DRAFT

Sport, Society, and the Olympic Games in Rhodesia:

Domestic and International Responses

Andrew Novak, Esq.∗

From Mexico City to Munich: A Prologue

Facing a boycott slated to envelop much of the post-colonial world, the International Olympic

Committee (IOC) chose to exclude the Republic of South Africa from competing at the 1968 Olympics

in Mexico City, lest it risk collapse of an already politically fragile Games.1 The relatively new African

bloc of national Olympic committees was steadfastly opposed; increasing support from the Soviet bloc

tipped the scale against South Africa, handing the African bloc its first political victory at the highest

levels.2 Within a decade after the installation of de jure apartheid in 1948, South Africa had done the

unthinkable, extending apartheid to the playing field so that black athletes could not compete with or

against white athletes or represent South Africa abroad.3 As newly independent African nations voiced

opposition to South African participation in international sport, many sport federations and games

organizers began to exclude whites-only South African teams from competition.4 However, as in

cricket and rugby, African efforts to persuade the IOC to expel South Africa initially faced resistance

from the 75-year-old body, which had never permanently expelled a country from the Olympics solely

for political reasons. According to the opponents of South African Olympic participation, however,

expelling South Africa was about condemning racial discrimination in sports, not about delegitimizing

an apartheid regime.5 The IOC came to agree and, to the great relief of the Mexico City Games

organizers and the Labour Government of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, South Africa was

∗

Andrew Novak is currently an attorney-advisor to the Hon. Pamela Lakes Wood, administrative law judge, U.S.

Department of Labor. He is licensed to practice law in New York. He holds a B.A. in international affairs from George

Washington University, an M.Sc. in African Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a J.D. from

Boston University School of Law. He can be contacted at novak.andrew@gmail.com. 1 The Mexico City Games were heavily criticized before their opening for their late preparations, the treatment of political

opponents, and the high altitude. Claire and Keith Brewster, “Mexico City 1968: Sombreros and Skyscrapers,” in National

Identity and Global Sports Events: Culture, Politics, and Spectacle in the Olympics and the Football World Cup, Alan

Tomlinson, Christopher Young, eds. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), p. 101-103, 110-111. 2 Barrie Houlihan, Sport and International Politics (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), p. 117 (noting consequences

of Soviet bloc support of the South African boycott). 3 For an overview of the laws that crystallized this racial separation, see Grant Jarvie and Irene Reid, “Sport in South

Africa,” in The International Politics of Sport in the Twentieth Century, Jim Riordan and Arnd Krieger, eds. (New York:

Routledge, 1999), p. 238-239 (describing the legal implications of apartheid laws); see also, William J. Baker, “Political

Games: The Meaning of International Sport for Independent Africa,” in Sport in Africa: Essays in Social History, J.A.

Mangan, ed. (New York: Africana Publishing, 1987), p. 284. 4 For an overview of South African sporting isolation, see Richard E. Lapchick, The Politics of Race and International

Sport: The Case of South Africa (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975). For analyses of South Africa’s relationship with

the IOC, see Sasha Soldatow, Politics of the Olympics (North Ride, Australia: Cassell, 1980), p. 124-140. 5 The International Olympic Committee had excluded South Africa from competition in Tokyo in 1964 unless South Africa

could show that it had made progress toward ending racial discrimination. “Olympics Rebuff South Africans: Tokyo

Invitation Withdrawn Because of Racial Bias,” The New York Times (Jan. 28, 1964). Opposition groups, including the

South African Sports Association, the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, and the Supreme Council for Sport in

Africa tended to focus on racial issues and not the legitimacy of apartheid as a political system. When South Africa was

expelled from the Olympics, it was on the basis of racial discrimination. Ramadan Ali, Africa At the Olympics (London:

Africa Books, 1976), p. 40-53.

expelled by a lopsided vote in April 1968.6

Soon after South Africa's exclusion from Mexico City, Rhodesia, a white settler-ruled country in

south-central Africa, became the new target of the increasingly powerful African bloc.7 After

successfully competing in the 1960 Rome and the 1964 Tokyo Games, the white settlers of the British

colony of Southern Rhodesia unilaterally seceded from the British Empire in 1965 and became

diplomatically isolated as a result.8 The architect of unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) was

Prime Minister Ian Smith, the head of the powerful Rhodesian Front party. Mandatory United Nations

sanctions stood between Rhodesian athletes and international sporting competition, and Mexico City

