by Larry Writer
Again, CARIS’s John Myrtle and Jim Boyce condemned ‘without reservation’ the vandalism. Myrtle remembers the incident today with a smile, ‘Peter was a close friend, he was best man at my wedding — and I would deliver one of the eulogies at his funeral — but the way he did his paint-up job at Rugby Union House was rather brazen. He went down to Crane Place in the evening in his battered VW and painted anti-Springbok slogans on the building. Then, just as he was getting back into his car, the police came around the corner. Peter switched off his lights, but they took his number plate. He was working as a teacher at Balgowlah High at the time. The headmaster came to his class the following day and called him out, and the coppers arrested him and took him to the station. They went over his car and took paint samples from where he had spilled paint inside, but he had done so many paint-ups they took the wrong paint sample and scientifically tested it against the paint on Rugby Union House. Peter fronted the magistrate to face charges, but, of course, the paint samples did not match. The magistrate said something like, “You’re guilty as hell, but I have to let you off.” Every time Peter pulled off one of these attacks, I would issue a press release dutifully saying that CARIS deplored such vandalism.’
A few months later, during the Springbok tour, the Rugby Union Club would again be damaged and defaced, this time by a group calling itself the ‘People’s Liberation Army’. The culprits may or may not have been from the AAM. Once more, Myrtle and Boyce disowned the attack: ‘CARIS joins with the Anti-Apartheid Movement in condemning without reservation the attacks on property … People have joined such groups as CARIS and the AAM with the aim of keeping the conscience of the world awake to the vicious nature of apartheid. It is the policy of CARIS that the racial discrimination of South African sport can best be combated by a rational understanding of the immorality of apartheid. The most effective protest is one that contributes to the knowledge of all Australians in their appreciation of racism. Such protests must be respectable and must respect the rights of the individual. CARIS has no clues to the identity of the so-called “People’s Liberation Army”. We can only assume that they are completely opposed to the aims of our campaign, and that their act has done great damage to our cause.’
The AAM was never afraid to enter the lion’s den. When players were trialling for the Sydney, New South Wales, and Australian teams, Burgmann, Freney, McGregor, and others turned up at suburban grounds chanting anti-Springbok slogans and brandishing placards, which was sacrilege to most rugby followers. ‘At the T.G. Millner Field in suburban Marsfield, Denis, Mark Aarons, and I held up a “Stop the Springboks” banner. The hostility we faced was scary,’ says Burgmann. ‘A group of rugger buggers looked like getting physical with us, and the police saved us by tossing us out. In the car park, a prominent rugby player named Eric Tindall tried to run us down with his car. It was frightening. We managed to jump out of his way. Denis was white with fear. They were so angry with us.’
At another Wallaby trial, Tony ‘Slaggy’ Miller, a stocky, bull-necked, bristle-cut front-rower who played with distinction in 41 tests for Australia, stormed down from the grandstand and confiscated Burgmann’s ‘No Racist Sporting Tours’ banner. ‘He told me the sign was blocking his view, which was ridiculous because he was sitting right at the top of the stand, with a perfect view of the game. The hostility we experienced opposing the Springbok tour was more intense than we’d experienced demonstrating against the Vietnam War. After the incident with Tony Miller, we left because we weren’t doing any good and we were scared.’
Meredith Burgmann today admits to a certain satisfaction in targeting rugby union. ‘Rugby was a particularly good target. Back then it was a so-called upper-class sport whose nursery was almost exclusively private schools and its supporters mainly wealthy businessmen. I don’t think there would have been any difference in the number at the demonstrations if it had been Australian rules or rugby league, but there was a view among us that, generally speaking, rugby union was played by toffs and that’s why they got on well with the white South Africans. It seemed to be the game that tied white South Africa and white Australia together … All the time, though, we had a secondary aim. We thought if we could disrupt the Springbok rugby tour, then the cricket tour of Australia by South Africa scheduled for later that year would be cancelled.’
