The Springboks’ well-deserved win yesterday over Argentina in the Stade de France was built on three key pillars: a deadly instinct to take advantage of opposition errors; crushing dominance in the lines; and Jake White’s brilliant stratagem to suffocate the rather one-dimensional, albeit effective until then, style of play of the Pumas — a stratagem that consisted mainly of a solid back line where Percy Montgomery was never left alone to defend the fullback position from the deep kicks of Pumas fly-back Juan Martín Hernández, Argentina’s top attacking force.
Prior to kick-off, statistical history showed the improbability of an Argentinian win in the World Cup semifinal: the Pumas have never beaten their opponents. This statistic, however, is denied by the Argentine Rugby Union (UAR), through its own version of the history.
According to the UAR (in Spanish), Argentina did defeat the Boks once, in 1982 in Bloemfontein, in a match the Pumas played under the alias “South America XV” and won 21-12. All points were made by fly-back Hugo Porta, the best Argentinian player to date. Marcelo Loffreda, Argentina’s coach until yesterday, was on the squad.
Argentinean rugby big wigs came up with the name “South America XV” to sidestep the anti-apartheid isolation imposed on South African sports. To this day, Porta and many other former Pumas fondly recall their efforts “to treat blacks as well as possible” on their trips to South Africa, so as to show “oppressive whites” that apartheid was wrong.
Those Pumas are most likely to have had the noblest intentions, if not the most thoroughly weighed. As journalist Santiago O’Donnell wrote in an article (in Spanish) yesterday, one could claim those Pumas were young, lived in a bubble and were ignorant of the political affairs of both South Africa and Argentina (the match took place on the day after the Argentinian military dictatorship invaded the Falklands Islands and started a ridiculous and impossible to win war against Britain).
What is not understandable about the “South America XV” match, and other similar ones, is the non-existence of any kind of latter-day condemnation or regret of those games — a symbolic gesture if nothing else.
It is striking that, in a democratic South Africa, the South African Rugby Union (Saru) has never requested other unions that broke international sanctions by sending their teams-in-disguise to play the “all-white Bokke” either to scrap those matches from their records or, at least, add footnotes to them, explaining that they were played in spite of an international campaign against a racist state.
Whether one agrees with the efficiency or not of those sanctions is a separate issue; the sanctions were in place and therefore required respect.
In an ideal world, this would not matter as sports would be all about physical and tactical performance, without any place for politics. In the real world, politics and sport inevitably mix.
The anti-apartheid sports sanctions on South Africa were one such mixture. By accepting at the time to play the Boks, the Pumas made a political decision and dismissed, as did others, a decision by the international sports community to which they belonged. Maybe, as O’Donnell says, they did not know what they were doing — although the effort to “treat blacks well” proves otherwise. However, they do now.
It is about time the people and unions who accepted the decision to apply sanctions and then, quite hypocritically, changed their names and shirts to break them, did something to redeem their behaviour. A good place as any to start would be by scrapping the “only win over South Africa” stat from the UAR website.
Would you feel that playing Zimbabwe under the current climate of political oppression would also constitute such a breach of honour as to one day strike these results from the record?
What about the Saudi Arabian football team being represented at the world cup? They cut off hands there and women are treated slightly more favourably than dogs.
China at the olympics? They use child labour and shoot people for poor quality production at factories. Not very nice but I don’t see sanctions against them either.
You see, just because the world chose to put sanctions on SA and not on others does not point to a worse crime…it simply points, like it does in Iraq, to a politically useful stance at the time. Otherwise why are sanctions not flying around the globe for all the wrongs we perceive?
Until sanctions become a weapon of choice for ALL countries not towing the UN majority line and are applied evenly and lavishly like a coat of quality paint over all the blemished parts of the world’s wall, I think that theuir very value and thereby the value of defying them is negligible.
Who can argue that the cultural isolation of the South African, especially sportswise in this sports-mad nation, played a crucial role in inspiring the admirable pragmatism exhbited by Vorster initially, followed by Botha and ultimately De Klerk?