Games organizers began to panic that they would run afoul of UN sanctions if Rhodesia competed.9

Under British pressure to exclude Rhodesia, Mexico City organizers were able to exclude Rhodesia on

technical grounds rather than spark a media frenzy as had occurred over South Africa.10

Mexican

officials sent the Rhodesian team press passes but not Olympic identity cards; they implicitly

threatened the landing credentials of the airline carrying the Rhodesian team; and they made clear that

Rhodesian passports were embargoed.11

Despite protests from the International Olympic Committee,

especially its longtime president and former American Olympian Avery Brundage, Mexico City

organizers and government officials successfully forced the Rhodesian team to withdraw without a

major public relations disaster.12

The exclusion of the Rhodesian Olympic team from Mexico City virtually ensured that an

invitation to the 1972 Munich Olympics in West Germany would be explosive. The International

Olympic Committee, founded in 1894, strenuously objected to the intrusion of politics in the Olympic

Games. Political sentiment, like commercialism, big media, and professionalism in sport threatened

the neutral, peaceful myth of amateur sporting competition that the IOC had long defended.13

The IOC

sought absolute assurances from West German organizers that all teams would be invited, and

threatened to expel any national Olympic committee that boycotted the Games for political reasons.14

Politics and sport must be kept strictly separated, the IOC warned. At the IOC meeting in Luxembourg

in 1971, the IOC brokered a compromise to allow Rhodesia to compete in a time warp: it would

6 Baker, op. cit., p. 286; Houlihan, op. cit., p. 117-118.

7 For more on the Rhodesian Olympic team, see Andrew Novak, “Rhodesia’s ‘Rebel and Racist’ Olympic Team: Athletic

Glory, National Legitimacy, and the Clash of Politics and Sport,” International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 23, No.

8 (2006), p. 1369, et. seq. (hereinafter Novak, “Rhodesian Olympic Team”). 8 For an analysis of the unilateral declaration of independence and the international response, see Robert Good, UDI: The

International Politics of Rhodesian Rebellion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 15-28, 251-256. 9 The correspondence between British officials in Mexico City and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London detail

this panic. See especially the contents of FCO 36/318 (Rhodesian Participation in International Sporting Events), British

National Archives. Mexican officials did not get full British cooperation, and so continued to stonewall by deliberately

misplacing documents. 10

A letter from IOC President Avery Brundage to Pedro Vazquez, the chairman of the Mexico City organizing committee,

sums up this fear: “You are well aware of the tremendous difficulty in handling the South African situation to save the

Games of the XIX Olympiad. I fear that should another controversy arises [sic.], it would be impossible to repeat the

miracle.” Letter, Brundage to Vazquez, June 11, 1968, Avery Brundage Papers. 11

Charles Little, Preventing ‘A Wonderful Break-Through For Rhodesia’: The British Government and the Exclusion of

Rhodesia from the 1968 Mexico Olympics,” Olympika, Vol. 14 (2005), p. 60 (on losing the paperwork in the mail and

disrupting communications); Harry Strack, Sanctions: The Case of Rhodesia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1978), p.

226 (on the flight and landing credentials). 12

For more on Brundage’s opposition to the South African and Rhodesian expulsions, see Allen Guttmann, The Games

Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 232-255.

Brundage threatened to expel the Mexican Olympic Committee because it had infused politics and sport by making the

political decision to keep Rhodesia out. Letter, Brundage to Pedro Vazuez, July 31, 1968. Avery Brundage Papers. 13

For an overview of the political involvement of the IOC, see Christopher Hill, Olympic Politics (New York: Manchester

University Press, 1992), p. 31-33; Richard Espy, The Politics of the Olympic Games (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1981), p. 163-173 (explaining and critiquing the belief that the Olympics were above politics). 14

IOC Executive Board Meeting Minutes, August 18, 1972, p. 3. IOC Documentation Centre.

compete as the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (RHS), as it had in Tokyo in 1964; on the medal

stand, “God Save the Queen” would play as the national anthem under the pre-UDI flag incorporating a

Union Jack.15

The so-called “Tokyo conditions” created a firestorm in domestic Rhodesian politics

because accepting the conditions essentially meant symbolically undoing Rhodesian UDI on a highly

public stage.16

Despite the strings attached to the invitation, and to the surprise of most observers,

Rhodesia accepted. Condemnation of the Luxembourg agreement came from the United Nations

General Assembly and the Organization of African Unity.17

If Rhodesia attended, they warned, a

boycott could result.

