02 | Boycott! | Blood Sport

By the 1970s the anti-apartheid movement is growing around the world as protesters find ways to hit the South African government where it hurts most. In Australia, the action takes place in a very public way, by heading onto the sports field. Seven former Wallabies rugby players refuse to compete against the South African Springboks when they tour Australia. As mass protests divide the country, Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen declares a state of emergency in Queensland. First Nations activists join the fight, and even Aussie cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman gets caught up in the action.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Just a warning. This episode of ABC Rewind includes the names and voices of Aboriginal people who have died.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  It's 1969 and Terry Foreman's about to graduate from Sydney Uni. He's studying agriculture and he's stoked because he's just been selected to tour South Africa with Australia's rugby union team, the Wallabies.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  From the time I was a child, when I first started to play rugby, I remember hearing this story about the spring box. And I thought, just as a child in your imagination, maybe they're different than us, you know, maybe they they spring along and they they sort of can jump.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Terry's seen the spring box play. They're fast and powerful. But as excited as he is to fulfill his childhood dream, something's just not sitting right.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  I didn't really know a lot about the political ins and outs of it. What I did know was that the coloured people in South Africa had very little rights and they were sort of forced to live a separate social and working life. Through my father, really, he was there during the war. And I remember him saying to me, he said, you won't like what you see there in terms of the people, exploitation of people.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Terry's got mates who've also been selected and there's a bit of talk going on. Should we be doing this? Is travelling to an apartheid state the right thing to do? They start asking themselves hard questions. Do I step into the dream of playing for Australia? Or do I take a stand and boycott the tour?

• 1:44Speaker 02

  And we certainly talked about it. And I think the general consensus was that we should go and see for ourselves. And also, I just had a feeling that I should go, you know?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  It's the 1960s, so Terry knows about the civil rights movement in the United States. And he's keen to know more about black rights. So he slays some stereotypes and he spends the flight to South Africa, reading a book of essays by the black gay writer, James Baldwin. And when they land...

• 2:13Speaker 02

  It was exciting, but as soon as you got a little bit away from that, you realised, you know, just even walking around the back streets or going to the post office, you see all the signs, whites only, blacks only, different seats. And that sort of thing started to become really disturbing.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  The Wallabies spend four months touring South Africa, and every day Terry's eyes are being opened.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  When he's on the rugby pitch, Terry notices something odd about the crowd.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  All the coloured people were in a separate section and often surrounded by barbed wire. It was almost like stock put in a different, in a different yard.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  It's incredibly unsettling. And then there are all these chaperoned side trips that South African rugby has planned for the team. One time, bizarrely, they're taken to visit a police station. And what Terry sees that day, it's seared in his memory.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Which was the police dog unit, showing us the way dogs were used to control African people because they're proud of the training of their German Shepherd dogs, you know.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  The police give the Wallabies a demo of how they use the dogs.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  And I remember some African people dressed up in almost like Osaki goalkeeper's gear, you know, padding and shields and so on while the dogs were let loose on them.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Yes, you heard that right. Dogs being set on humans. Many, many black people in South Africa are still scared of dogs to this day for exactly this reason. Normal police dogs are used to sniff and detect crimes. Apartheid dogs are trained to attack.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Some of us just, when we realised what it was, we just turned and walked away from that as well.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  The team's disgusted. Despite, or maybe because of these experiences, the tour is a game changer for some of those players.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  I'm very pleased I went and saw it and experienced it and came back with a different view. And it was actually something that really changed my life.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Terry Foreman will go on to play a big part in the mighty Australian protest movement that challenges apartheid and holds white South Africa accountable. Years before governments take any action, before any formal sanctions against the apartheid regime, a formidable coalition of activists leads the way in saying, "Not in our name. This has to stop." This is Boycott: The Fight to End Apartheid. And I'm Sisongem Simang, the daughter of a South African freedom fighter and a child of the anti-apartheid movement. I grew up in exile, unable to go home because of the racist South African regime that swept to power in 1948

• 4:58Speaker 01

  and brutally divided our people based on the color of their skin. In the last episode, you heard about what it was like to live under apartheid.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Black and white can't marry. Certain jobs were only reserved for whites. Blacks can't do all the skilled jobs. All menial work was left to them. That's your lot in life. God said so.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  After generations of peaceful protests by Africans, one of the darkest days in our history took place: the 1960s Sharpeville massacre.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  We just heard a loud shot from the gunfire. From there, it was all hell.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  My photographer, Yan Hook, started shouting, "Their bodies all over, their bodies all over."

