‘It was a war with real blood shed’
They came to play rugby — but the 1981 Springboks’ presence resulted in a torrent of violent protests never previously seen in New Zealand. Neil Reid looks at the Barbed Wire Boks’ unhappy place in sporting history
,, When you see the barbed wire [around the field and stadiums] and the plane, it was more of a motivation to play and do the best in the game.
Theuns Stofberg, Springboks lock
For Errol Tobias, the 1981 Springbok tour to New Zealand should have been a career highlight — a chance to make a global statement for black and coloured South African players.
But just weeks into the tour, the trail-blazing midfielder was ready to pack his bags and fly home.
Then aged 31, Tobias was the only non-white player selected to tour.
Before the team arrived in NZ, his selection had been labelled by both Kiwi critics of South Africa’s racist regime and by white South Africans who backed the apartheid system as a cynical move from South African rugby officials to try to placate anger from the anti-tour protest movement.
And as he was to find out during the tour which divided our nation so violently, members of the team management — including manager Professor Johan Claassen — several teammates and some South African media covering the tour also believed his selection wasn’t based on his ability.
It came to a head when Tobias — who had impressed right from the start of the tour — missed selection for the first test against the All Blacks; being overlooked for midfield rival Willie du Plessis who was struggling with a hamstring injury.
“I seriously considered packing my bags and returning home to [my wife] Sandra who was pregnant with our twins,” Tobias reveals in his autobiography, Pure Gold.
“I phoned my wife and poured out my heart about the demonstrators and violence, and our unfeeling, ineffective team management. Sandra immediately said that if I felt unsafe, I should rather ask to come home.”
Tobias said in his book — never released in NZ in hardcopy form — that he told his wife: “In the current situation no Springbok can feel safe”.
After some soul-searching he decided against quitting the tour from hell. “I realised it would encourage Professor Claassen in his efforts to keep the Springbok team lily-white.”
After the omission he could understand why reporters from home gave his strong form “very little coverage”.
Tobias — who now serves his church as a lay preacher — also decided to refuse to pray with his team-mates. He “didn’t feel up to praying with people who believed only white people were worthy of wearing the green and gold”.
He first felt a “very negative attitude” towards him before the Boks even arrived in New Zealand.
Claassen didn’t make eye contact when they met. Coach Nelie Smith was also “strangely evasive”.
“My sixth sense had never let me down and I immediately had the feeling a very unpleasant time would be ahead of us,” he wrote in Pure Gold.
The only person he confided in was Springbok great Rob Louw; another player Claassen didn’t want.
Before boarding their flight to New Zealand, the team received impassioned speeches from South African Rugby Board president Danie “Doc” Craven and South African Rugby Football Federation president Cuthbert Loriston.
Craven wanted the Boks of 1981 to lay the “groundwork” for South Africa to host a Rugby World Cup in 1990. Loriston hoped the tour would “pave the way” for the Boks’ readmission to the international rugby fraternity.
By the time the Springboks left NZ on September 13, their hopes couldn’t have been further from the truth.
No idea of what awaited them
Speaking to the Herald from his home in Stellenbosch, in Western Cape province, former Springbok star Theuns Stofberg said when he boarded the plane to New Zealand he was totally unaware of what awaited.
“We were just a group of guys who came to New Zealand to play against the best in the world,” he said.
Six years earlier he had made his test debut against the All Blacks on their tour of South Africa. In 1980 he had captained the Boks against the South American Jaguars.
“Playing the All Blacks . . . that is the highlight of any South African, especially on their home field.” Tobias initially thought the same. He recalled officials said there was no need “to be concerned” about protesters disrupting tour matches.
Among items they had to give to Kiwis during their stay were stickers featuring a Springbok leaping through a silver fern with the wording: “A rugby friend is a friend indeed”.
But their unpopularity quickly sank in during a stop-over in New York. They had to fly via the US after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser refused to allow their plane to land and refuel in Australia.
Waiting were protesters with banners telling them to “Go Home”.
When they finally touched down at Auckland International Airport on July 19, three days out from the tour opener against Poverty Bay, the atmosphere was “unfriendly”.
“Many of the [ demonstrators] . . . wanted to know how I could be on the side of such a despicable bunch of racists,” Tobias wrote in Pure Gold.