Several factors guaranteed that Rhodesia’s invitation would create a diplomatic crisis. First, the

West German government was much more divided as to whether Rhodesia should be allowed to

compete than the Mexican government was.18

The interior ministry in particular defended the

commitment to the IOC that all teams must be invited to the Games.19

Second, the Munich organizing

committee was much less resistant to political pressure than the Mexico City organizing committee had

been. The IOC found a devout disciple of the Olympic myth in the person of Willi Daume, the

chairman of the Munich organizing committee.20

Daume warned the West German government that if

they kept out the Rhodesian team, he would dissolve the organizing committee and cancel the Munich

Games.21

This was a serious threat. West Germany had fought hard to host a postwar Games and undo

the damage wrought with the last German Olympiad, the so-called “Nazi Olympics,” held in Berlin,

1936. Third, West Germany was not a member of the United Nations in 1972; it would not join until

1973. As a result, it was not formally bound, as Mexico had been, to comply with mandatory United

Nations sanctions on Rhodesia and did not have the same legal obligation to exclude international

sports teams.22

As the Munich Games grew closer, the prospect grew that Rhodesia would compete

after all.

Perhaps the most decisive difference between the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and 1972 in

Munich was that the international political environment had changed. In particular, the Labour

Government of Britain under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, which had so strenuously objected to

15

Strack, op. cit., p. 228 (listing the Tokyo conditions). Mexico City organizers had originally devised the idea as a way to

prevent Rhodesian participation. Letter, G.W. Harding to D.J. Swan, 3 May 1968, FCO 25/549 (Sport 1968), British

National Archives. See also, Telegram Hope to London, 12 June 1968, FCO 36/318 (Rhodesian Participation in

International Sporting Events), British National Archives. Both of these documents show that Mexico City had considered

enforcing the Tokyo conditions even before the Luxembourg agreement was brokered. 16

The Rhodesian Financial Gazette, a conservative-leaning newspaper in the country, was especially hostile to the Tokyo

conditions. See Editorial, Rhodesian Financial Gazette, Sept. 17, 1971. 17

UN General Assembly Resolution 2796 (December 1971). Kurt Waldheim, UN Secretary General, informed the West

German government that admitting Rhodesia would violate UN sanctions. Dean McHenry, “The Use of Sports in Policy

Implementation: The Case of Tanzania,” Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1980), p. 246. The Secretary-

General of the Organization of African Unity opposed Rhodesian participation at Munich, and lobbied African governments

to that end. See Telegram, Henderson to British Embassies, undated, FCO 36/1297 (Participation of Rhodesia in Olympic

Games in Munich 1972), British National Archives. 18

“West Germans Differ over Rhodesia and the Olympics,” Bulawayo Chronicle (21 July, 1972), p. 1. 19

Ibid. 20

Daume continually deferred to the wishes of the IOC on Rhodesia and emphasized that the organizing committee would

comply with whatever the IOC decided on Rhodesia. See IOC Meeting Minutes, August 21-24, 1972, p. 8-18. IOC

Documentation Centre. Daume’s personal views are reflected in a telegram from the British Embassy in Bonn to the

Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Daume “had consistently helped to build up the popular belief that Olympic

universality is somehow non-political, and the vote against Rhodesia therefore shattered a non-political ideal which the

German public had, perhaps naively, come to regard as an integral part of the Olympic package.” Telegram, Aug. 24, 1972,

PREM 15/1220 (1971-72 Sport), FCO Records, British National Archives. 21

Letter, J.D. Campbell to Goring-Morris, 26 May 1971, FCO 36/982, British National Archives. 22

Informally, Rhodesia tended to comply with the sanctions, although it continued to trade under contracts that predated

UDI. Guy Arnold and Alan Baldwin, “Rhodesia: Token Sanctions or Total Economic Warfare,” in The Rhodesian Problem:

A Documentary Record, 1923-1973, Elaine Windrich, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1975), p. 273.