CHAPTER 10
BATTLE LINES
With their 1970 defeat of New Zealand and a split series against France, the Springboks claimed the title of champions of the world. Determined not to relinquish that mantle through the 1971 tour of Australia, the South African Rugby Board selected a magnificent side — tough, talented … and white.
Managed by George ‘Flappie’ Lochner and coached by Johan Claassen, both former Springboks and the latter a captain, the team comprised: fullbacks Ian McCallum and Tony Roux; wings Syd Nomis, Gert Muller, and Hannes Viljoen (Andy van der Watt would later join the side as a replacement); centres Peter Cronje, Joggie Jansen, and Peter Swanson; fly-halves Piet Visagie and Dawie Snyman; scrum-halves Joggie Viljoen and Dirk de Vos; loose forwards Tommy Bedford (vice-captain), Morne du Plessis, Jan Ellis, Piet Greyling, and Thys Lourens (Albie Bates joined as a replacement during the tour); locks Frik du Preez, John Williams, and Johan Spies; props Hannes Marais (captain), Sakkie Sauermann, and Martiens Louw; and hookers Piston van Wyk and Robbie Barnard. The most experienced team members were Marais, Ellis, Bedford, du Preez, and Nomis, who had toured Australia and New Zealand in 1965 and been regular Springboks since, while there was exciting new talent in the two Viljoens, Sauermann, Louw, Cronje, Williams, du Plessis, and Snyman, all at the dawn of their international rugby careers and expected by management to do the Springboks proud against all comers through the 1970s and into the 1980s.
The Springboks would play 13 games over six weeks. They would face minnows Western Australia in Perth on 26 June, South Australia in Adelaide on 30 June, and Victoria in Melbourne on 3 July before tackling Australia’s finest in the traditional rugby states New South Wales and Queensland. They were scheduled to play Sydney in Sydney on 6 July, NSW in Sydney on 10 July, NSW Country in Orange on 14 July, Australia in the First Test in Sydney on 17 July, the ACT in Canberra on 21 July, Queensland in Brisbane on 24 July, the Junior Wallabies in Brisbane on 28 July, Australia in the Second Test in Brisbane on 31 July, Queensland Country in Toowoomba on 4 August, and, the final match of the itinerary, Australia in the Third Test in Sydney on 7 August.
Having on the 1969–70 tour of Britain experienced riots, vandalism, and even the attempted hijacking of their team coach (a protester drove the vehicle from the team hotel in London’s Park Lane with the players onboard, but was thwarted when a player grabbed him around the neck, causing the bus to crash into parked cars), the Springbok management and players knew by now that similar anti-apartheid mayhem was odds-on to take place in Australia. On the night when the South African team was named, captain Hannes Marais — a 180-centimetre, 100-kilogram, sandy-haired, 29-year-old University of Port Elizabeth zoology lecturer widely regarded as the world’s best, certainly most uncompromising, tight-head prop — fielded questions from reporters about what the Springboks would encounter in Australia. ‘We will ignore [demonstrations] as much as possible because we’re not a political team, we’re a rugby team, and we’ll try to keep politics out of it. Our only object is to play the game and where there are people opposed to us being there we [will say] that we were invited by the Australian Rugby Union. They invited us, and we’re only there to do as they want us to do, and that is play against the Australian sides.’ Marais suggested that all would be well so long as the players did not ‘get involved with demonstrators. You don’t touch them. As for the press, you answer normal questions but no political questions.’
While Hannes Marais, Springbok management, and the SARB were determined that the team would turn the other cheek to provocation, South Africa Rugby Union president Dr Danie Craven, the heart and soul of South African rugb
y, displayed the combative spirit that was his trademark as a Springbok halfback in the 1930s in a pre-tour interview with Sydney’s Sun newspaper. Craven had a warning for Australian protesters figuring on harassing his beloved Springboks: don’t mess with us. ‘If someone slaps me on the face I do not turn the other cheek … I bloody-well hammer him. Dirty, long-haired ruffians suffering from delayed puberty taunt our players, yet they have no conception of our problems … Well, let me tell you, if I get my hands on one of them I will kill him … I do not know that we can restrain our athletes any longer.’ South African rugby champions, he said, were ‘artists [with] deep emotions which they control, and are very sensitive’. However, if demonstrators dared to invade the rugby field ‘and get mixed up in a loose scrum, God help them’. He continued, ‘Australians should be the last to criticise us. We haven’t murdered our natives or put poison in their soup. How many Aborigines have you got now, eh?’