I sincerely hope that the international community applies tactics meant to achieve change in truant nations with judicious pragmatism.
In the case of South Africa where crimes against humanity were being perpetrated by a minority white regime with umblical cord firmly attached to Europe, cultural isolation was always going to have the desired effect.
I could be wrong but I think sanctions against that great footballing nation, Saudi Arabia, would have the effect of Sheik-Watchamicall shrugging his shoulders, adding $2/a barrel on the oil price and going about his hand-chopping ways.
Not that I think Rodrigo’s original point was even about the appropriateness of sanctions – more the hypocrisy of saying you will and then don’t.
Ndumiso, you are omnipresent…
I would think that your Saudi retort sums up beautifully how white South Africa responded to sanctions, except cut ‘oil’, paste ‘gold’. I still see no counter argument in there to the basic cases put forward.
Anyone could argue that sanctions played a role but a ‘crucial role’? How do you quantify that? It was not a visible factor and while it might have contributed indirectly to sentiment, many people also gained, most notably white business people who rode the finrand like a point-break at Jeffery’s Bay and have great wealth today as a result. White South Africans under sanctions were more secure and powerful than they are now. How did sanctions, therefore, bring down a regime when their voters benefited in so many ways?
And if you are going to attack people who did not comply with a rule, it is absolutely relevant to consider how valid and equitable that rule is in the first place. Apartheid’s laws, if nothing else, should highlight that to you in Technicolor.
If sanctions were applied, fairly and equitably, to each and every country whose government transgressed a moral code as judged by the UN majority, then they would be a standard by which we could judge those who transgress them. They are not, as I have shown by some simple examples above, and thereby lose their right to set that standard.
Thus, back to the point here, if sanctions are so dubiously applied, how can one retrospectively make great moral pronouncements about those who did not comply with them? Should we strike the Puma’s game from the record? No we should not. Give a black mark next to its entry in the record books by all means, but make it disappear from history? Dangerous engineering of the past to comply with current views, I think…
Ndumiso, you are right, my point had nothing to do with the validness of sanctions. In fact, as a norm, I do not believe they work. They may work in certain cases, not in most.
Grant, in American sports history, records specify when leagues (mainly baseball and basketball) where opened to black players, putting an end to the “Negro leagues”. This is not done as part of “dangerous engineering” of the past, it is to explain the past in the correct manner. It explains that those records of matches, leagues and players from before racial integration fail to include an important chunk of the population.
To add a mark next to the games played by Pumas in sanctioned-ZA (and the matches of all other teams, be they All Blacks, Lions, Wallabies or whoever)would do that, it would offer the bigger picture. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
Rodrigo, please scroll up and you will see I have no real problem with marking the game as a ‘sanctions game’, for what that is actually worth to anyone. Removing it from history, deleting the record, is what I have a problem with. And where does this process of editing history after the fact end?
What about the Berlin Olympics of 1936, should we remove those from the record because athletes travelled to a country that was in the grips of a fascist regime that made ours look like kids playing house? What benefit does removing these records have for us today? Do we really feel better when we slap the faces of players from 30 years ago? Perhaps. Or is it maybe just time to step above this kind of petty redressing and look forward instead of wallowing in the past and taking a Koki to history so it better suits our views?
Last comment, if this whole process is about correcting for the past wrongs of apartheid, what could be a better tonic for apartheid victims of South Africa than a team coming in here and bashing a white-only rugby side? If I was a black guy back then, I would have cheered for every Argentinean point…not so? Perhaps it should be highlighted and not removed for the greater good…
As far as sports and sanctions go I would never equate aparthaid-ZA to Nazi-Germany or to Saudi Arabia or China or any of the other countries you have mentioned.
I would equate it to pre-civil rights movement USA. The difference between all those other countries and US/ZA is that these two legally barred an important part of their own population from playing. Thereby, their teams were formed by only a faction of the people.
Now, as you say, highlighting may be far more viable and logical than scrapping. But something has to indicate what the circumstances where then and there.