Rhodesia’s presence in Mexico City and colluded with Mexican government officials to deny

Rhodesian passports and documentation, had fallen.23

Wilson was replaced by the Conservative Prime

Minister Edward Heath, who pursued a very different Rhodesia policy. Instead of lobbying for

Rhodesia’s exclusion from Munich, Prime Minister Heath did his best to prevent a boycott, and British

embassy officials throughout Africa attempted to persuade African political leaders to allow Rhodesia

to compete.24

Britain even considered giving all Rhodesian team members British passports to allow

them to travel without problems since Rhodesia was, after all, a British colony.25

But with Britain’s

abdication from the boycott movement, the African continent stepped up. As the summer of 1972 wore

on, African Olympic teams began defecting from the Games until the continent was almost unanimous

in its threat to boycott. The old order on the IOC stood firm, but for the first time, and by a close vote,

they lost.26

When forced to choose between the Munich Games and the Rhodesian team, the IOC voted

to exclude Rhodesia four days before the opening ceremonies.

This paper is about the international response from Britain, the African continent, and West

German Games organizers to Rhodesia’s invitation to the Munich Olympics. The threatened boycott of

Rhodesia held the African bloc together after South Africa’s expulsion from the Games, the high water

mark of African unity. In 1976, the African continent did walk out of the Montreal Olympics in protest

of New Zealand’s presence, the most flagrant violator of sport sanctions on South Africa.27

It was the

last time the African Olympic bloc would stand together. The boycotts of Moscow in 1980 and Los

Angeles in 1984 split Africa down the middle. However, the 1976 boycott may not have been a

complete failure in the long run. One country did take the African threat seriously. Canada in

particular was stung by a boycott not only of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but the Toronto Paralympics

as well, where South Africa’s presence had sparked a walk-out.28

Canadian pressure on other

Commonwealth heads of government in order to prevent an African boycott of the 1978

Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Alberta led to the drafting of the Gleneagles Agreement, which

would result in the exclusion of South Africa from international cricket and rugby.29

By standing firm,

boycotting African nations were eventually successful at their ultimate goal.

This paper proceeds in four parts. First, I theorize about sport in white settler societies in

general and Rhodesia in particular. Sport was a means of social control by the white settler community,

but it was also a means of social protest by the indigenous black populations. Second, I analyze the

often-repeated claim that sport in Rhodesia was not as racially segregated as sport in South Africa.

Racial segregation, and not the political isolation of Rhodesia’s illegal regime, proved to be the

ultimate ground on which Rhodesia was expelled from the Olympic Movement. Third, I discuss

international and domestic responses to the Rhodesian invitation to Munich. Relying on the records of

23

For more on the Labour government’s attempts to exclude Rhodesia from Mexico City, see Little, “1968 Mexico

Olympics,” op. cit., p. 47-68. Little gives an excellent analysis of the Mexico City situation, but the ramifications of the fall

of Wilson’s government in 1970 are outside the scope of his article. 24

See Novak, “Rhodesian Olympic Team,” op. cit., p. 1379. I originally drew this conclusion after seeing documents in the

British National Archives. See infra for a more detailed analysis of these documents. 25

Letter, Byatt to Le Quesne, 21 August 1972, FCO 36/1297 (Participation of Rhodesia in Olympic Games in Munich in

1972), British National Archives (weighing pros and cons of allowing the Rhodesian team to travel on British passports). 26

IOC Meeting Minutes, August 21-24, 1972, p. 8-18. IOC Documentation Centre. 27

Historians have not been kind to this boycott. See, e.g., John Goodbody, “Montreal Background,” in Olympic Report ’76,

James Coote, ed. (Montreal: Select Press, 1976). Goodbody writes that the boycott was essentially without merit. See also

the statement by the Vice-President of the IOC, Mohamed Mzali of Tunisia, describing the disappointment among the

African team members. “Mr. Mzali: I am Sorry About the Boycott of the Montreal Olympic Games,” Olympic Review, No.

107-108 (Sept.-Oct. 1976), p. 463-465. 28

For the Paralympic boycott, see Andrew Novak, “Politics and the Paralympic Games: Disability Sport in Rhodesia-

Zimbabwe,” Journal of Olympic History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2008), p. 53-54. 29

Donald Macintosh, Donna Greenhorn, and David Black, “Canadian Diplomacy and the 1978 Edmonton Commonwealth

Games,” Journal of Sport History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1992), p. 26-55; Donald Macintosh and Michael Hawes, Sport and

Canadian Diplomacy (Buffalo: McGill-Queens University Press, 1994), p. 72-85.

the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the IOC Archives, and the Avery Brundage Papers, I

chronicle the African boycott movement and British and IOC attempts to stymie it. I also discuss the

reaction of the Rhodesian political establishment to compromising UDI and accepting the Luxembourg

agreement. Finally, I place the Rhodesian boycott movement in its proper context: as both a

contributor to and a consequence of South Africa’s isolation in international sport.