• 5:42Speaker 01

  When police murdered 69 black people at Sharpeville, it changed the way the world saw South Africa, and it changed South Africa. The leading political movement, the African National Congress, or ANC, is banned, and its leaders go underground.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  But the world is now watching, and activists around the globe start pushing back, finding ways to hit South Africa's apartheid government where it hurts most. And right here, in this country, activists take aim in a truly Australian arena: the sporting field. This is episode 2, Blood Sport. The Australian Wallabies and the South African Springboks are two of the best rugby union teams in the world. And the rivalry between them is fierce, always has been.

• 6:38Speaker 06

  They were probably always, in those days, the supreme rugby-playing country, along with New Zealand.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Anthony Abrams plays lock for the Wallabies on that 1969 tour with Terry Foreman. If, like me, you have no idea what being a lock means, basically, it means being tall and powerful, the key jumper in line-outs, and pushing hard in a scrum. Got it?

• 7:03Speaker 06

  The rugby matches in South Africa are almost like Nuremberg rallies, an almost ecstatic or hysterical edge created by people who felt their isolationism. They knew that their domination was under challenge, and that really translated onto the rugby field.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  That sounds about right, because in South Africa, rugby isn't just a sport. It's a way of showcasing white superiority. Prime Minister John Foster.

• 7:30Speaker 07

  Sport has always been played separately by the various races in South Africa, and so it will remain.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Prime Minister Foster there, emphasizing that there are black teams and there are white teams. And to have the honor of wearing a Springbok Guernsey? You have to be white. For white South Africans, the Springboks represent power and strength, white superiority. But for black South Africans, the whites-only team represents humiliation, the loss of land and rights, in other words, white supremacy. We black people also see that the government uses sport to normalize apartheid to the rest of the world, to soften its image. Because if white South Africans can be great sportsmen, surely, they can't be monsters. Despite what some people might try to tell you,

• 8:22Speaker 01

  sport and politics? They can't easily be separated.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Let's take a step back to 1963.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  The Wallabies are on route to South Africa.

• 8:43Speaker 08

  Eight thousand miles westward on the wings of a song. Just over thirty men, already anticipating new experiences in a strange land, a sister country, south of the line.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  But before the rugby team even boards the plane, one of the Wallaby players pulls the plug. His name's Lloyd McDermott, and he wants nothing to do with playing in apartheid South Africa. Here's his daughter, Philippa McDermott.

• 9:12Speaker 09

  My father was born in Idesfold, which is a little town in central Queensland, and really lived the first years of his life on the station and then out bush with my grandparents and wider kind of clan group, uh, working, ring barking and what have you. So he, he, he basically lived in a tent till he was about ten or eleven, and he didn't go to school.

• 9:40Speaker 10

  My anglicize name is Lloyd Clive McDermott. I also have taken on a tribal name called Mullenjwaka, which is a combination of the Mullenjali clan and the Waka Waka people.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  The late Mullenjai Waka, Lloyd McDermott, is just the second Aboriginal man to play rugby union for Australia. And he should be on that plane to Johannesburg, but he's not, because there's a slight problem. Everyone knows South Africa won't allow black players on its team. But get this, it won't even allow black players on the field.

• 10:13Speaker 10

  But when I realized I would have had to be acknowledged as some sort of honorary white for that period of, of the tour, I, the decision wasn't a hard one. I, I thought myself that we shouldn't have been playing. We should have, uh, had sporting sanctions at that stage, but that wasn't to be.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  So essentially Lloyd makes a huge decision. After playing just two tests for the Wallabies, he resigns. His international rugby union career is over, just as quickly as it began.