Point taken, there is a distinction, you are right.
I used those examples merely to ask whether ‘sanctions against a country’ is, in fact, the litmus test by which we should either ratify or discard sports results. My view is that it is a poor method to judge this as so many countries display a human rights record as bad or worse than ours and because sanctions are so vaguely applied.
The fact that in our case it was a racial issue preventing all players from participating as opposed to perhaps a class issue in India makes it no less relevant to the overall argument of striking from the record those who do not ‘deserve’ to be recorded. Why should a group of rugby playing South Africans and Argentineans be erased from history when a group of long-jumping Nazis are not was the thread of the thinking there.
As for going back in history to pre-civil rights USA, where do we stop because from the early 1900′s just 50 years before that almost every country in Europe with a colony had subjects prevented from playing sport in their national teams. I realise this is a much bigger debate though and shall stop flogging a dead horse.
Thanks for a thought-provoking article.
P.S. Do you think any Jews made the relay team in 1936 Nazi-controlled Germany while we are talking about population segments excluded from sport?
The match that was played by the Pumas in 1982 was played under a brutal Argentinean dictatorship (it fell at the end of that year) who are said to have murdered between 30 000 and 50 000 people in 7 years. Rugby in Argentina was and still is an entirely elitist sport and those in the rugby team are often linked to super-conservative or military backgrounds. Little wonder they felt a kindred spirit beckoning them to Africa. Argentina was itself not respecting human rights of its own people at the time of the match, let alone going to respect those of South Africa and the international community. There was an enormous amount of international pressure on Argentina at the time, which South Africa also neatly ignored.
Aside from the Rugby Union or the dictatorship (who I’d venture to say were not that ignorant)Were the players themselves ignorant? Probably. They still are. THey are ignorant of their own poverty and diversity never mind those of Africa. I have been living in Argentina for 4 years and I still get asked if I am from Africa why I am not black with a pot belly dying from hunger. And this is an incredibly racist society – just ask any indigenous-looking person how they are treated here. How Argentineans still go up and “touch” black people for good luck and how they refer to lower class people as “cabecitas negras” (black heads) although they *swear* it’s got nothing to do with skin colour.
Sport is politics. Let’s not be so naive as to isolating it to ‘just a game’. To say that the oppressed would be glad that Argentina whipped the Bok’s ass is to completely miss the point in my view. The point was participation not winning. The South African state could maintain its legitimacy if it participated in international events as an entity (even if it was only a sporting match a ‘national identity’ is recognised and legitimised).
I agree that that sanctions and international morality is often selective and unfair (especially where women and classes are concerned as you all point out quite rightly). But that doesn’t change that apartheid was wrong and illegitimate. And sanctions were right even if they were and not always applied equally. And just coz you can’t prove ‘scientifically’ that they worked, you can’t prove that they *didn’t* contribute (sorry about the double negative). Sanctions were the right thing to do, in my view.
And sorry, while I am on the soapbox, just an aside – Argentina is a country which still recognises “Race Day” (12th October) – the day when Columbus “discovered” America and conquered (read “committed ethnocide”) the indigenous peoples of their own country. All their maps still are printed and taught in schools with the Falklands marked “Malvinas (ARG)” ….. so I wouldn’t expect them to be changing any Rugby Union records too soon even if we agree that that might be the right thing to do!
I was just reading my above comments and reading it cold, the tone was a bit harsh and reactionary (I think it was the Porta quote about “treating the blacks as well as possible” that did it). I *do* think that Argentinean society or rather some therein are racist but naturally any generalisation has its limits.
Lucy, some valid points especially participation vs result. My intention was merely to point out that you can’t undo the fact that the game was played and if you wish to put some spin (for that is all this is) onto it now, rather highlight the fact that the SA team, comprised of the ‘master-race’, was the only one ever to lose to the South American IX (Pumas). It seems more adult to me than pretending the game was never played at all which seems petty and silly? Why do we wish to erase our past instead of facing up to it?