Sport in Rhodesian Society: A Sphere of Social Control and Protest

For the white community, sport was a means of social acculturation, allowing contact among

relatively remote settlements and contributing to the creation of a unified white culture. The formation

of an exclusionary white settler identity was essential to maintaining dominance and control over a

much larger population. Kennedy, in his comparative study of white settlers in Kenya and Rhodesia,

writes that the power to shape social identity so as to define distinctions between the settler population

and the subject population was crucial to their status.30

“Settler culture” was characterized by a refusal

to adapt to the host environment and an avoidance of contact and interchange with the indigenous

population. While white settler populations in general had enormous power relative to their size,

bordering on monopoly control, “settler culture” was often more insecure than it was confident and

more anxious than arrogant.31

The diverse origins and class status of white settlers were deemphasized

in favor of a mythical, hegemonic, unitary white community. Rhodesian society was also very

transient; the yearly turnover of the white population was among the highest in Western societies.32

The transience and underlying heterogeneity of the whites provided strong motive for the manufacture

of a Rhodesian identity.

The social distance between whites and black Africans insulated the white community from the

realities of the black African existence. Sport became part of the white “myth,” one tied to the pioneers

and heroes of Rhodesian history and to Cecil Rhodes himself, the godfather of the country, who

bequeathed much of the country’s symbolism and self-identity. Sport was both an opportunity for often

rural and isolated white settlers to engage in a social activity, and a means by which white settlers could

begin to form their own communal identities and allegiances. A sports jersey tagged “Southern

Rhodesia” helped to give some content to a Southern Rhodesian identity, separate from British and

South African identities. Like “other colonial societies, which used sporting achievements to define

and enhance their national self-esteem, the Rhodesians deified their heroes and relied upon their

national teams to restore or sustain national morale.”33

This was particularly true of rugby and cricket

in the 1970s given their overwhelming popularity and the isolation of Rhodesia in other sports. In

1972, cricket star Mike Proctor outpolled Prime Minister Ian Smith for “Rhodesian of the Year.”34

Sport figured prominently in the white settler history of Southern Rhodesia. The personality of

Cecil Rhodes was central to the history of white sports in the territory; Rhodes himself was an avid

sportsman and several of the earliest pioneers took part in the organization of early Rhodesian sport.

Sir William Milton, the South African cricket player and sponsor, accompanied Rhodes to Rhodesia

and became administrator of Southern Rhodesia.35

Tanser recalls that the first “pioneers” from South

30

Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1939 (Durham:

Duke University Press, 1987), p. 189. 31

Ibid, p. 187-189. 32

Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c.

1970-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 17. 33

Ibid, p. 38. 34

Ibid. 35

For an example of the hagiography, see J. de L. Thompson, The Story of Rhodesian Sport, 1889-1935 (Bulawayo: Books

of Rhodesia, 1976), p. 8. For a critique of the hagiography, see Jonty Winch, Cricket’s Rich Heritage: A History of

Africa set up sporting facilities very shortly upon their arrival. Soon after the Pioneer Column reached

Fort Salisbury, they erected a race course and played cricket in what would later become Cecil

Square.36

By 1909, Hone could describe the numerous sports facilities in Salisbury and Bulawayo and

write, “Sport in all its varied forms fills a very important part in the life of the people, and perhaps in

no other country is so much enthusiasm shown for it.”37

As Hodder-Williams describes of Marandellas,

Rhodesia (now Marondera, Zimbabwe), sport increased in popularity after the Second World War since

the rationing of gasoline no longer constrained travel.38

Sport was inseparable from white settler

identity and contributed to and reflected the social separation of white rulers from black subjects.

