Description
Book Synopsis“There will be a black Springbok over my dead body.”
— Dr Danie Craven, President of the South African Rugby Board, 1969
Just a year after the controversial D’Oliveira affair, the organised disruption of the all-white 1969/70 South African rugby and cricket tours to Britain represented a significant challenge to apartheid politics. Led by future cabinet minister Peter Hain, the ‘Stop the Seventy Tour’ campaign brought about the cancellation of both tours, presaging white South Africa’s expulsion from the Olympics and the end of apartheid sport altogether.
With his brand of attention-grabbing, direct action sports protest, the 19-year-old Hain emerged as a hero to some and enemy to others. Now, reflecting on these experiences with fifty years of hindsight, Lord Hain, together with South Africa’s foremost sports historian and fellow anti-apartheid activist André Odendaal, shows how decades of relentless international and domestic campaigning for equality led to a Springbok team captained by black athlete Siya Kolisi winning the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Interspersing a wide range of examples with personal testimony, Pitch Battles explores the themes of sport, globalisation and resistance from the deep past to the present day. Published in the same year as the Stop The Tour documentary from acclaimed director Louis Myles, this compelling story of sacrifice, struggle and triumph reveals how sport should never be divorced from politics or society’s values.
Trade ReviewA brilliant study of how sports played a crucial role in ending apartheid -- Mihir Bose
The sports struggle was crucial in defeating apartheid
-- Mavuso Msimang
Stopping the 1970 cricket tour confronted white South Africa with the necessity to end racism in cricket. -- Mike Brearley
Table of Contents1. ‘Hain Stopped Play’ 2. Empire and the British roots of sports apartheid 3. A matter of life and death: Sport and rebellion 4. SANROC in exile: Intensifying the sports boycott 5. SACOS and the revival of the sports struggle inside South Africa 6. Preparing to govern: Struggle, disjuncture and new strategies for sport in South Africa 7. Sport and nation-building: The final push for national liberation and democracy, 1989–96 8. Making sense of sport and globalisation today Epilogue
