South Africa, Apartheid and the Olympic Games

Abstract

South Africa was part of the Olympic Movement for more than two decades after apartheid had been officially introduced in 1948. In 1964 South Africa was excluded from the sporting event for the first time, and in 1970 it was formally expelled from the Olympic Movement. It had to wait until 1992 for its return when South Africa participated in the Olympic Games in Barcelona and won two medals. In the first part, this article describes South Africa’s development to exclusion and then back to its return by examining reasons for the late expulsion from, and re-entry to, the Olympic family. The next part looks at reactions of the governments and national sports federations (NFs) of Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to South Africa’s exclusion and its return against the backdrop of the Cold War. This paper further analyses the general attitudes of those actors towards apartheid (in sports). The conclusion points out the implications of South Africa’s sporting isolation and additional research gaps.