On your ‘sport is politics’ comment, I feel there is plenty of sport played without national politics being the central element trying to control it. We seem to fixate on it. It is a political lever of great weight and it is being used ruthlessly as I write this to threaten world cup successes that are still in motion. First we had racist selections and exclusions, then apartheid isolation and now we have transformation affecting our sport here. Leave it alone and fight the battles elsewhere, sportsmen and women should not be political pawns. Laugh if you like but I see it as selective governmental social engineering and it is wrong. Simple question, why do we have no transformation issues in football? It also came out of the apartheid era as rugby did in 1994.
Your point about Argentina only serves to strengthen my point. Why are we the only ones being judged here? I have spent a fair amount of time in Australia. They are as racist there as you claim the Argentineans are and I have yet to get a look of understanding or sheepish compromise when I ask when the first Aboriginal president of Australia will be appointed or why there are no Aboriginal Wallaby players. Yet they saw fit to stand on their moral high ground and demand SA to be removed from the international sporting arena for apartheid. It might have been morally justifiable but it is NOT consistent.
The point is that no country, not even little neutral Switzerland stashing away their Nazi gold, is above comment and criticism for some part of their international reputation. Until there is an international standard for deciding who shall be allowed and who shall not be allowed to participate, fairly and equitably, perhaps we should stop the masochistic urge to purge and just play the game?
Grant, I think that there is a pretty clear international standard: racism as a legal institution, supported and policed by the government. When such a system exists you are on the “wrong” side of the standard.
This was the case of apartheid South Africa and this is why apartheid-South Africa was different from Argentina, Cuba, Australia or Switzerland (some of the countries you’ve named).
There can be a separate argument as to whether it is the right standard or not, but there is no doubt that it is some kind of standard. To argue the validness of the prevailing standard, the one I mention, would imply arguing about morality and I’m sure you will agree with me that arguing about morality is like arguing about religion: it is a dead-end discussion.
Rodrigo, I am not arguing that racism is moral by a long stretch. I am taking a step back to look at the bigger picture and implications of what you suggested in your article. It highlighted that ALL countries have shameful pasts judged by today’s standards. It is simply a matter of timing.
Apartheid is over. It ended in 1994. If it was still entrenched here and we were arguing over a coming tour, different discussion entirely, I agree. We are not, the game happened, they won, people watched, they were there. It is now part of history.
I suppose your phrase of ‘some kind of standard’ probably sums it up perfectly. Again, briefly, if you are going to judge for all time the validity of a match lets not do it with ‘some kind of standard’. Your ‘standard’ allows countries with terrible human rights abuses to play away as long as the government does not legislate the abuse, while SOME of those that do get rapped over the knuckles?
If you feel the need to judge, fine by me. But at least judge fairly and consistently.
P.S China, Saudi Arabia, Iran…do these places not have legislation that abuses your ‘standard’ of human rights whether it be on the topic of women, religious freedom or freedom in general? Is racism the only one that we do not tolerate now?
P.P.S. Australians, whilst playing international sports with full recognition, had legislation in place until 1972 allowing the forced removal of part Aboriginal/part European children from their Aboriginal parents into state run welfare homes (see the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_history_of_Western_Australia). It was government imposed, legislated, race-orientated ethnic meddling. Hence my example of Australia. Their sports results stand unaltered before that date and what, if you please, is the difference? Should we go back and state that all ashes games before 1972 should have an (RLIP) for Racial Legislation In Place? Maybe. My point is, if we do it to SA we sure as nuts better look into all the other culprits down the ages in the interests of fairness and completeness don’t you think? Or is it just simpler to martyr SA and leave the rest of them looking on in amusement from their guilty comfort zones?
