Summer read: This year marked the 40th anniversary of the rugby tour that divided a nation. While countless books and articles have been written about that time, some important details have faded with age. Leonie Hayden looks back at three of them.

First published July 22, 2021

Merata Mita’s documentary Patu! opens with a group collecting signatures on the street in Auckland to petition the government to stop the upcoming Springboks’ tour of New Zealand. A young passer-by starts arguing with the organisers, asking how would they feel if a group of “wogs” or “Blacks” came over here. One group member explains that she’s married to a Black South African man. Undeterred, the man continues his tirade about what would happen if “they” were in charge.

It’s 1981 and Mita’s grainy film footage captures one of those most divisive periods in our history since the New Zealand Wars. It was a battle that played out on the rugby field, in the streets, within the halls of parliament and at kitchen tables all over the country. But the fight for New Zealand to take a stand against South Africa’s apartheid regime was far from new.

The New Zealand Rugby Football Union had left rugby legend George Nēpia and other giants of the game at home in 1928 to conform with South Africa’s segregation laws. In 1959, the Citizens’ All Black Tour Association had tried to demand “No Maoris, no tour” when Māori players were excluded from the team’s 1960 visit. They weren’t successful then, but Māori players would go on to tour South Africa as “honorary whites” in 1970 and then in 1976 – the same year as the Soweto uprising that saw hundreds of children and student protestors murdered by police.

While Robert Muldoon campaigned on sports and politics being kept separate, deftly side-stepping the Commonwealth members’ Gleneagles agreement, the world had very much decided the two were connected. Black African nations boycotted the 1976 Montreal Olympics in protest of our ongoing engagement with South Africa. New Zealand was becoming a pariah.

And so when the 1981 tour was announced, anti-apartheid groups such as Halt All Racist Tours (HART), Citizens Association for Racial Equality (CARE) and the Patu Squad (led by Hone Harawira, Donna Awatere, Josie Keelan and Ripeka Evans) began a national campaign to stop it in its tracks.

Ultimately, the demonstrations and petitions to Muldoon’s government – plus a national poll showing only 46% public support for the tour – fell on deaf ears and the South African team were officially welcomed to New Zealand at Te Poho-o-Rawiri marae in Gisborne on July 19, 1981.

Tā Graham Latimer’s wero

It was a pōwhiri with teeth.

The welcome for the Springboks took place at the same time as Māori activists were spreading glass across Gisborne’s Rugby Park ahead of the first game. The speakers that evening comprised Te Poho-o-Rawiri kaumātua, dignitaries of the Tairāwhiti Māori council, and the president of the New Zealand Māori Council, the late Sir Graham Latimer.

To many the welcome would have looked like a sign of a generational divide – conservative assimilationists on the marae versus activists on the field – but Latimer ensured the pōwhiri wasn’t an occasion that ignored or played down what was at stake. In fact, he very politely told Springboks captain Wynand Claassen and his team they wouldn’t be welcome again while apartheid remained in South Africa.

Per tradition, it was Latimer’s role as the New Zealand Māori Council president to extend a greeting to any international group being welcomed onto a marae. The speaker before him, Tom Fox, had emphasised with some pride, and to much applause, that the Tairāwhiti branch was the only Māori council that actively supported the tour.

Latimer, however, was less effusive. “I am fully conscious of the fact that I do not have a complete mandate to make this welcome,” he began. “Seven out of the nine district councils that make up the New Zealand Māori council are opposed to the tour, and one is undecided.” A long pause, silence from the crowd.

“Fifty-four per cent of the general public of New Zealand has expressed opposition to your tour. That’s in a poll. The last time such a tour was mooted, only 16% were against the tour. That you have come has been seen by some as a major victory but it must be recognised that if there were only another 6% against the tour, there would be neither a political party not a rugby union game enough to extend an invitation to you.”

He continued: “There can be no doubt in my mind that we will not be making another such welcome on a Māori marae – I emphasise that point – unless your government can show it is prepared to change its policies on apartheid. We hope we can look forward to a time in the not too distant future when you could be welcomed on any marae. It would be a pity if this could be looked upon as the last international tour by South Africa.”

Latimer finished by giving an especially warm mihi to Errol Tobias, the first player of colour to tour with the Springboks. “I believe he represents hope for 18 million South Africans, for whom there appears to be little hope.”

The genius of Latimer’s challenge was in its statesmanlike delivery. While much of his speech was received with (presumably) shocked silence, he was still rewarded with a huge round of applause at its conclusion, even though he had just told those gathered they would not be welcome in future under the same circumstances. The extraordinary recording of that evening, housed in the Ngā Taonga archive, captures a mild-mannered assassin executing an entire squad with diplomacy.

Naturally we have no way of measuring the effects of that speech on either the Springboks or apartheid. But it may have been the last time the issue was discussed politely.