• 10:47Speaker 09

  It was really a personal decision for Dad about not compromising his identity as an Aboriginal person. And for us, and everything that we've been through, and our families, and families before that, he would never compromise his values, his identity. It's the essence of being for us. It's our birthright. It did end his rugby career. It had not only, you know, a political impact, but yes, it had a financial impact on Dad. But he did not let that hold him back.

• 11:20Speaker 10

  And I downhauled anything out against the Wallabies and went and toured there. But I took the view that I could not go there and play in a segregated society. I don't regret that decision at all. And as history's proven, we were right.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Malang Jawaka Lloyd McDermott will go on to become Australia's first Aboriginal barrister. So yes, history has absolutely proven him right. No doubt, his experience growing up Black in Australia has primed him for the role. In South Africa, the 1960s are referred to as "the lost decade". Nelson Mandela and his comrades are either in prison or in exile. And the apartheid government has silenced any dissent in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre. But everywhere else in the world, change is in the air. There's war raging in Vietnam, and protests along with it. The civil rights movement is blossoming.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And in Australia, Indigenous people are finally recognised as citizens. So by the time the Wallabies set off on their 1969 tour, the world is starting to scrutinise South Africa. Anthony Abrams is a law student at Sydney Uni, and he's on the tour. Like Terry Foreman, he's tuned in to world events. So when he's selected for the tour, he's conflicted. Should I go? Should I stay? Some friends advise him not to go. Why dignify apartheid? Others urge him to use it as a fact-finding mission. He decides to go. He'll play by day and investigate by night. It doesn't take long for racism to rear its head.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Anthony can see it on the pitch.

• 13:03Speaker 06

  There was a relatively small enclosure where blacks were allowed, and they were hemmed in by high barbed wire. And there were police dogs and truncheons to intimidate them if they got unruly. Unruly being if they supported us too vociferously, because they used to go mad every time we scored a try.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  The black people in the stand are doing exactly what I did my whole life when I watched sport, supporting any team except South Africa. It just would have been absurd to support a national team that excluded us. And off the field, Anthony is using his time wisely. He's doing his homework. He talks to political leaders, to writers, to journalists.

• 13:49Speaker 06

  Whilst I was fulfilling very diligently my training obligations and playing obligations, I was carrying out this sort of parallel agenda of using my badge and the tie in order to get behind doors where people who were very central to the South African opposition could be spoken to.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  South African rugby is in full propaganda mode. They're carting the Wallabies around to attend a bunch of events, like that police dog demo, trying to convince them that black people are happy and love apartheid.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  The rugby tour ends. The Wallabies lose 4-0, and Anthony Abrams decides to stay on in South Africa. It's a harrowing journey. As he makes his way north by land towards what is then Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, he sees things many white men pretend not to see. It makes him angry and pushes him toward action. Finally, as he crosses the border and is safely out of South Africa, he posts a letter that will make his private concerns very, very public. Who is his missive addressed to? The Sydney Morning Herald.

• 15:10Speaker 06

  It laid out the issues that confronted us on the tour and raised the question of whether Australia should continue to play against South Africa. The Australian people had to decide whether they were willing to go on accepting that.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  On October 8, 1969, Anthony's letters published with the headline, "South Africa and Sport."

• 15:32Speaker 06

  And I suppose it really had the effect of starting a horse race with a hand grenade.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Indeed, it does. Anthony's letter pressures sporting bodies to question the morality of playing whites-only South African teams. Does playing the South Africans give cover to their apartheid policies? This question is about to be put to the test.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  By the 1970s, a whole new language of black power is emerging. In America, it's embodied by the Black Panthers. And in South Africa, it's Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement. And in Australia, the epicenter of black rights is Redfern, the inner Sydney neighbourhood that's become a hotbed of Aboriginal activism, pride and politics.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  A powerful group of Aboriginal activists is based in Redfern. And one of them is Gary Foley. Gary is a Kumbengir man. Today, he's Professor of History at Victoria University. But back then, he's helping set up Australia's first Aboriginal medical and legal services, as well as the Tent Embassy in Canberra, as well as a founding member of the Black Panthers in Australia. And he keeps hearing all about this white mob protesting apartheid with his eyebrows raised.