I just want to make three points. Grant, I feel that you grossly underestimate what apartheid was. It was not only a system of separate amenities & exclusion (as in the US) – that’s petty apartheid and was part of a much greater scheme, grand apartheid. It was a deeply socially engineered system based on over 40 years (not the Nazis 5) of oppression from education, social opportunities, job reservations, restrictions on movement, freedom of choice, religion, ideology, sexual relations – and not just sanctioned by norms but legitimised in law. To achieve the grand scheme of creating separate countries for all tribes and races, millions of people forcibly ripped from their homes and communities, placed in their arid, uncultivable miserable, homelands, requiring a ‘passport’ to get into white South Africa. They were “given” their identity and potential by the State which not only limited opportunity but psychologically affected generations of South Africans in terms of self worth & identity. It was violent state oppression on every ideological and security level. We had “tests” of race, official state definitions of race, for goodness sake. We were measuring craniums at University anthropological departments (in the 70s!!) and spending intellectual time to justify all of this. And the reason that it was different to slavery and colonialism was precisely that it was done recently as part of the modern state system. Context is crucial and not simply a byline. “Values” are not absolutes floating without history and context giving them meaning. It counts that we did it much later than everyone else (the fact that we tried to operate it as a ‘democracy’ and not as a colonial administration attests to that) who had by then recognised human rights and discounted the validity of racial oppression. Grant, this system was a hideous, grotesque, deeply entrenched system of minority rule. Please do not minimise it. It’s not about some schoolboy gang saying, “We’re better than you and won’t let you play with us.” But I digress.
Secondly, I mentioned Argentina *not* in reference to the inconsistency of the international world, which is obvious and a given – I am not arguing with you there. All of humanity is stained and imperfect and hypocritical. It does not take away from my point above however. Apartheid was wrong as an absolute – as much as the international community applied and apply their morality in a relative manner. My Argentina “rant” pointed to the debate over why they went, why they flouted international sanctions and how much knowledge they might have had (and how much we can expect a dictatorship to have had). Not to the legitimacy of sanctions. Or to the huge symbolism attached to things like name-changings, or footnotes in records of sport winnings. It’s not petty. It’s *part* of facing the past and recognising things. I don’t know if the rebel cricket tour results are considered officially part of the English or West Indian cricket results (one in the magical year of 1982 would you believe)? The English players were banned from international cricket for 3 years and the West Indians for life so it was considered petty to the ECB or WICB.
And thirdly. Sport is politics not because it should be, but because it *is* – for two reasons. There is money involved in professional sport. Money and power are naturally closely linked. And there is the identity of the nation state – the world cup is a game played between legitimately recognised states (or countries) not ethnic groups, with the exception of the UK which play their separate “kingdoms” (an interesting point – why should we play as “South Africa” and not “South African ethnic groups”?? We know why!! Because we are trying to integrate and not separate). As soon as we mentioned the word “nation” or “state”, we are in the realm of power and ideology. We have to be able to accept that. When France called their soccer world cup team “non-French” because they had “black” players (second generation African immigrants- Zidan himself being Algerian) that is a “political/ideological” debate about who or what is the nation. All questions of identity, nation (what that is, what it should be), citizenship and opportunity (who gets the chance to play or socioeconomic circumstances) are part of national sport. Sport is also an important political element in any nation and it is naive to think otherwise. It is part of the ‘nation-building’, identity projects that states undertake and that citizens “feel”. Why do you feel ‘good’ if South Africa wins? What is it that makes you feel ‘proud’ and what is that makes you feel ‘South African’? Can you understand why the majority might *not* feel these things since the team is still basically white?.
I personally am embarrassed that our rugby team and cricket team are still white. They shouldn’t be. Don’t tell me it’s about meritocracy. Meritocracy can only function as such if the base on which it starts is fair. Ours is not. We have to change the base actively ‘cos the old white boys club is not going to do that on its own (or at least I don’t feel that they will). Not because they are ‘bad people’ – I bet that some of them are not even conscious acts but because the ‘social matrix’ of apartheid still functions at an unconscious level in defining ‘us’ and ‘them’. And that is the greatest ‘victory’ of an ideology. On the contrary, Grant, we *need* to act symbolically such as writing notes at the bottom of rugby scores to bring all of these things into our consciousness. It counts.
