14 x Souvenir Programmes: 1981 Springbok Tour to New Zealand (Working copies of and signed by RNZ Broadcaster John Howson)

14 Souvenir programmes from the 1981 Springbok Tour to New Zealand + Audio CD.
Working copies of - and signed by - John Howson, who broadcast the games for Radio New Zealand.

Staple bound booklets, some volumes with tide marks as pictured, but Very Good overall.

The programmes are from all the games that were actually played, with Howson’s marginalia in some and signature to each. Also included is a Radio New Zealand audio CD, with the full broadcast of the 25 July game at Hamilton, which was called off when protestors invaded the pitch.

Howson toured South Africa with the All Blacks and broadcast all the games on their 1976 tour to South Africa (the year of the Soweto Uprising). He has won multiple awards including the 1981 David Inglis Memorial Award and New Zealand Radio Journalist of the Year in 1981 for his coverage of the Hamilton game, and Sports Journalist of the Year (All Media) in 1982.

For 56 days in July, August and September 1981, New Zealanders were divided against each other in one of the largest civil disturbances ever seen in the country. More than 150,000 people took part in over 200 demonstrations in 28 centres, and 1500 were charged with offences stemming from these protests.

To some observers it might seem inconceivable that the cause of this unrest was the visit to New Zealand of the South African rugby team. Touring South Africa with its entrenched segregation was also problematic. The New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) chose not to select Māori for tours to South Africa until 1970. In 1928 this meant leaving players like the legendary George Nēpia behind. Before the All Blacks toured the republic in 1960 there were calls of ‘No Maoris – No Tour’, and 150,000 New Zealanders signed a petition against sending a race-based team, but the tour went ahead. Prime Minister Keith Holyoake’s statement that ‘in this country we are one people’ was translated into practice when a proposed 1967 tour to South Africa was cancelled.

In 1968 the United Nations called for a sporting boycott as one way of putting pressure on the South African government. As rugby and cricket were the two main sports for white South Africans, the spotlight was bound to fall on New Zealand. When the All Blacks toured in 1970 they sent a multiracial team, not as a result of international pressure softening South African resolve, but because the South African government allowed Māori to travel as ‘honorary whites’.

A Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 1977 discussed the South African question and unanimously adopted the Gleneagles Agreement, promising to ‘discourage’ contact and competition between their sportspeople and sporting organisations, teams or individuals from South Africa.
Despite Gleneagles, Prime Minister Robert Muldoon made it clear that the government would not allow political interference in sport in any form. The NZRFU took this as a green light, and in September 1980 invited the South Africans to tour the following year.

The deputy Prime Minister, Brian Talboys, wrote to Ces Blazey, the NZRFU chairman, expressing concern that a tour was even being considered. Such contact would be seen as condoning apartheid and would affect ‘how New Zealand is judged in the international arena’. Muldoon said that he could see ‘nothing but trouble coming from this’, but when faced with the choice of cancelling the tour, he spoke of ‘our kith and kin’ in South Africa and the fact that New Zealanders and South Africans had served side by side in the Second World War. He reiterated his mantra that New Zealand was a free and democratic country and that ‘politics should stay out of sport’. Talboys stressed that the government had done everything in its power, short of coercion, to halt the tour.

The Springboks were officially welcomed to New Zealand at Te Poho-o-Rawiri Marae in Gisborne (just as they had been in 1965) on 19 July 1981. Despite all the pre-tour rhetoric and debate, few anticipated that the country was about to descend into near civil war, ‘a war played out twice a week’ as the Springboks moved from game to game.

16 Games were planned; protests, more or less violent, plagued every game – clashes between police and protestors were common and sometimes bloody; flour and smoke bombs were dropped on the pitch from a Cesna light aircraft at the 12 September game.

The 25 July game at Hamilton was called off when about 350 protestors invaded the pitch and reports surfaced that Pat McQuarrie had stolen a light plane from Taupo and was heading for the stadium. While there was confusion as to his intentions, the police decided that the situation was getting out of hand and cancelled the match for security reasons.
The 19 August game at Timaru was called off to give police a break from clashes with protestors.

Tour Diary and List of Programmes

Sources: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour
https://www.rba.co.nz/
Personal Correspondence