• 16:50Speaker 11

  Suddenly, in 1971, we started reading about these demonstrations that were being held in Sydney, near us, involving these Australian anti-racists. Now, this was a significant surprise to us because our experience up until then, we didn't think there were very many Australian anti-racists at all. I can only speculate that they found it more comfortable to be challenging racism that's a lot further away from their own backyard. Because once you start thinking about your own backyard, it's a different kettle of fish.

• 17:38Speaker 12

  The question marks are really piling up now as Australia waits the arrival of the South African rugby team at the end of next week.

• 17:45Speaker 13

  No means the end of disruption, because the anti-apartheid movement has organised itself to block games at such places as this Sydney sports ground.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  By 1971, there's a slow drumbeat of opposition, building globally against the apartheid regime.

• 18:01Speaker 13

  There's a protester's kit, which consists of a whistle, a clicker, a balloon with a slogan on it, and a protester's guidebook showing how to get in, how to dis-

• 18:10Speaker 01

  But because of the Springboks tour, it's especially loud here in Australia. Trade unions, land rights activists, uni students, they're all joining forces. They're screaming at the top of their lungs about racism in South Africa. Gary Foley is curious about what this white mob has to say about this pressing social issue. So, the next time they protest, he goes along with his mate, another Aboriginal activist, the late Paul Coe. They're listening to the speeches, and suddenly Paul's had enough.

• 18:44Speaker 11

  Paul Coe jumped up and commandeered the microphone and laid down a challenge to the Australian anti-racist. He said, you know, "How is it that all of you people are here demonstrating about racism halfway around the world? What about here in your own country, you know?"

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Fair call, Gary. As you were.

• 19:04Speaker 11

  What about here where you may have to sort of face up to the reality that you might be part of the problem rather than part of the solution, which is what you see yourselves as here with, you know, the demos against South Africa. And so we didn't really expect them to respond in any sort of way, given the nature of Australia at the time, but to their credit, they did.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  So the anti-apartheid activists and the Black Rights Movement join forces to fight racism on all fronts. They're demanding land rights for Aboriginal people, and they're calling on the Australian government and rugby union to cancel the Springbok Tour. They realize something important, that Australia and South Africa speak a common language, this crazy love and respect for sport. Former Minister for Foreign Affairs Gareth Evans, he supports the boycotts at the time, and he explains it like this.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  Because we were a cricket and rugby-playing country, we had the capacity to make an impact on South African public opinion, which was equally, at least in the white community, sport-mad, including in those two sports. So I think it was perceived as a way of striking at the core of Afrikaners' sense of what they're all about and making them sort of focus on the indignities and the horrors.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  In other words, Australia is uniquely positioned to strike a blow against apartheid. It has power.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Another influential group is also forming behind the scenes, the Wallaby Seven. It's a group of former rugby internationals calling for a boycott of the tour, including Anthony Abrams and Terry Forman. The Wallaby Seven pick up where Lloyd McDermott left off, refusing to be part of any team playing the white-only Springbok.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  They're pretty famous, so they get a heap of attention for their stance, including from Prime Minister William MacMon, who slams them, saying they're a national disgrace. Barry McDonald is another of the Wallaby Seven. In this news clip from 1970, he's just come off the field with Anthony Abrams. They're dripping with sweat and not holding back on how they feel.

• 21:26Speaker 14

  So I think we all feel the same about it. I just can't see how you can possibly invite a side out here that chooses a side according to race and say that you're not endorsing their policies.