Thanks for that Lucy. I lived here, still do. I know exactly what and how crazy apartheid was. You have given the party line emotionally and without qualifying anything. My simple and logical, now rather boring point, still stands unanswered… what are the fair criteria with which to dig back into the past and put a cross through the sporting performances of a nation’s national sports team?
If I follow what you are saying, you think only recent racial atrocities should be included? Why? What are your reasons for including these and excluding all the other violations of human rights going on? ‘Apartheid was very, very bad and happened only a few years ago’ doesn’t cut it for me and manufacturing a ‘standard’ so that only South Africa and those that played here complies is just myopic mob justice in the extreme. The whole thing might be a good idea (although I personally doubt it since it would highlight wrongs instead of rights and therefore alienate instead of unite) but then lets do it properly.
On a personal and honest note, I am sorry but I will not spend my life in an apartheid version of catholic guilt. I have patience and understanding, have sympathy and act accordingly BUT I did not do those race tests or measure craniums, beat black people or place them into homelands. That was done before my time by a conservative clique of Afrikaner Nationalists that wrestled control away here and made sure they kept it. Just as many normal people got caught up in the Nazi madness (which lasted far longer than the 6 years of war by the way…1933-1945?) so too did normal people get caught up here. I am still here, I am working to make the place better, I am passionate about doing that BUT I will not be a second-class citizen for life ON THE BASIS OF MY SKIN COLOUR (sound gut-wrenchingly familiar?) because some NG Kerk-inspired idiots ran amok here in SA.
Grant, no-one’s asking you to feel guilty about what happened. Or that it is an isolated atrocity. We are going to have agree to disagree about the role of sport in all of this and the symbology of changing or not sporting records. And about the meaning of history and context.
To answer your question (again), I agree that the sporting international community applies its morals relatively and not according to a ‘standard’. But that doesn’t change my agreement with its stance on apartheid. I get the feeling that with your mentioning other atrocities, that you are wanting to “normalise” apartheid? In that sense all societies have their dirty laundry and no-one should be able to cast the first stone? IT’s a point but I disagree with you. Apartheid was wrong and should have had stones thrown at it. THe fact that Australia should have been looking inward at its abolriginal issues is valid but I still agree that they should have been sanctioning apartheid. Cos if that was the case, no-one would ever be able to judge anyone on human rights and that’s not really practical. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.
I also find it interesting that you call mine the “party line”. One could also say yours was the Tony Leon “party line” (yes I know he’s not the leader anymore) but I will treat you instead as an individual with all thoughts and intentions that that implies. None of my comments were personal at you (your opinion but not at you). But at ‘us’ (I used ‘we’ all the time). I was there too (though ignorant of most of what was going on until afterwards).
I disagree vehemently that apartheid was committed by a bunch of mad afrikaners. The rest of us were not just ‘victims’ – normal people who were forced into a system against our will. We were all complicit otherwise it couldn’t have lasted for so long. I am probably the same age as you and didn’t beat black people up either. THe downside of the TRC was that it treated apartheid as a bunch of discrete crimes that were committed by some individuals (not us). All of us had a part to play in some way, I believe and we need to aknowledge that, not to feel guilty I insist! but to move on. I don’t feel we can do that if we think that apartheid was only about who actually committed the atrocities, that other countries did the same and worse and not about the complicit ignorance (sometimes on purpose) of whites (and indians and blacks ect) and subtle racism that went on and still goes on. It’s not about self-flagellation but about self-actualization.
On a personal note too, Grant, I feel so sad and so far from a lot of my white friends who are so strongly NOT wanting to talk about guilt, their complicity, about our own “very secret” racist thoughts (I feel that there is still a subconscious ‘apartheid mentality’) without feeling attacked and needing to defend what no-one is taking away. Seriously, not to offend you. I am sorry that you feel like a second-class citizen, no-one in this debate has treated you that way or has suggested that you are.
Let’s just shake hands now and agree to disagree.