In early Rhodesia, as in early white settler societies elsewhere in Africa, the first networks of

sporting contacts among white settlers developed through “premodern” leisure sports such as hunting,

riding, horse and dog racing, and shooting. These sports reflected a sense of class consciousness that

developed in Britain. Describing white settlers in Kenya, Nicholls writes, “[t]he cheapness of servants

opened to [settlers] many aristocratic pursuits such as polo, racing and hunting,” and indeed the

prospect of a kind of social mobility unavailable to working and middle classes in Britain spurred white

settlement to the colonies.39

Steinhart, writing of early colonial Kenya, notes that big game hunting by

sportsmen was a popular leisure activity until about the First World War, connoting images of wealth

and high class standing, a “sport of gentlemen who obeyed a civilized and humane set of rules of the

game.”40

Following the war, hunting in Kenya became a tourist industry run by professional white

settler hunters rather than a leisure activity for the aristocratic classes.41

Even hunting was a racialized

sport. Strict game and gun laws in Kenya and Rhodesia denied black Africans the same hunting

privileges, and consequently the same access to dietary sources and wildlife trade, that white settlers

had.42

White settlers could be “hunters” while black Africans were “poachers.”43

Sports historians

have long noted that these forms of leisure activities were agrarian in origin, strongly parochial, and

exclusionary, and thus did not easily adjust to increasing urbanization and heavy industrialization, and

the consequent breakdown of traditional class barriers.44

As in Europe half a century prior, modern

sport in white settler societies began taking on modern characteristics of capitalist development,

competition, team identity, and spectacle by the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The diffusion of modern sport in Rhodesia was part of a process of sport globalization more

generally, and tended to follow existing imperial networks such as missionary education, military

conquest, trade, the activities of medical personnel, and, perhaps most importantly, European

settlement. Reflecting on why soccer became the sport of the masses throughout the British Empire

while cricket (and derivatively rugby) had more limited appeal, Guttmann argues that soccer peaked in

Rhodesian and Zimbabwean Cricket, 1890-1982 (Bulawayo: Books of Zimbabwe, 1983), p. 1, et. seq. (hereinafter, “Winch,

Cricket’s Rich Heritage”). For more on the initiatives of Sir William Milton in organizing the colony’s sports, see Jonty

Winch, “There Were a Fine Manly Lot of Fellows: Cricket, Rugby and Rhodesian Society During William Milton’s

Administration, 1896-1914,” Sport in History, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2008), p. 583-604 (hereinafter, “Winch, Sport in History”). 36

G.H. Tanser, The Guide to Rhodesia (Salisbury: Winchester Press, 1975), p. 313. 37

Percy Frederick Hone, Southern Rhodesia (London: George Bell and Sons, 1909), p. 21. 38

Richard Hodder-William, White Farmers in Rhodesia, 1890-1965: A History of the Marandellas District (London:

MacMillan Press, 1983), p. 177. 39

C.S. Nicholls, Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya (London: Timewell Press, 2005), p. 161. 40

E.I. Steinhart, “Hunters, Poachers and Gamekeepers: Towards a Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya,” Journal of

African History, Vol. 30 (1989), p. 253. 41

Ibid, p. 254. 42

In any case, overhunting and rinderpest sharply depleted herds by 1900. John M. Mackenzie, “Hunting in East and

Central Africa in the Late Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to Zimbabwe,” in Sport in Africa: Essays in Social

History, William Baker and James Mangan, eds. (London: Africana Publishing, 1987), p. 172. 43

Ibid, p. 189. 44

Robert T. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700-1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1973) p. 170-171.

conjunction with the height of the British Empire and thus was diffused most rapidly.45

Cricket had

peaked too early. In South Africa, rugby was closely allied to Afrikaner domination, and it was

consequently discouraged among black South Africans.46

Cricket in particular tended to be class-

stratified, the sport of the colonial service, their collaborators and allies, and small pockets of well-

connected colonial subjects.47

“The old boys from the public schools and Oxbridge who went out to

the Empire took not only the games they played in school and college but also their obsession with the

distinction between the gentleman amateur and the mercenary professional,” Perkin writes.48

Soccer,

on the other hand, allowed professional athletes to play and quickly absorbed the working classes in

Britain; those working classes became merchants and functionaries throughout the world.49

The divide

between cricket and rugby as elite sports on the one hand and soccer, the sport of the masses, on the

other, diffused to the Empire.