• 21:37Speaker 15

  You know, South Africa won't let Aboriginal sportsmen go there and play in South Africa. South Africa won't let people like Arthur Ashe play in South Africa. And if they're going to pursue these sort of policies which underline sort of racial difference in the world of the 1970s, well, I think that we've got to be firm and say that politics have been brought into sport, not by us, but by South Africa, and we've got to do something about it.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Sadly, however, the PM has his finger on the nation's pulse. Polls show that 85% of Australians do think the tour should go ahead. They don't want to hear about all this apartheid stuff. The public is saying, "Politics and sport? They don't mix." Huh.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  And so, the 1971 Springbok Tour of Australia goes ahead.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  On Saturday, the 26th of June, South Africa's all-white rugby union team touches down in Perth, only to find protesters clashing with rugby fans at the airport. And when they get to their hotel, there are more demonstrators. And that's just a taste of what's to come. The tour becomes a moral battle between racism and anti-racism, between right and wrong, with one side insisting that sport is never just about sport.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Trade unions across the country are in full activation mode. They've been talking to their South African counterparts for years. And now they have an audacious plan to disrupt the Springbok tour. Their first step? The unions ban members from working if the Springboks are on the plane. You'll most likely know Bob Hawke as our prime minister in the 80s. But back in 1971, he leads the very powerful Australian Council of Trade Unions.

• 23:36Speaker 16

  Are you confident this announcement now can stop the South African tour?

• 23:40Speaker 17

  You can be absolutely confident in these matters, Gary. But my expectation is that it will mean that the South Africans will not be able to tour in Australia.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  The unions have a lot of power. So when the ACTU says jump, its members say, how high? The major airlines won't be flying the Springboks anywhere. The team's forced to fly around the country on five tiny charter planes. And on the ground, transport workers refuse to let them onto trains and buses. Unions even make it hard for the rugby boys to get a feed.

• 24:16Speaker 17

  And also, the hospitality unions had bans on any establishment, any hotel or motel that they were booked into.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  John Halfpenny is a senior unionist at the time.

• 24:29Speaker 17

  And also, they had to arrange accommodation in sort of small motels, sometimes in the homes of rugby union supporters at the time.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Just like high school students on a field trip, these high-flying international rugby players are billeted out, sleeping in the spare rooms of supporters.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  After weeks of protests at games around the country, the Springboks finally arrive in Sydney. The pressure's been building, and the team has been feeling the heat. Because of that union boycott, the Springboks can't stay at the big-name hotels. So they're forced to secretly book at a random motel in Bondi Junction, The Squire Inn. It's inconvenient for the Springboks, but it's super convenient for Aboriginal activist Gary Foley and his mates in the Black Power movement, whose headquarters is, get this, just around the corner.

• 25:26Speaker 11

  So we opened up the doors of our commune and that became the headquarters of the demos that took place while the Springboks were in Sydney.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  So it was purely coincidental, just pure luck?

• 25:38Speaker 11

  Well, nobody knew where the Springboks were going to stay, but then suddenly one day we saw all these police at the motel next door. And when we sort of sussed out what was going on, we discovered here are the Springboks. And so we alerted the rest of the crew and everybody started having demos in front of the Springboks motel.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  And guess who else lives just around the corner from The Squire Inn? Former Wallaby, Jim Boyce, one of the Wallaby Seven. Now, Jim had been on the 1963 tour of South Africa, and one moment was seared in his memory. After one of the games, the Wallabies had a meet and greet with South African politicians, and one of those politicians gave Jim three Springbok Guernseys, and he said,

• 26:23Speaker 18

  A black man will never play rugby for South Africa.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  The guy who said this to Jim Boyce? He later went on to become the Prime Minister of the country. So yeah, anyway, I reckon Chester Williams, the first black post-apartheid Springbok, might have something to say about that. So might Sia Colisi, the first black captain of the Springboks, and it's most successful, I might add. I could go on and on and on. In any case, back in 1971, Jim Boyce is now mates with Gary Foley. He takes those three Springbok Guernseys and gives them to Gary.

• 27:01Speaker 11

  And he brought them to us and he said, "The Prime Minister, John Voest, had said that no black man would ever wear..."