The Springboks were in no doubt that they were embarking on a most difficult trip. They made a gung-ho pact to remain united, to rise above the rancour and distractions, and to focus on playing winning rugby. Yet at least one player was in turmoil over what lay in store for him and his teammates, and the reasons why.
Forty-four years later, Springbok vice-captain Tom Bedford retains vivid memories of touring Australia in 1971. Architect Bedford, today a genial, civilised man of 73 residing in the picturesque London village of Barnes, had lived in England’s Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before touring there with the 1969–70 Springboks. His post-tour advice to the South African Rugby Board that they should reconsider their policy of racial team selection because it was wrong and was making South Africa a pariah nation angered them, and had he not been so accomplished a player it would surely have cost him his place in the ’71 team to Australia. ‘I left in 1965 to study at Oxford,’ he recalls, ‘and when I returned I was having grave reservations about South Africa and South African rugby,’ he told me. ‘The Afrikaners had taken over, and because of their power the Springbok teams were comprised predominantly of Afrikaners.’
Some influential rugby people were members of the Broederbond, a secretive, male-only organisation devoted to advancing Afrikaner interests. ‘England, which I considered a progressive and compassionate country, changed me and the way I thought … The swinging ’60s, trade unions, people making their feelings heard … To me, Britain was a kaleidoscope of everything that was democratic and free … I also considered Australia and New Zealand, places I’d toured earlier, as ideal places to live. They seemed to have little of the oppression or laager mentality that existed in my own land, and, if anything, South Africa seemed to have become more introverted while I was away.’
By the time the Springbok team to Britain in 1969–70 was selected, it was open knowledge that Peter Hain was at the forefront of organising demonstrations to halt the tour along with the vociferous anti-apartheid movements in Britain and Ireland. At a farewell party for the Springboks at the Casamia Hotel in Johannesburg, recalls Bedford, ‘Ministers of government and white rugby’s high and mighty were all there. Speeches were made effectively saying how we were going to sweep all before us in the three-month tour of the UK and Ireland. It was gung-ho stuff. After all, we had a nucleus of players who had beaten the British Lions, the French, and the Australians prior to this tour. As vice-captain to Dawie de Villiers, I was asked to say a few words, too, almost at the end of the speeches. And I was honest in what I said: “The coming tour will not be anywhere near as easy or straightforward as has, with respect, been alluded to by all the previous speakers, because you don’t understand the power or the form the demonstrations against us are likely to take, or how they can affect our game and our mentality when we already have our work cut out trying to play winning rugby at international level as well. Having been at university in England just 18 months ago and having seen various demonstrations at firsthand, something our team has no experience of at all, I have to say that because of all the forces that will be against us, I don’t believe we will go as well as everyone here has said. And if things perhaps do not go well for us, I hope the people here and at home will be understanding.” Well, that went down like a bloody lead balloon. My contribution to the speechifying was called unpatriotic. But the poor tour results would back me up …
‘All through that tour of the UK and Ireland, three months of skulking around while demonstrations and police cordons were all about us, when we were an almost daily feature on newspaper front pages as much as on the sport pages, I experienced mixed feelings and a kind of inner turmoil. I understood what people were protesting about. My life, which had opened up and been so richly broadened by those three years in England as a student, was now suddenly constricted by the police and the Four Nations’ rugby authorities putting protective walls around us, cocooning us from any contact or dialogue with the onslaught of anti-apartheid demonstrators protesting against our presence wherever we were. What made the situation so much worse was that rugby officialdom, as well as our own management, refused point blank to engage in the fierce debate raging around the validity of the tour, thereby allowing the anti-apartheid factions carte blanche domination of the British and Irish media. There was no let-up for the entire tour, because no one in rugby’s administration had the balls to speak up in our defence and say who we were and what we believed. Many of us opposed apartheid. We simply wanted to play rugby, not for money or to glorify our government or its policies, but because we loved playing rugby union and were proud to represent our country. And so, as well as being unable to defend ourselves, instead of allowing this important rugby team from the geographically and politically isolated country at the foot of Africa to experience the broadening aspects of multicultural life that I had enjoyed in Britain, we were frustratingly denied this. The vision I had was that when we Springboks — influential figures as we were, particularly in the context of the ruling Afrikaners — arrived home after the tour, we could help bring about sporting and other changes in our country, [it] came to nothing. The demonstrations instead collectively forced the team into the laager mentality, which had come to be part of the white, especially Afrikaner, psyche in the indefensible apartheid era of those days in South Africa.’
