“No Māoris - No Tour”

The Time Our Country Prioritised a Rugby Ball Over Māori 

Hundreds gathered outside the bunches of barbed wire that decorated rugby pitches. Motorcycle helmets and shields on one side. Blows of police batons on the other. But no matter how many police there were, the protestors stormed and invaded the grounds. Havoc ensued for 56 days in Aotearoa, with protestors refusing proudly to end the riots until the Springbok tour of 1981 was over. 150,000 of Aotearoa’s citizens involved in over 200 protests.  

The 1981 Springbok Tour Protests were one of the largest times of civil unrest in modern Aotearoa history, with our nation divided on the subject of continuing to play against South Africa. The country was split, with half condemning the apartheid system of South Africa andW Aotearoa’s treatment of Māori. The other half believed that South Africa’s politics had nothing to do with Aotearoa and should be left out of sports.  

But the argument that Aotearoa had no connection to South African views was a wilfully ignorant lie. The relationship of rugby and racism between the two countries was born decades before the confrontations of the 80s, when the Springboks arrived in Napier in 1921 for a game versus the All Blacks. When Māori players performed the haka, all the Springboks players turned their backs. This insult was made worse afterwards, when a South African journalist covering the game expressed disgust at Pākehā spectators “frantically cheering on a band of coloured men” to beat “their own race”.  

Art by Keelin Bell

This blatant racism went unaddressed for years. For decades condoning racism was the status quo for Aotearoa, at most offering a few placating words about how Māori and Pākehā were “one in this country” (shoutout to our very own William Massey, who made this comment and many others contributing towards Aotearoa’s racism throughout his tenure as Prime Minister). 

In 1948, South Africa formally established their apartheid system, which institutionalised racial segregation and banned Māori rugby players. The New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) let it slide by only sending white players to play in South Africa.  

The cherry on top arrived in 1970 when three Māori players and one Samoan player were dubbed ‘honorary white’ by the South African government and allowed to tour the country. 

For many rugby supporters, athletes, and government officials, this title was a victory. It relieved the guilt they felt about enabling the racist views of their opposition. Even some Māori accepted the title, as it allowed them to join in the sport. It provided a surface-level promise that they would be treated equally to their white counterparts. 

The South African Government paraded the title like it was a prize. Like Māori rugby players should have been honoured to be viewed as a different race than their own.  

But we Māori are historically notorious for our pride, for the mana we hold within our identity and culture. For a prideful group of people such as ourselves, the suggestion to identify as anything other than Māori was kindling to the frustration they had felt for decades. 

Joining Māori in their fury was the freshly formed ‘Halt All Racist Tours’ (HART) group in 1969. HART’s main goal was opposing apartheid. They were concerned that accepting the ‘honorary white’ title would lead to Aotearoa adopting similar mindsets to South Africa. For the next decade they would speak out.  

HART members wore badges that signalled their membership and hosted rallies with banners and signs. But when the union and the Government ignored public opinion and announced the 1981 Springbok Tour in Aotearoa, it was clear something provocative needed to be done.  

The protests of the 1981 tour would be the final victory after decades of struggle. This was the last time the All Blacks would officially play the Springboks while apartheid was in place in South Africa. For good reason, too, as these final protests were the most explosive feuds yet, sometimes literally.  

Brawls between protestors and rugby supporters on the streets, invasions of pitches, damages to television transmitters to halt coverage.  

When the protestors were met with brutality from the police and supporters of the tour, they let it fuel them even further. Even as the police’s feared Red Squad came down on them with the unsanctioned use of batons upon their heads and left some of them hospitalised, the protestors fought back until the very last game.  

After three months of this, the protestors were successful in getting one of the first games cancelled due to rumours that they were going to fly a plane into Rugby Park. By the end they made good on the rumours, and the final game in Auckland was disrupted by smoke and flour bombs from a small plane. 

When the dust settled the effects were not immediate, with the union attempting to propose another All Blacks tour of South Africa in 1985. The union was taken to court for their proposal, but found a way around the tour's cancellation by sending the Cavaliers — a ‘different’ team that definitely wasn’t 28 of the All Blacks disguised. 

However, many of these players faced severe backlash back in Aotearoa, and the union was forced to act by barring them from rejoining the All Blacks.  

After decades of Māori voices going unheard, a man locked away in a distant prison heard of a 1981 game in Hamilton being cancelled and felt as if “the sun had come out”.

This man was Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black head of state and lead the apartheid resistance. After the apartheid was ended in the early 90s thanks to Mandela, he visited Aotearoa to shake the hands of prominent protesting figures and thanked them for seeing him in kind.  

Protestors were told by rugby supporters that Aotearoa had no influence on the political occurrences of another country, but Mandela’s arrival proved them wrong.  

Today sport is no longer put over the needs of Māori, and many Māori athletes are wildly successful. But Māori still hear platitudes about having “equal rights, regardless of ethnicity” from figures such as politician David Seymour. This is while they actively inhibit initiatives such as the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme which aims to mitigate Māori hardship. 

If something is done for the justice of yourself and others then it is worth doing, no matter how long and hard others may try to silence it. Māori protestors learned this decades ago when there was no one to defend them but themselves. Older Māori make sure we remember this. 

So today, I hope every Māori rugby player throws that ball as far as they can, leaving one less thing for Aotearoa to prioritise over us again.