• 27:10Speaker 11

  This hallowed symbol of Africana-dom, the Springbok football guernsey. And Jim Boyce said to us, if you guys wear these things and the South African players see you, they'll hit the roof.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  The audacity, this is brilliant. Gary Foley and a couple of mates put on the guernseys and wear them to a protest outside the motel where the Springboks are staying.

• 27:32Speaker 11

  The South Africans saw us wearing these things. The police came out of nowhere and dragged us into the Squire Inn because the police thought that we had stolen these guernseys from the current team that was staying in the Springbok.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 27:48Speaker 11

  And so the police dragged us in there and they made all of the South African rugby players come down and parade past us and they were saying, which one of you guys did these guys steal these jumpers from? And very quickly, the police suddenly realised their mistake and the South African rugby players were not happy at all.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  But again, these players ain't seen nothing yet.

• 28:13Speaker 19

  Rival hookers, fun bike for the Springboks and the veteran New South Wales captain, Peter Johnson.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  It's game day, the 17th of July, 1971.

• 28:23Speaker 19

  A lot of balloons coming out of the field at the moment.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  And Meredith Bergman's just arrived at the revered Sydney Cricket Ground for the first match between the Australian Wallabies and the South African Springboks.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  When you got to the cricket ground on the day, it was extraordinary. There were these huge, great barbed wire fences and the only area that didn't have these was of course, the member stand and the lady stand.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Meredith's a sports tragic and she'll go on to be a state labour politician, but today, she's a young, daring, anti-apartheid activist who's known to the police. And so, she's in disguise, dressed up as a white, South African woman.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  I had organised with a sister and two other friends to... we dressed ourselves up as what we thought middle-aged Africaners had looked like and I'm wearing these terrible daggy clothes and a black wig. Anyway, but the police were totally bamboozled and they let us in.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  To Australians, when a team runs onto the field and it's all white, and you know that the country is 80% black, you can see very clearly what's wrong. It was such a clear case of terrible discrimination. And we thought that to the average Australian, that would be despicable.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  But actually, most Australians aren't blinking an eye.

• 29:55Speaker 20

  What's your opinion of the demonstrators as a whole? You really want to know? Heavy guns. Heavy guns, mate. Cuttersnipes. Out. Finished.

• 30:05Speaker 21

  I think it's a shocking demonstration by a lot of radical louts.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  The SCG is packed. It's been six years since the Springboks played in Australia. But strategically planted throughout the massive crowd are disguised activists like Meredith, there to disrupt the game when the time is right.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  We were just sitting there, talking to each other in what we hoped were Afrikaner accents. And the police in front of us, and we actually got them to move aside because we said we couldn't see properly.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  As the game gets going, thousands of demonstrators flood in through the turnstiles. They're blowing whistles, they're chanting, they're booing, they're making an enormous racket. Then, they start throwing flares and fireworks onto the rugby pitch.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  It's pure chaos, and in spectacular style, they achieve their objective. They've disrupted play. The fans in the stands are furious, but this is the cue for Meredith and her sister to make their move.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  We jumped over the fence, we ran onto the ground. And the police that had moved aside for us, obviously horrified that these middle-aged Afrikaners were doing this.

• 31:20Speaker 19

  A chance here, there's a demonstrator on the field. Out to the winger on the far side, Stegman. Stegman inside the 25, and a demonstrator has run right through the play.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  I lay down in the middle of a scrum or a ruck, or whatever they are. But my sister Verity got hold of the ball and kicked it. And the bullerian actually called it the best kick of the season because it went right up in the air and sort of took ages to come down.

• 31:43Speaker 19

  Out on the halfway line, and police are converging from anywhere.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  The cops run onto the field and arrest Meredith and Verity with a particularly rough tackle, but they've made their point. The protest with an image of the women on the pitch is on front pages globally. Boyed by the success of the Sydney protests, demo organizers are banking on even bigger protests in Brisbane. By the time the Springboks board their five tiny charter planes and fly to Queensland, Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen is ready for a showdown with protesters. He makes a stunning announcement.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Joe Bjelke-Petersen, the Premier of Queensland, called a state of emergency to stop the demonstrations against the Games.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  So in defence of the Games, in defence of the Spring... in defence of white supremacy, a state of emergency was called in Queensland?