Back in South Africa after the tour of the UK and Ireland, Bedford took time off the start of the new (southern hemisphere) rugby season mainly to think about what had been a traumatic tour for him while a leg injury incurred towards the end of the tour healed. With no television in South Africa, there was great interest to hear what the tour and the demonstrations had been like, and he was asked to be guest speaker at numerous functions all over the country, as he had captained the Springboks in some of those matches as well as successfully against the touring Australian team of Greg Davis the year before. Bedford told the truth as he saw it. Part of that truth was his belief that Peter Hain, who had orchestrated the relentless anti-apartheid demonstrations against the touring Springboks, had put across the anti-apartheid lobby’s point of view tellingly. As much as he detested Hain driving the Springboks into the laager in every town and city they visited on the tour, Hain had outscored the rugby fraternity and South Africa.
Bedford made clear his view that no country could afford to host white South African teams under such conditions. Future tours to the UK and Ireland would not happen. In order for them to take place, South Africa would have to change. Black and brown South Africans would have to be involved nationally if there was to be a future for rugby, and for sport generally since South African cricket and the Olympic sports had already been prevented from competing internationally because of apartheid. Bedford hoped now that (white) officialdom and the administrators of rugby, who had sat comfortably at home far away from the tumult of the tour, and had not once spoken up for the country or the team over those three months, would finally realise that both they and the government must act to change the pariah status of South Africa.
When the Springbok trial teams to pla
y against the 1970 New Zealand All Blacks were announced, Bedford was not included, though his leg had long healed and he was back playing rugby and captaining two clubs, Durban Collegians and Natal (now the Sharks). The selectors’ reason was that he was not considered tall enough to be a loose forward. Bedford is sure his omission was punishment for advocating change.
In 1971, the Springboks’ itinerary consisted of two home test matches against France and the tour of Australia. Bedford was this time invited to play in the Springbok trials. A week before they took place, he received a call quite out of the blue from a senior committeeman on the South African Rugby Board. In an Afrikaans conversation, the man asked Bedford to please never divulge his name as it would be ‘a blight on me and my family because I am a member of the Broederbond and am thus phoning secretly’. He told Bedford that his conscience had been pricking him for some time because of the unfairness of much of what had been happening in rugby. Bedford, he said, had to realise that the majority of the SARB’s committee and the selection panel comprised members of the Broederbond. This meant that Afrikaners would always enjoy priority. So in spite of Bedford being the logical successor to Dawie de Villiers, having been his vice-captain, the man said he would be lucky even to make the side at all in view of his post-UK comments … but also because his surname was English. The captain of the Springboks would be an Afrikaner. Bedford, therefore, should not be unduly disappointed were he to be overlooked again.
‘The team I captained in the week of trials did rather well as trial matches go,’ recalls Bedford. ‘Much to my surprise, I made the Bok side against France and the Springbok team to Australia, and as surprisingly, as vice-captain again, this time under Hannes Marais’ captaincy. Having been considered to be “too small” for selection against the All Blacks, the same selectors now chose me to oppose Benoit Dauga and Walter Spanghero, the French loose forwards, each of whom were far taller and heavier than me.’
