‘We don't Want Crumbs, We Want Bread’: Non-Racial Sport, the International Boycott and South African Liberals, 1956–1990

Abstract

In 1958 Alan Paton spoke as founding vice-president at the launch of the South African Sports Association, the first organization to promote non-racial sport effectively. In 1959 he opposed a racially-segregated tour of South Africa by a West Indian team. During the 1960s Paton and Peter Brown supported the sports boycott and tried to persuade Maori rugby players not to tour with the All Blacks. In 1967 Paton criticised John Vorster's new policies for international sports relations as an attempt to obscure the realities of apartheid. In 1970 an exiled member of the Liberal Party, Peter Hain, was instrumental in the cancellation of the South African cricket tour to England. In the 1970s reforms aimed at depoliticising sport while retaining the basic values of apartheid were introduced. And in 1983 multinationalism implemented on the sports fields of South Africa was imposed on its political system, although Africans were now excluded. This article looks at nonracial sport and the international boycott in relation to values of liberalism and analyses criticisms later levelled at supporters of the boycott by those who bemoaned what they called the slideaway. It concludes that non-violent boycotts as a means of opposing the dictatorial abuse of power are justifiable liberal strategy.