Remembering Scotland's stance against apartheid.
In 1995 I was eagerly awaiting the kick-off in the Rugby World Cup Final from Ellis Park in Johannesburg, wanting the home team to win, and dreaming of visiting South Africa.
Growing up in Scotland in the 1980s, I had enjoyed watching sport. I remember seeing Zola Budd running barefoot for Great Britain at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and the furore when she was involved in a tripping incident during the 3,000 metres race. But I did not understand the politics surrounding a South African representing Britain, which had been the subject of much media attention in the build up to the Games. Nor did I know about the politics involved in Nelson Mandela's incarceration on Robben Island, or the politics of international trade sanctions and sports boycotts.
Apartheid was a system of government based on white supremacy that operated in South Africa from 1948 to the 1990s. It was introduced by the National Party, who held office from 1948 to 1994. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 introduced racial segregation (apartheid) to schools, including what subjects — and to what level — students could be taught. Schools for Black children were both over-crowded and under-funded. The 1976 Soweto Uprising began when students held a protest march against the compulsory use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in general, and the Bantu Education Act in particular. Violent clashes between the state and black protestors continued throughout the 1980s.
South Africa became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945, three years before the National Party came to power. General Jan Smuts, President of South Africa and a close ally of Winston Churchill, had even helped to draft the Covenant of the United Nations. However, following the election of the National Party in 1948 and the introduction of apartheid, the international community sought to distance itself from the nation. This led to several attempts by the United Nations General Assembly to pass resolutions supporting economic sanctions against South Africa. These were continually vetoed by the USA, Britain and France. During the 1980s, the Conservative government of the United Kingdom continued to trade with South Africa.
The 1977 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held at Gleneagles stated that it was: 'The urgent duty of each of the governments to vigorously combat the evil of apartheid by withholding any form of support for, and by taking every practical step to discourage contact or competition by their nationals with, sporting organisations, teams of sportsmen from South Africa or from any other country where sports are organised on the basis of race, colour or ethnic origin.' This, and other international responses to apartheid, set the scene for South African sport in the 1980s. The 1986, or 13th Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh took place at a time of domestic political tension in the UK, with the pain of the miners' strikes of 1984-85 and resultant social and political division still keenly felt.
In early 1984 the Rugby Football Union (RFU) in England invited South Africa to tour England. Edinburgh District Council, as it was then, approved a motion condemning the proposed tour, as it was seen as threatening a boycott of the approaching Commonwealth Games. The following year Edinburgh Council showed its opposition to apartheid during the 1985 Dairy Crest Edinburgh Games Athletic Championship held at Meadowbank Stadium. They followed through on their threat of hanging an 'Edinburgh Against Apartheid' banner during the one mile race, in which Zola Budd was running. This resulted in Channel 4 cancelling live coverage of the race due to the banner contravening the Independent Broadcasting Authority's prohibition of political advertising.
Edinburgh Council went further with their protests. On 22 July 1986 a statue was unveiled at Festival Square — in front of what is now the Sheraton Hotel — of a mother and child to commemorate the victims of apartheid. When the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, paid a visit to the Commonwealth Games she was met by anti-apartheid demonstrators at both Meadowbank Stadium and at the athletes' village.
Edinburgh Council was unable to put a stop to this visit as the Prime Minister was a guest of the Commonwealth Games Federation. Despite all of the protests both the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) and the Scottish Cricket Union, as it was called then, followed the RFU and invited South African teams to tour Scotland after 1986.
As a child in the 1980s, I was oblivious to this intense political aspect of the Commonwealth Games. I had watched the Games on television, and even won a prize for shot putt in a related school sports initiative, unaware of the important anti-Apartheid protests that were taking place in Edinburgh too.
During the apartheid era, South Africa remained a member of the International Rugby Board (IRB), but was unable to take part in the first two Rugby World Cups in 1987 and 1991. Contacts were restricted following the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement, but some tours did go ahead in the 1980s.
