South Africans Celebrate Nelson Mandela's Life
South Africans Celebrate Nelson Mandela's Life
They got a chance to crawl out of their hole when bowler Tom Cartwright's shoulder injury opened D'Oliveira's way into the team. The MCC's belated courage meant the tour was cancelled.
It was punishment by sport, not economics, that would prove most effective in drawing attention to South Africa's white supremacist government, but Australia still thought itself remote from the issues.
The Australian government, which only three years before had held a referendum that finally acknowledged Aborigines were entitled to enjoy the same laws as everyone else, permitted an Australia cricket tour South Africa in 1969-70, under skipper Bill Lawry.
The concern was more about Lawry, who lost all four Tests, than apartheid. But over in England, the 1970 touring South African rugby team met massive demonstrations, which would be repeated the following year in Australia.
AUSTRALIA'S opposition to apartheid was a slow awakening. As Nelson Mandela and his comrades began serving life terms for opposing the South African regime, African, Asian and Caribbean nations began to motivate in the United Nations.
England, New Zealand and Australia dragged their heels.
A UN resolution of 1957, which condemned South Africa's racist policies, was supported by 56 countries, but not the powerful white - majority cricket and rugby nations.
It was therefore not surprising that it would take a sporting outrage, rather than an atrocity against black Africans, to raise full international awareness of apartheid.
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