The 1981 protests were explosive – but they did not spring up overnight. The fuse had been lit 60 years earlier, when the Springboks first toured New Zealand. The reason for protest was South Africa’s racist policies, known since 1948 as apartheid. Until the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, successive minority white South African governments were committed to maintaining white privilege and control. In South Africa, all sports teams were racially segregated. Until 1970, even visiting All Blacks teams were required to be ‘white’. The New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) went along with this, leaving Māori players at home.

Before Rugby World Cups, All Blacks–Springboks clashes were regarded as unofficial world championship matches and hugely popular in New Zealand. But eventually, not at any price. In 1960, 150,000 New Zealanders signed a petition (the largest to that date) opposed to sending another all-white All Blacks team to South Africa that year. The tour went ahead anyway. From the mid-1960s, anti-apartheid protest in New Zealand grew.

Pressure was also mounting internationally for South Africa to end its racist policies. Sanctions were being called for. In 1968, the United Nations called for a sporting boycott. New Zealand’s rugby contacts with South Africa were increasingly under the international spotlight. Tour supporters argued that politics should be kept out of sport. The South African Government’s attempts to maintain international sporting contact showed the extent to which sport and politics were in fact inextricably entangled.

In New Zealand, CARE (Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality), formed in 1964, and HART Halt All Racist Tours), formed in 1969, campaigned – unsuccessfully – against the 1970 All Blacks tour of South Africa.
In 1973, the scheduled Springboks tour of New Zealand was stopped by Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk. He believed that it didn’t reflect how New Zealand should act internationally. The 1975 general election brought the National Party into power. The new Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, personally supported rugby and other contacts with South Africa – and he saw political advantage in this.

In 1976, at the same time as hundreds of protesting black schoolchildren were being shot in the streets of Johannesburg, Muldoon announced that the All Blacks were going to South Africa ‘with the blessing and goodwill’ of the Government. Amidst widespread domestic and international protest, the All Blacks departed for South Africa. So incensed were African nations that they demanded New Zealand’s exclusion from the 1976 Montreal Olympics. The International Olympic Committee refused their request. In protest, most of Africa boycotted the games. The first Olympic boycott of the modern era had been caused by New Zealand’s support for apartheid South Africa.

In September 1980, knowing it had Muldoon’s support, the NZRFU invited the Springboks to tour New Zealand in 1981. Neither the NZRFU nor the Government saw that the battle against apartheid was highlighting racism at home. As anti-apartheid protest grew, it was not only to oppose South Africa’s racist policies. Increasing numbers of New Zealanders were asking ‘what about racism here?’