Errol Tobias: Pure Gold

Errol Tobias: Pure Gold

Tafelberg

‘Errol Tobias is not coloured, he is pure gold.’

– English coach Dick Greenwood after his team narrowly defeated the Proteas on 23 May 1984

Preface

– DOUGIE DYERS, former teammate, coach and administrator

ERROL TOBIAS took the road less travelled and with courage, exceptional skill and faith destroyed the myth that people of colour were not good enough to represent South Africa in rugby.

The South African Rugby Federation had strong leadership in Cuthbert Loriston and his committee. The decision to move closer to the SA Rugby Board was historic and life-changing. It demanded integrated school, club, provincial and national competitions, with integrated trials and merit selections. It was a difficult path but the SA Rugby Federation’s faith in its people and quality of its rugby was not misplaced.

We were thrown in at the deep end and gave a creditable account of ourselves on the playing fields of South Africa and the world, competing against the likes of England, the Lions, France, and the All Blacks and locally in the premier South African competitions.

Errol’s great performances were an inspiration to our players and our people alike. The SA Rugby Federation produced many fine players and Errol was one of the greatest. He was one of the best players I’ve played with and coached. He had great skills and moved like a thoroughbred. He was a quiet, dignified man, and fearless – OUR FIRST SPRINGBOK!

He paved the way for our youth to aspire to become Springboks on merit and retain their dignity, bearing in mind this all transpired many years before democracy in South Africa. Errol made a wonderful contribution to world rugby and was a classic example of ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’.

Preface

– ROB LOUW, former Springbok, teammate and roommate

‘BOESMAN!’

‘YES, BOERTJIE!’

That’s the way Errol and myself converse.

From the day I met Errol and throughout the tours we went on, nobody knew what really went on in Errol’s mind and the pressure he went through in being the first black Springbok who ‘broke down the door’, an incredibly gifted rugby player who at 34 represented the Boks against England in 1984.

I can only praise his dedication, character, and loyalty to South Africa, his community and his family. I hope he speaks his mind on the troubled times he had as a player and good times we shared together as roomies on the 1981 tour.

Errol, one day you will be applauded for your fortitude and braveness for ‘breaking down the door’.

Regards

Boertjie

Sport and race in South Africa: A short history

South African sport, you could say, was born in politics. Politicians meddled with sport from very early on in the country’s history. The issue of race in national teams was a particularly thorny issue.

Take Cecil John Rhodes, arch-imperialist and erstwhile premier of the Cape, who rejected the speed bowler Krom Hendricks from joining the South African touring team of 1894 who had been on their way to England. Hendricks had to stay home although he was widely considered one of the best speed bowlers of his time.

His only ‘sin’ was the colour of his skin.

Some suggested that he join the team as baggage handler, according to Dean Allen’s Empire, War & Cricket in South Africa. But Hendricks was not a fan of the idea that he should humble himself in that way. A.B. Tancred, a member of this team sponsored by Rhodes, was angered by the fact that Hendricks refused to carry his teammates’ baggage and possibly participate in a match or three if the circumstances were right. It wouldn’t simply be unthinkable to play with him as an equal, Tancred said. According to him it would also have been unbearable.

Such attitudes regarding athletes of colour eventually became the norm in white South African society. They could not participate with white people in sport at all, regardless of how good they were. The possibility of so-called multiracial or mixed teams was unthinkable to the majority.

The situation got worse in the years of segregation in the first half of the 20th century, until it was entrenched in law after the National Party came into power in 1948 with its apartheid policies.

South Africa’s sporting competitors accepted this state of affairs because international sporting bodies were generally also controlled by conservative white people. They continued to play against white South African teams and excluded people of colour in their own teams. The New Zealand Rugby Union excluded Maori players in the 1949 and 1960 teams that came to South Africa, as it had done in 1928.

The silent approval of South Africa’s racial and sporting policies could not last much longer, however. The era after World War II and all its atrocities was, after all – unlike the situation in South Africa – one of equality, freedom and human rights.

Pressure from outside began to make international sporting authorities think differently. The Springbok touring team of 1960–61 through Britain and France ran up against protestors. It was on a small scale when compared to the resistance that Springbok teams would encounter in later international tours, but it was proof that there were people dissatisfied with South African racism, including in sporting arenas.

