby trophy cabinet and may even have supplanted the Springboks as New Zealand’s greatest rivals (although I’m not sure I buy that).

The more cerebral Aussies (whom the Springboks meet in Pretoria on July 28) are adept at playing with the minds of their opponents; they pose intellectual questions as much as physical ones and there’s no doubt the Springboks prefer the head-on challenge.

“Playing the All Blacks is always the highlight of my year,” Mark Andrews said this week. “As a forward I love to play them. They play a pretty confrontational game in the same way we do.

“Everyone knows that the Springboks lift themselves for a game against the All Blacks and they know that as well they always lift their game against us.”

Viljoen’s new wave is not going to win Test matches just yet. That task will fall to the old lags and the hard-yardage men who have been down this road before; to such as Andrews playing his 18th test against the All Blacks and to Cobus Visagie returning to the tighthead after the overturning of his drug ban.

And you can forget all the crises and controversy that has surrounded the Springbok camp over the past five weeks because when 15 men in green and 15 men in black run out to face each other the history that bears down on them is not of the past month; it is of 80 years of respectful enmity.

New Zealand have 27 wins to South Africa’s 26 in the series and like almost every previous version this one will be decided by which set of forwards comes out on top.

Ironically, since the resignation of Andr Markgraaff, the Springboks have been working on their scrummage as never before this season and it’s there that they will focus their attacks.

The forecast is for the game to be played in a dry window in the rainy squalls that have been lashing the Cape all week, but it will be a wet-ball Test, which means the scrum count will only mount.

The more scrums there are the more the Springboks will enjoy it. The All Black front row is perceived as being their weakness and the return of Visagie to the number three jersey has boosted hopes that the South Africans may be able to take a winning hand in the scrums.

Having said that both countries were given a hard time by the French eight in the recent series and the Springbok front row is just one area of an alarming number of untried combinations.

Behind them locks Andrews and Victor Matfield pack down for the first time and in midfield Robbie Fleck and Joubert make their acquaintance for the first time apart from the time they nearly came to blows in a Western Province versus Boland match a year ago.

These late marriages are not naturally conducive to well-oiled displays although you don’t have to travel far in the history of meetings between the sides to give the lie to that idea.

The last time the pair met, Fleck was called back into the squad to cover for the injured De Wet Barry and slot into the unfamiliar inside centre position alongside Grant Esterhuizen. He promptly went on to score two tries and set up others as the All Blacks conceded more points and more tries than they had before in a 46-40 defeat.

But only seven of that starting line-up are still in the starting XV and only eight of the side that ended 2000 against England at Twickenham.

A fit Corne Krige and Albert van den Berg would have been likely starters on Saturday but, for the moment, Viljoen has the side on the field that he wants.

He has resisted the conservative approach of picking the safety blanket of Braam van Straaten (although he remains under the tarpaulins and under reconstruction by backline coach Tim Lane) and has retained Percy Montgomery as his goalkicker.

But then much of what Viljoen has done has been cast as revolutionary. He is storming the Winter Palace right now; the only question is will he be able to take it before patience is exhausted.

@Cosafa Cup the target

SOCCER

Ntuthuko Maphumulo

Bafana Bafana were ranked top dogs in Africa by world governing body Fifa until this week, but their inability to win the regional Council of Southern African Football Association (Cosafa) Cup has undermined their claims to continental supremacy.

Despite winning the African Cup of Nations at their first try in 1996 and qualifying for the World Cup at their first attempt (in 1998) and again this year, Bafana have not progressed beyond the semifinals of the Cosafa Cup in three years of trying.

There has been a steady improvement, however, with Bafana being eliminated in the first round in 1998 (by Namibia), in the quarterfinals in 1999 (by Namibia again), and in the semifinals last year (by eventual winners Zimbabwe).

This weekend Bafana will take on Malawi in a quarterfinal and will be hoping they can reach the final this year. Bafana beat Mozambique 3-0 in the first round and Malawi reached this stage by beating Botswana 1-0.

Malawi have become whipping boys for South Africa’s national team. Last week’s 2-0 drubbing in Durban in a World Cup qualifier was the fourth time without reply Bafana have beaten Malawi.

Bafana’s showboating in the second half of the most recent match prompted Malawi coach Kim Splidsboel to warn: “A lot of dribbling is unnecessary and if this is what they are going to do in Japan/Korea they will be out of the competition sooner than they think.”

But this week a totally different Bafana will be playing the likely same squad of Malawi. Carlos Queiroz will be in charge of his first Cosafa Cup match, having delegated the coaching duties to Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba against Mozambique.

Two-time winners Zambia (1997 and 1998), 1999 winners Angola and defending champions Zimbabwe are already in the semifinals.

@Best of sport on television

friday

Athletics: IAAF Golden League, Herculis Zepter meeting, from Monaco, at 8.30pm on SuperSport International (SSInt)

Cricket: Second Ashes Test, second day, England vs Australia, from Lords, at noon on SuperSport2 (SS2)

Cycling: Tour de France, 12th stage, at 2.05pm on SS2

Golf: Open Championships, from Royal Lytham, at 10.30am on SSInt/CSN

Swimming: Fina world championships, from Fukuoka, Japan, at 11.30am on SS1

saturday

Boxing: Zolile Mbityi vs Xolani Ndleleni, plus Irvin Buhlalu vs Simphiwe Joni, Neo Seboka vs Sizwe Sinyabi, Osborne Masmam vs Donovan Luff, Zolani Marali vs Andile Watata at 8pm on SSInt

Cricket: Second Ashes Test, third day, England vs Australia at noon on SS2

Cycling: Tour de France, 13th stage, at 12.55pm on SuperSport Extra1 (SSX1)

Golf: Open Championships at noon on SSInt/M-Net

Horse racing: Mercury Sprint at 3.30pm on SABC1

Rugby: Tri-Nations Test, South Africa vs New Zealand, from Newlands at 4.45pm on M-Net/SS1

Soccer: Cosafa Cup, quarterfinal, Malawi vs South Africa at 10pm (delayed) on SSInt

Swimming: Final world championships at 6am on SS1/CSN

sunday

Athletics: IAAF British, Grand Prix, from Crystal Palace, at 7.50pm on SSInt

Cricket: Second Ashes Test, fourth day, England vs Australia at noon on SSX1

Cycling: Tour de France, 14th stage, at 12.15pm on SSX2 (1pm on SS2)

Golf: Open Championships at 1pm on SSInt/M-Net

Motorbike racing: German MotoGP at 11am on SS1

Soccer: African Soccer Show, magazine programme at 2pm on e.tv

Swimming: Fina world championships at 8am on SS2

monday

Cricket: Second Ashes Test, final day, England vs Australia at noon on SSInt

Soccer: MTN Kickoff magazine programme at 6.05pm on e.tv; World of Soccer at 8.30pm on SABC1; On the Ball at 8.15pm on SSInt