Police violence was far worse than they’d like you to remember

Nicknamed the Day of Shame, July 22 saw the Springboks’ opener against Poverty Bay. Three hundred protestors marched to Rugby Park in Gisborne via a nearby golf course and attempted to breach a fence. Rugby fans jumped into action and a brawl broke out between the two groups. Police arrived to break up the fighting, and only two men managed to run onto the field. Thirteen were arrested and many were hurt in the resulting brawl, but it was nothing compared to the violence that was to come.

Over the course of the next two months, police, in particular the infamous Red and Blue riot control squads, would become more and more comfortable with using extreme violence against unarmed protestors, causing serious and sometimes permanent injuries. Pro-tour rugby fans were also brutal in their retaliation.

Singer and journalist Moana Maniapoto, then a first-year law student at the University of Auckland, remembers when the fence came down at the second game in Hamilton on July 25. “Everyone’s leaning on it, pushing and pushing it, and then the next minute the fence came down and you just heard this ‘Run!’ You’re just swept along. So then I’m in the middle thinking, ‘what am I doing here? They’re gonna kill us!'”

She recalls looking up at thousands of angry faces in the stands. “They were totally rabid. Screaming, yelling and throwing cans of beer at us.

“The police arrived, just the ordinary cops, not the Red Squad, and I actually thought, ‘oh this is good, surely they’re not gonna let us get murdered’. Then the commissioner came on and said the match has been called off and there was this huge roar from the crowd. At first it was like, ‘yay!’ and then ‘oh my god. How the hell are we gonna get out of here?’”

Maniapoto, along with land protector Eva Rickard and another friend, managed to escape into the surrounding streets. “The cops were sporadically placed so you had to make a run for it to the gate. Then the cops recognised Eva and they were abusing the shit out of her. But we got out, and we were very lucky, my friend’s father heard on the radio that the match had been cancelled and he circled until he found us. A lot of people got attacked.”

Marx Jones and Grant Cole flour bomb Eden Park in a hired Cessna. 

She would go on to attend protests in Rotorua and at the third test in Auckland – the latter resulting in a violent clash between police, protestors and rugby fans on the streets of Mount Eden. “Red Squad came out of nowhere and nutted off at everyone. I was with the least militant bunch when they charged. We were just standing there. Couldn’t believe it. I was batoned, kicked by heavy police boots while on the ground. Shock for a young freshie like me. They just smashed into us and left people lying on the ground in their wake.”

For further proof you need only watch the violence through Mita’s lens. The dull thud of police batons hitting flesh and human skull, and the wails of the injured, some of them young teenagers, is the haunting soundtrack for nearly half the film.

Maniapoto scoffs at the selective memory that it was “New Zealand” who took a stand against apartheid. “It’s held out as a landmark, framing New Zealand as a global social justice advocate. It wasn’t New Zealand; it was people power. It was activists, people from across all walks of life, and there were far fewer of us than there were in the stands.”

She talks abut the Nelson Mandela exhibition hosted at Eden Park in 2019 – a strange venue considering the violence that played out on the surrounding streets 38 years earlier. She says at the launch none of the speakers from the New Zealand Rugby Union came close to admitting they’d been wrong, or offering an apology. Instead everybody spoke proudly about the stand taken by the protestors. Says Maniapoto: “They’re starting to rewrite the history!”

The good bishop saves the Patu Squad

It was at the last test at Eden Park on September 12 that a young Hone Harawira, one of the leaders of the predominantly Māori and Pasifika Patu Squad, was finally caught.

Harawira and a handful of others had been arrested at Waitangi earlier in the year, and although they had been denied bail, they were turfed out of the cells for causing a ruckus and told when to attend their court date. They didn’t show up.

The group had outstanding warrants for their arrest before the tour even began.

“It must have got out to the police that we were all going to be involved in the tour, and one by one we were all picked up. One of the brothers, they got him before it started! So he spent the whole of the tour in Mt Eden,” Harawira chuckles.

Harawira says he was caught early on after the test that ended with Marx Jones’ aerial flour bomb attack, so hadn’t been involved in the upturning of a cop car, or the violence that erupted on an unprecedented scale outside Eden Park. Nevertheless, Harawira was charged with the assault of a police officer who’d had both collar bones broken.

“It wasn’t me but they wanted someone to pin it on so they pinned it on me.”

He says he had seven charges against him. “They were serious charges. Three charges of participating in a riot and four charges of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Which all carried a total of something like 98 years.”

Justice being neither blind nor in a hurry, Harawira wouldn’t stand trial for another two years, alongside many others who he notes were mostly brown, despite the vast majority of protestors being Pākehā. “Most of them were members of the Patu Squad.”