In New Zealand, public ire grew regarding the exclusion of Maori players in teams touring to South Africa. The way New Zealand’s rugby authorities humiliated their countrymen time and again to fall in line with South Africa’s racial policies started to sway opinion towards breaking ties with South African sport.

It didn’t stop at protests and public statements. In 1960 South Africa took part in its last Olympic Games for more than 20 years. The International Federation of Association Football (Fifa) kicked South Africa out. White South African teams were clearly no longer welcome everywhere in the world.

This resistance sometimes led to laughable ‘reform efforts’ in South Africa. The government agreed, for example, that black boxers could be selected to represent South Africa, but they could under no circumstances travel on the same airplane as their white teammates. In an effort to soothe Fifa, the local soccer authorities suggested that a white team take part in the qualifying matches for the World Cup tournament of 1966 and that a black team could represent South Africa in the qualifying matches for the 1970 tournament. So black people could represent South Africa now and then, but never in the same team as white people.

This did not impress the rest of the world much. The resistance to South Africa’s racist sport policies increased. In 1963 the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (Sanroc) was founded so that, along with other South African exiles, it could give support to this campaign against racism in sport.

South African rugby was, at first, not much disturbed by international protests: In the first half of the 60s the Springboks toured in Britain, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand and hosted Scotland, the All Blacks, Ireland, the British Lions, the Wallabies, Wales and France. Rugby ties with Argentina were also renewed with a Junior Springbok team (1959) and a Gazelle team (1966) touring there.

The Springbok teams were still white and apartheid was clearly visible on the pavilions, where black spectators cheered for the overseas teams from their markedly worse seats (usually somewhere high up and just off the goalposts). This sometimes led to small altercations, but the rugby bosses didn’t much care as long as the Springboks were still in action.

But the uncompromising attitudes of the apartheid government at last came to affect South African rugby relations in the international arena too. The Springbok touring team of 1965 was still in New Zealand when Dr H.F. Verwoerd, then the premier, made it clear in his infamous Loskopdam speech that Maoris would not be welcome as members of the All Black touring team scheduled to come to South Africa in 1967.

The tour was cancelled.

For many South Africans it was a shock. The French agreed on short order that they would replace the All Blacks, but the damage was done. What to do when one of your faithful rugby friends refuses to play against you? The government of B.J. Vorster realised that it had to make careful concessions if it didn’t want South African rugby to be exiled in the same way as other sports. Not long after Vorster said that the English cricket team would not be welcome in South Africa with South African-born Basil D’Oliveira in its ranks, he agreed that the All Blacks could include Maori players in its line-up for the tour of 1970. They would be allowed to tour as ‘honorary whites’.

The Springbok team would, however, remain white.

The concession about Maoris was too much for some of Vorster’s supporters and contributed to the split in the NP that led to the founding of the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party in 1969. Later in the same year it also became clear how unpopular South Africa’s racist laws and sporting policies actually were when the Springbok touring side of 1969–70 was met everywhere they went in Britain with levels of protest they had never encountered before.

Thousands of protestor overwhelmed the Springboks’ matches to signify their stand against apartheid. Peter Hain, a South African expatriate, was one of the protest leaders. The protestors clashed with the police, made a racket outside of the Springboks’ hotels, and threw sharp objects like nails onto the playing fields. There was fear for the players’ lives.

White South African propaganda, especially from the radio commentator Gerhard Viviers, tried to dismiss the protestors as worthless hooligans who were paid to demonstrate. Some of them didn’t even wash their (greasy, and of course long) hair, listeners were told match after match, and supposedly didn’t even know what or who they were protesting against. Such emotional statements tried to lead the attention away from the true issues. Many knew better.

For some the price of friendship with South African rugby started becoming too high. Even age-old traditional rugby friends started to back away from contact with South Africa. The match against Scotland in 1969 was South Africa’s last for nearly 25 years against the Scots. The one against Wales was the last for almost 24 years. A Springbok team would be welcomed in England again only in 1992.

Such pressure led to more small concessions. In 1971, Roger Bourgarel, the French wing, was the first black player allowed to come to South Africa and play against the Springboks. (He also forced certain people who believed that black people were not good enough to compete with white people to swallow their words when he flattened their great hero Frik du Preez on the corner flag.) But small concessions were no longer nearly enough.

The Springbok tour through Australia in