“These words hurt me deeply, but . . . it was the best possible motivation to play even better.”
More concerning was learning days later of pamphlets from a section of the anti-tour movement that offered instructions on how to make firebombs, and urging protesters to collect broken glass to spread over grounds to host the Springboks.
Tobias was one of the stars of the Boks’ 24-6 win over Poverty Bay.
But “a ‘ non-white’ player wasn’t welcome in this Springbok team, not to mention a ‘non-white’ assistant manager with the tact of Abe Williams,” Tobias wrote.
Very early in the tour Williams told media: “As rugby players there’s nothing we can do about apartheid because it’s the law. Maybe we should rather see this tour as the beginning of a new era for South African rugby. In our team we have Errol Tobias who was selected for the team purely on merit and not because he is coloured.
“This your own scout [an unnamed All Black scout] can vouch for, who saw him in action in the second test against Ireland and thought he posed a bigger threat for the All Blacks than Danie Gerber’.”
They were Williams’ last words at a press conference during the tour.
NZ on the “brink of civil war”
Springbok captain Wynand Claassen fully realised his team were in for a “tough” time after the protests on the day of the Poverty Bay game.
But after the scheduled clash against Waikato had been abandoned after a mass pitch invasion and fears a stolen plane would be crashed into Hamilton’s Rugby Park — he had upgraded his description the atmosphere the Boks were operating in as “like a war at times”.
“Protesters tore down a wire fence and stormed the field. While the police were grappling with those on the field, we rushed back to the change-room where we stood on benches to look out the back window to see what was going on,” he recalled in Springbok — The Official Opus.
Tobias also remembers protesters “bashing” the change-room windows.
Police fears that the stolen light plane was going to crash into the ground if the match wasn’t cancelled were also passed on to the Boks.
“It was now a full-scale war with real blood being shed,” Tobias wrote.
“For me, it was equally shocking and tragic to see how the Kiwis were fighting each other, how friendships and families were ripped apart.”
The match was off but the tour went on. Temporary fortifications were put up around venues, including heavy shipping containers and thousands of metres of barbed wire to keep protesters out. The team were dubbed the Barbed Wire Boks.
The police’s new anti-riot group — the Red Squad — followed the Boks everywhere. And the team were not allowed to travel from their hotels in small groups in team gear without the threat of potential violence.
“It was beyond my comprehension how not even the bloodshed in Hamilton could open the eyes of the team management and make them realise that the world was not going to accept a white Springbok team any more,” Tobias said. “It was one of the largest campaigns of civil disobedience in New Zealand’s history and drove the country to the brink of civil war.”
As the tour progressed it became a “bizarre, never-ending nightmare”.
Players had mirrors shone in their eyes from protesters who managed to get into match venues. Noisy protests until the early hours were held outside hotels the team stayed in.
The increasing targeting of hotels saw the Springboks being housed in function rooms at Athletic Park and Eden Park before the second and third tests respectively — in the team’s words, the “Grandstand Hotel”.
‘Don’t you have an Air Force in NZ?’
New Zealand witnessed protest scenes with an intensity and violence never seen here before the Springboks’ 56-day stay here.
None was as shocking as those around Eden Park on September 12, 1981; the day of the third test.
For several hours, protesters wearing a variety of protective gear, and some using cricket bats, softball bats and fence palings as weapons, clashed violently with police.
Inside the stadium, crazy scenes were played out as 50,000 rugby fans watched a pulsating test which went on to be dubbed the Flour Bomb Test.
A light plane piloted by Marx Jones completed numerous low-level passes of Eden Park. Flares, anti-tour pamphlets and flour bombs — one of which felled All Black prop Gary Knight — rained down on the pitch.
After Knight was hit by the flour bomb, Wynand Claassen asked those around him: “Don’t you have an Air Force in New Zealand?’.”
“We were under enough pressure as it was and with all this going on around us, it was important — but equally tough — to keep the guys focused,” the captain later said.
“I just kept telling them we should think of the people back home and that we simply must win this test.”
Stofberg said Jones’ antics was the extreme end of protests the Boks never imagined they’d face in NZ.
By the time they walked on to Eden Park for the final test the team vowed to use the spite directed towards them as a motivating factor.
“When you see the barbed wire [around the field and stadiums] and the plane, it was more of a motivation to play and do the best in the game.”