As he had many times before, Harawira planned to defend himself in court. He’d had University of Auckland law lecturers Jane Kelsey and David Williams to rely on for advice, but this time he wasn’t sure it going to be enough.

“The day before my court date, I’m sitting out the back in the cells thinking ‘jeez, what am I gonna do?’ Then the brain wave came to me. Bishop Desmond Tutu had been invited over by the Anglican church to come and do a speaking tour. Interest was still very high in apartheid South Africa. My mum knew George and Jocelyn Armstrong, who were part of the organisation that brought him over.

“So I rang my mum and said look, I want Bishop Tutu as a witness. She said, ‘He wasn’t there!’. I said, ‘that doesn’t matter! I want him for my witness’. So she said ‘OK when is it?’ And I said ‘Tomorrow! I’m gonna need him by about 10.30.’”

The next day Harawira and 10 others prepared to stand trial.

When the time came for him to give his defence, his star witness wasn’t there. “I read my statement. I’d come to the very end and I was dragging it out. I didn’t want to get out of the dock ‘cos I knew it hadn’t been enough to get me off. Then the door burst open, and someone looked at me with a big smile and just nodded and I knew then. So I asked the judge: ‘Can you please call my witness?’”

Harawira still laughs at the memory of the stunned faces of the judge, prosecution and jury as as the now-Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in his signature dark suit and purple cleric’s shirt, walked into the courtroom.

“And then I’m thinking, ‘What the fuck, now what do I do?’

“So he takes the stand and I go, ‘Could you please tell the court your name?’ And then I said, ‘Can you please tell the court your address?’ And he gave an address in Soweto. Instantly, if the room wasn’t already charged, everyone was completely wide-eyed now.

“And then I said, ‘Can you please explain to the court what apartheid is?’. And away he went. He must have spoken for 20 minutes. It was absolutely stunning. You could have heard a pin drop.”

He says that after Tutu had finished, neither he nor the prosecution could think of any more questions.

“As Bishop Tutu stepped out of the dock, all 11 defendants, we all stood up. Then our lawyers stood up, then the public, the screws from Mount Eden, the police stood up, then the jury stood up. Half of them were in tears. If was one of those moments. I knew right then and there we were gonna get off.” He crows in delight at the memory.

The group were acquitted of all charges.

“It’s kind of hard to believe but it’s all true. Meeting Nelson Mandela himself and going to his tangi, that’s another story.”

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Summer read: A pair of Jordan sneakers worn by Te Paati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi led to some contentious comments in parliament last month. But why would a pair of shoes that are relatively commonplace spark such a reaction – and what does it say about where we’re at politically? 

First published November 8, 2021

When Te Paati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi delivered his maiden speech in the house in December 2020, he warned he would act like a pebble in the shoe of parliament – an unapologetically Māori voice in the halls of power.

Eleven months later, in a curious exchange during question time on October 21, it was Waititi’s shoe choice (Nike Air Jordan 1 mids in gym red) that became that pebble in the shoes of some of his parliamentary colleagues.

On that Thursday afternoon, a point of order was brought to the speaker by a grey-suited Act leader David Seymour, who sits next to Waititi in the house.

“I know you may not be used to being asked for sartorial advice,” Seymour said. “But are Air Jordans an example of business attire?”

The speaker Trevor Mallard responded: “I’d tend to say it would depend on the business you’re in.” He followed jovially with: “The business which Air Jordans are normally associated with in my interpretation is not quite the business we expect to take part on these precincts.” Mallard decided not to make any official ruling on whether sneakers were or were not acceptable attire in the house.

Waititi says subsequent conversations with Mallard outside the house and over the phone confirmed the type of business the speaker was alluding to; that of basketball players but also drug dealers and gang members. The day after the interaction he tweeted: “What you didn’t see yesterday was on my way out of the chamber, the Speaker said to me ‘Jordans are usually worn by drug dealers and gangsters!’”

The tweet led to numerous comments condemning Mallard, with many of those expressing concern about what they saw as the stereotyping and racism implied by his remarks. 

Mallard responded to the controversy in tweets saying he “really liked” the sneakers in the 1980s “when they first came out”. But, he said he “couldn’t afford them” and that “only professional basketballers, rich people, drug dealers and gangs had them then”. 

Mallard also expressed discomfort at the accusations of racism: “What makes me very uncomfortable with this is the racist assumption that appears to sit behind some of the comments.”

Waititi remains surprised by what he describes as an “unusual interaction”. 

“I’ve worn my Jordans for a little while now in the house,” says Waititi. “But for some reason somebody took offence to me wearing them that day.”

He credits his passion for sneakers to the years he spent studying and living in Auckland. “Urban streetwear was part of my upbringing,” he says. 