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. And the number of police that were called out to each game, it was quite remarkable.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  It's no surprise when things get really nasty.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  On Saturday, July 24th, protesters are gathered outside the Springboks accommodation, the Tower Mill Hotel, on the fringe of Brisbane's CBD. They're holding signs, they're blowing whistles. Again, they're making a lot of noise. So far, so good.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Until an astonishing number of police arrive. Protesters are at the top of a hill, but when they see the cops moving toward them in such force, they panic and they start to run.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  And the police chased the demonstrators down a hill, sort of cordoned them off in a particular area and just started beating people up. It was probably the worst police violence of the whole tour.

• 33:42Speaker 22

  The demonstration is now getting quite violent. They're carrying quite a number away now, it's impossible to keep a tally. But there are screams of pain and cries of pain coming up from the crowd from time to time. Quite frankly, I can't see any reason why the police are arresting the people.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  More than 600 police swarm the protest. The premier's given them carte blanche to be as aggressive as they need.

• 34:08Speaker 23

  I got grabbed by some police officers.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Queensland's future premier, Peter Beatty, is there protesting.

• 34:13Speaker 23

  Got thrown to the ground and I ended up being carted off the hospital. And then I got charged with disorderly conduct. I mean, disorderly conduct and I was running away from police. It made me suspicious of the system. It was a turning point for me. I think it was the catalyst or the event that actually encouraged me into full-time politics.

• 34:33Speaker 22

  The police were five-deep in places across the roadway. Some of them were wearing crash helmets.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  What they did was just, they linked arms and they started pushing us down the hill, which, so people were kind of tumbling backwards and, you know, trying to get out of the way of other people.

• 34:49Speaker 24

  I was just grabbed by a whole group of policemen, about 10 of them. They punched me, they stole my feet, they hit me about the head. They wouldn't let me go and then they started, they pushed me off. Did you expect this sort of action? It's incredible, I can't believe it. You know, this is Australia, you know, you don't sort of think...

• 35:03Speaker 23

  It was a watershed. It was a frightening watershed. It was a bit scary at the time. But out of that came an energy, an energy for change, a good energy.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Amongst the protesters are Aboriginal activists and organizations making a stand too.

• 35:17Speaker 25

  The police were right in there behind us like blue healers with a mob of cattle. And we were running. The battens were out and my heart still races at the memory of it, yeah.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  The late Maureen Watson is there and says the police violence has a particular flavour if you're black.

• 35:36Speaker 25

  There were Aboriginal people getting bashed up and being warned to get out of town. They were more or less given an open permit on Aboriginal people with the state of emergency.

• 35:47Speaker 23

  It was a time of, I guess, new awakening, new awareness in many senses. And people were expressing their democratic right. I mean, I'd never seen Indigenous activists before.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  The police violence totally backfires. The public is horrified. As the Springboks board their flight home to South Africa, support for the tour is evaporating. With their strikes, whistles, flares, guernseys and placards, the demonstrators have sent a clear message to South Africans and the world. And it's damn impressive.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  When Meredith Bergman and co started protesting the 1971 Springbok Tour, they knew it was too late to stop it. But they figured their protest actions would get a lot of attention. Because the plan was to build up to another fight, the upcoming South African cricket tour.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  We did feel we could probably stop the cricket because it's such a more delicate sport.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Cricket's always been known as the gentleman's sport. It goes on for days and days and days, don't get me started. That means players are more vulnerable to distraction. And of course, there's a lot more time to disrupt. Here's ABC reporter Mike Carlton with a few choice tips for maximum protester disruption.

