South African Rebel Tours - Origins

Origins

Until the D’Oliveira affair and Olympic exclusion in 1968, only white athletes had been allowed to represent South Africa in international sport. This position reflected their apartheid society (1948 onwards) and racist social conventions pre-dating apartheid. In 1971 an international sports boycott was instituted against South Africa to voice global disapproval of their racist selection policies and apartheid in general. South Africa became world sport’s pariah, excluded from the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, Test cricket and a host of minority sports.

The boycott effected measurable change on policy and opinion in sports selection – and cricket in particular. In 1976 the South African Cricket Union (SACU) was created to administer the game in the republic on a multi-racial, meritocratic basis: so-called ‘normal’ cricket. However this was insufficient to ensure South Africa’s re-admission to international cricket. Inside the republic, many non-whites resented ‘normal’ cricket, which was a feeble concession in the wider context of life under apartheid, and declined to take part. Outside the republic, the ICC bloc of India, Pakistan and the West Indies refused to countenance re-admission until apartheid itself was dismantled.

After a decade’s isolation, cricket in the republic was weak. Standards, attendances and child participation were all falling. Overseas the game had been revolutionised by the World Cup and World Series Cricket but isolation had deprived South Africa of these commercial and competitive engines. Then in 1979 Doug Insole, an English representative on the ICC, told SACU’s Dr Ali Bacher: 'Until apartheid goes, you can forget about getting back into world cricket.'

Bacher and SACU felt obliged to act to "keep the game alive in South Africa". Since players were endangering their careers by breaking the boycott, SACU had to offer substantial sums to entice their targets. These rebels would play ‘unofficial’ internationals against a Springbok team who considered themselves as strong as any team in world cricket except the West Indies. In the earliest rebel tours Mike Procter and Peter Kirsten captained home teams featuring Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Clive Rice and Garth Le Roux. By their conclusion in 1990 these men had retired and were replaced by the likes of Hansie Cronje and Allan Donald.

The boycott movement opposed any such tours. They felt that engagement lent credibility and a propaganda coup to the National Party. But SACU insisted that all funding came directly from commercial sponsorship and that the tours would be conducted independently of government. Initially at least overseas opponents could not prove otherwise while inside South Africa non-white opposition, as under apartheid more generally, was barely heard due to restrictions on freedoms of press, speech and assembly.