Beyond what they mean to him personally, he sees sneakers as a way to make parliamentary politics more reflective of those he represents. In other words, it’s about politicians quite literally walking in the shoes of their constituents. 

“Not all of us represent the suit and tie regions or electorates,” he says. “We represent real people on the ground who don’t wear ties, who prefer to wear Air Jordans.”

Sneakers have long held a cultural meaning, signifying ideas around national identity, status, race, class, gender and criminality. While nearly everything we wear is in one way or another political, when it comes to sneakers, the complexities of associations sets them apart from other types of footwear.

The response to the Jordans from Seymour and Mallard didn’t just appear out of nowhere. The specific genre of sneakers Waititi was wearing carry with them a cultural weight influenced by their American origins. While streetwear sneakers are of course not worn by solely one group – in fact their aspirational image is desirable across the board – they’re intertwined with a complicated and politically charged mix of identities: inner-city, urban, African American, hip hop-influenced, counter-cultural and criminal. 

University of Auckland ethnomusicologist Kirsten Zemke says because shoes like this are tied to the hip hop community, “we do get that association with race and racism”.

Despite their high price tag, Jordans in particular have been positioned in opposition to authority since they hit stores in 1985. In 1984, when Nike signed basketball player Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal, he wore his signature Air Jordans in NBA games, in defiance of league rules. Nike continually paid his $5,000-per-game fine, while airing ads declaring: “The NBA can’t keep you from wearing them.”

A degree of moral panic around certain types of sneakers took hold throughout the 80s and beyond as pristine white Air Force 1s became associated with drug dealers and colloquially known as “felon shoes”. In 1990,  Nike’s Spike Lee-directed sneaker ads were blamed by media for a string of “sneaker killings”, and in Run-DMC’s 1986 track ‘My Adidas’, the hip hop pioneers defended their Adidas Superstars against their associations with crime,rapping: “I wore my sneakers, but I’m not a sneak.” 

While many of these cultural associations originated in America, and are weaponised against black and brown communities there, the same negative assumptions have developed here too, says Zemke. 

As hip hop culture has been adopted in New Zealand, particularly by Māori and Pacific Island communities as an extension of both individual and group identity, the same negative stereotypes have developed. We see it in the increasingly uncommon but still existing nightclubs that turn away those in pristine $300 sneakers (while at the same time happily welcoming others in haggard-looking gladiator sandals or uncomfortable dress shoes that hurt to dance in), and in this case we see it in our parliament.

It’s not Waititi’s first sartorial controversy. He’s previously faced scrutiny for wearing a hat and was ejected from parliament for wearing a hei tiki in place of a tie, which eventually led to a change in parliament’s dress code. Now it’s his shoes.

Despite his newness to parliament, Waitit’s aesthetic is well-established: his personal style is a distinct collage of influences from head to toe. 

Waititi was brought up on a dairy farm on the East Coast. His recognisable cowboy hat, which he’s worn since he “was a young fulla”, is a nod to his rural roots as well as his tūpuna who fought in World War II. Their company within the Māori Battalion was known as Ngā Kaupoi (cowboys), because horses were a common mode of transport along the East Coast. He wears the hei tiki instead of a tie simply because, “Well that’s me,” he says. “I’ve always worn taonga.”

To Waititi, the “shoe debacle” is a reflection of an outdated parliament. “I think we’re holding on to some customs that really don’t reflect our society in Aotearoa.” To him, and many others, wearing a pristine pair of sneakers is no less respectful or dressy than a pair of leather brogues or shiny court shoes.

Parliament, he says, “should be reflecting the communities and the constituents that you represent”. 

The taken-for-granted Pākehā corporate wear of parliament is in itself a statement about what power and authority should look like. Zemke says the discomfort Waititi’s sneakers provoked in a couple of members of parliament brings up important questions around respectability. “When we think about the formality of parliament, we know the dress codes are based on colonial ideas of what is formal,” she says. Rather than conform to these standards of appearance, these types of shoes, though being no less appropriate, disrupt that. 

Visually displacing the sombre tailoring we’re so used to seeing in the Beehive, Waititi’s bold sneakers stand out in that environment because they dismantle “that very formal Eurocentric view of what respect is,” she adds. These days you’re likely to see kicks in spaces deemed respectable by western standards: corporate boardrooms, the red carpet or high-fashion runways. But at the same time, there’s nothing to say that shoes worn by black, brown, Māori or Pacific people in any other setting should denote anything less, or that the people wearing them deserve any less respect. “They’re not inherently disrespectful unless you find hip hop disrespectful,” says Zemke. 

Converse, cowboy boots, Crocs and red bands are all regular shoe choices for Waititi. But “at this particular moment and in that space, I think Jordans are a lovely touch,” he says. 

“I don’t think it’s the clothes that make the man,” says Waititi, “but sometimes it is hard to look this good.”

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