The 1979 South African Barbarians tour of Britain was greeted by mass protests. The National Library of Scotland holds programmes from their games against the Co-optimists at Hawick, and against the Scottish Border Club at Galashiels. The British and Irish Lions, as well as France, toured South Africa in 1980. They were followed in 1981 by Ireland, and in 1984 by England.
The cancellation of the 1986 British and Irish Lions tour did not prevent some South Africans playing in invitational teams to mark the centenary of the IRB in Cardiff and London. This was followed in 1989 by an officially sanctioned IRB World XV playing two test matches to celebrate the centenary of the South African Rugby Board (SARB).
Glasgow was particularly involved in the Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM). It was the first place in the world to grant Nelson Mandela Freedom of the City, in 1981 (other Scottish cities and districts followed suit afterwards: Aberdeen in 1984, Midlothian in 1985, Dundee in 1993, and Edinburgh in 1997). It wasn't until October 1993 (following his release three years earlier) that Nelson Mandela was able to visit Glasgow in order to accept the Freedom of the City in person.
One of the more notable acts of Glasgow's support for the AAM came in 1986, with the re-naming of St George's Place — location of the South African Consulate — to Nelson Mandela Place. Some of the businesses based in Stock Exchange House on the new Nelson Mandela Place refused to recognise the new name, and either adopted a Post Office box number for receiving post, or changed their address to an alternative entrance at 78 West George Street. But it was an important and visible protest against the South African government from a Scottish city and increased awareness of the fight for Black equality in an impossible-to-ignore manner.
On 11 June 1988, a concert was held at Wembley stadium in London in honour of Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday. Glasgow-born Jim Kerr of the band Simple Minds sang 'Mandela Day' to a global television audience of 600 million. The day after the concert a large march and rally took place in Glasgow, after which 25 people marched to London. They arrived in London on 18 July, Nelson Mandela's birthday.
After being imprisoned on Robben Island between 1964 and 1982, Pollsmoor Prison between 1982 and 1988, and finally the Victor Verster Prison between 1988 and 1990, Nelson Mandela was finally released on 11 February 1990. Very few people were aware then that a long series of meetings and negotiations between Nelson Mandela and the government had been taking place since the mid-1980s. During the final part of his imprisonment Nelson Mandela was housed in a small cottage within the grounds of the Victor Verster prison. This was to help him with the transition back to a 'normal' life.
Following Nelson Mandela's release from imprisonment in 1990, the power-sharing government, and then the first democratically-elected South African Government, the rest of the world began to grow closer to South Africa. Once elected President of South Africa in 1994, Nelson Mandela encouraged Black South Africans to get behind the previously-hated national rugby team, the Springboks, as South Africa was due to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup. As a keen fan of rugby, this is when the seed of my interest in South Africa began to grow.
When the 1995 World Cup began, South Africa (the Springboks) were seeded ninth and were not expected to progress beyond the group stages, or the quarter finals at the very most. On their way to the final South Africa defeated Australia, Romania, Canada, Western Samoa and France. I remember sitting down to watch the final between South Africa and New Zealand from Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg on the television, and getting the feeling that this was something very special. I couldn't quite put my finger on why, until Nelson Mandela arrived wearing a Springbok rugby shirt with team captain Francois Pienaar's number 6 on the back.
The final was a draw at full-time, so it went into extra-time. Seven minutes from the end of this, Joel Stransky scored his now famous drop goal to win the game, and tournament, for the Springboks. When Nelson Mandela presented the William Webb Ellis Trophy (the Rugby World Cup) to Francois Pienaar, Mandela said 'Francois, thank you for what you have done for our country'. To which Francois Pienaar replied 'No, Mr. President. Thank you for what you have done'.
Sport has immense power to bring people together. Politics, conflict, and injustice have equal power to drive people apart. In the 1980s, sporting boycotts were on the fault line where these two forces met. There is a time for sport, and a time to lend support. The role of Scotland in the 1980s is a small but important part of the story of how nations addressed the system of apartheid.
