The sharpest argument in this episode of Rugby's Greatest Rivals comes from Auckland-based rugby historian Jamie Wall, who makes the case that New Zealand's exclusion of Māori players from tours to South Africa wasn't simply compliance with apartheid — it predated it. "This was New Zealand doing it just off their own bat," Wall argues, pointing to the 1928 tour, two decades before the Population Registration Act. The practice continued voluntarily in 1949 and 1960, with Wall's central charge being that the NZRU was "engaging in apartheid themselves." The episode sharpens that indictment through Fred Allen, the 1949 tour captain, who returned home so disillusioned he threw his boots overboard — and later said the NZRU should have told South Africa "where they could shove their tour." Wall also pushes back on the popular narrative that public opposition eventually forced the issue: when New Zealand's National Party ran in 1976 on a platform of keeping politics out of sport, they won — evidence, Wall argues, that editorial calls for a moral reckoning didn't reflect what many New Zealanders actually felt.
How New Zealand voluntarily enforced apartheid — before apartheid existed
Jamie Wall argues that New Zealand's exclusion of Māori players from South Africa tours was a voluntary act that predated apartheid itself — and that domestic political will to end it was far weaker than the liberal press of the era suggested.
Jamie Wall argues that New Zealand's exclusion of Māori players from South Africa tours was a voluntary act that predated apartheid itself — and that domestic political will to end it was far weaker than the liberal press of the era suggested.
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