• 37:14Speaker 26

  Now with the footballers, a fairly common tactic was the blowing of whistles, which confused the players about the referee's decisions. But with the cricketers, a far more effective tactic, I'm told, will be the use of pocket mirrors to effectively blind the batsmen.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  My absolute love of cricket had me horrified at the thought of breaking up cricket matches. But we knew this had to happen. If they were going to send us a whites-only cricket team, we would break it up.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Principle over pleasure. It's not just mirrors and whistles. There's a whole bunch of disruptive tactics Mike Carlton suggests. Blasting radios tuned to different stations, releasing grasshoppers onto the pitch, fleas into the crowd. The possibilities are endless. But in addition to her staunch opposition to apartheid, I suspect Meredith wants to spare her beloved cricket these miseries. So she gets to work campaigning to have the cricket tour cancelled.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  In 1971, Sir Donald Bradman is the Chair of the Australian Cricket Board.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Sir Donald Bradman, I don't need to describe who he was, you know. It's probably Australia's most famous sports person.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  But if, like me, you're a migrant, not a cricket fan, or just under the age of 50, then you need to know that Bradman was, well, is, an absolute legend. The greatest batsman of all time. And as the Chair, he's deliberating whether or not the upcoming tour should go ahead. He's seen what happened with the rugby, and he does not want to repeat performance.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Anyway, one day I get this letter through the post.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Meredith is beside herself. The letter is from Don Bradman, her hero. And he wants to know why she thinks the cricket tour should be cancelled.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  So he was trying to make out that there should be a exception made for cricket. Anyway, I wrote back, and I was very, I'm a very polite girl from Bee Croft, so I wrote back very politely.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Very politely. But she clearly spells out why the tour must be cancelled.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Meredith and Donald write back and forth for months. No quick texts in these days. It's paper and pen and postage stamps. And then one day, Bradman announces his decision.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  He said, "We will not play South Africa until the system of apartheid is finished." Which was a wonderful thing to say. We were so pleased with it.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  You could not ask for better.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  It was terrific, coming from Sir Donald Bradman, who was well-known as a conservative force in Australian cricket.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  It's a stunning victory. There will be no dramatic cricket protests, no mirrors blinding the batsmen, no police with batons as the gentleman's game unfolds.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  I think he was astute enough to see that what had happened to the footballers would be awful, happening to cricket, and that it would put cricket right in the middle of a terrible argument about race.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  1971 has been a massive year for anti-apartheid activists in Australia. They've disrupted the rugby, the surfing, golf, tennis, swimming, any sport with the South Africans and their white-only teams. And the big one, they've completely blocked the cricket tour, proving that Australians can make a difference in the most larrikin of ways to issues they care deeply about. But there's another victory, a quieter victory, one that's taken place off the sports field. Gary Foley.

• 41:16Speaker 11

  Suddenly, the land rights demonstrations started to be much bigger as more and more non-Aboriginal Australians were joining these marches. And as these marches got bigger through 1971, that dramatically increased the pressure on the Australian government.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Activists and the government are realising racism's racism. You can't fight it in another country without also cleaning up your own backyard.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  I mean, it still horrifies me when I realise that while all this was going on, and I was demonstrating against Vietnam and apartheid, children were still being taken away from their parents because of their skin colour. That was still happening.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Fighting against apartheid places Australian racism in stark relief. In 1972, just a year after the Springbok Rugby Tour, Labor comes to power. In one of Gough Whitlam's first acts as Prime Minister, he announces a new policy. Racially-selected sporting teams will be banned from touring Australia. Whitlam also announces an inquiry into how best to grant land rights to Aboriginal people. They are small, but such significant wins for everyone fighting against racism.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Next time on Boycott, we head back inside South Africa, where the apartheid regime is cracking down harder than ever.

• 42:51Speaker 27

  But it soon developed into a much wider expression of black anger. Hundreds died in the violence.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  But it's being met with the rage of a generation that will not be silenced.

• 43:02Speaker 28

  He made it quite clear that we had to fight for our own freedom. Black man, you are on your own.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Surviving the crackdown means taking massive risks.

• 43:12Speaker 29

  Someone knew someone who were selling very dodgy documents, but these documents worked.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I'm Sisong Kim Simang, and Boycott is a Rewind production for ABC Radio National.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC Podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.