Cricket and rugby were the most central components of white settler sport culture. As Winch

writes, cricket and rugby drew the small and scattered white population of Southern Rhodesia together

and provided a link with home.50

More importantly, the two sports “promoted imperial ideologies of

the power of the British race and of masculinity expressed through sporting prowess.”51

Through the

political efforts of Sir William Minton and other early Rhodesian administrators, cricket and rugby

governance became highly structured and closely aligned to the settler state.52

Even by 1900, white

dominance of the two sports was complete, and mixed race athletes who had participated on white

teams in Cape Town were excluded from competition in Rhodesia and ignored by the white press.53

White cricket and rugby organizations would be absorbed into South African structures after World

War One. The South African cricket and rugby associations governed their Rhodesian counterparts,

and Rhodesian cricket and rugby teams became dependent on the Currie Cup competition annually in

South Africa, especially during its period of international isolation.54

Perhaps the most famous

Rhodesian sportsman was Colin Bland, who played cricket internationally for South Africa.55

While

less prestigious, the domestic Logan Cup competition in cricket was instrumental in conditioning

Rhodesian cricketers; the competition continues in modern Zimbabwe.56

While cricket and rugby

remained important in wartime Rhodesia, the sports suffered as universal white male conscription

depleted sporting ranks.57

The decline has continued, in part because of economic decline and political

turmoil, and in part because unlike South Africa, colonial Zimbabwe never had a historically black

African cricket and rugby culture.58

Modern sport in Rhodesia was about more than just play; it was also about power. Just as sport

in white settler societies helped foster a sense of social belonging among whites by instilling a sense of

common identity and friendship in an often lonely rural lifestyle, so too did it help to define a social

distance between white Rhodesians and the black population. “Sport for whites—especially cricket—

45

Allen Guttmann, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism (New York: Columbia University Press,

1994), p. 40. 46

David Black and John Nauright, Rugby and the South African Nation (New York: Manchester University Press, 1998), p.

60, et. seq. 47

Harold Perkin, “Teaching the Nations How to Play: Sport and Society in the British Empire and Commonwealth,” in The

Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire, Society, James Mangan, ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1992), p. 217-218. 48

Ibid, 216. 49

Ibid. 50

Winch, Sport in History, op. cit., p. 583-584. 51

Ibid, p. 583. 52

Ibid, p. 590, 598, 601. 53

Ibid, p. 589. 54

Winch, Cricket’s Rich Heritage, op. cit., p. ii. 55

Ibid, 97. 56

Ibid, ii. 57

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 296 (cricket) and corresponding endnote 77 (rugby). 58

Winch, Sport in History, op. cit., p. 601-602.

had been a symbol of racial and national qualities; a ritual of affirmation at which Africans were mere

spectators or adjuncts,” Ranger writes.59

Sport imported from Europe helped define the social

boundary between white settlers and black populations. When black Africans began learning European

sports and becoming quite good at them, more overt and stricter control was required to maintain racial

distance through sport. Boxing, for instance, had originally spread organically through black urban

populations in Southern Rhodesia and became enormously popular without direct European

influence.60

Fearing that boxing was an aggressive and dirty sport, dangerously subversive of the

colonial regime, municipal and provincial governments began taking over boxing leagues and

competitions and rigorously enforcing rules of combat.61

By structuring forms of African sport, white

settlers could maintain control over urban gatherings and, they believed, avoid riots, clan disputes, and

political protest.

Unlike boxing, the white government never completely captured the field of association football

(soccer), long a sphere of autonomous black African control.62

As Giulianotti writes, legal restrictions

on public meetings involving large groups of black Africans “had turned football into one of the few

arenas in which Africans could gather legally in large numbers,” resulting inevitably in political

dialogue.63

However, reflecting the incompleteness of white control, some African sports clubs

accepted and recruited white players and officials. Football “provided a rare leisure space in which

whites were permitted by an increasingly repressive security system to interact with Africans.”64

Stuart

explains the unique historical reasons for the football anomaly. In 1948, when the Bulawayo City

Council attempted to assert control over urban football leagues and competition, just as the Salisbury

City Council had done ten years earlier with boxing, the black African population in the city boycotted

municipality-organized soccer for two years.65

Eventually, the Council backed down. African-

organized football developed a sophisticated structure and made important moves toward racial

integration before and during the country’s brief entry into and exit from FIFA (1965-1971).66

By 1979

black African-organized football leagues had quit the white-run Football Association of Rhodesia and

applied successfully to FIFA as the Zimbabwe Football Association.67

Just as sport could be a tool of

social control by the white settlers over black urban-based populations, so too could it be turned around

and used as a means of social protest.

Racial Discrimination in Rhodesian Sport: A Working Hypothesis

Black Rhodesian athletes had made tremendous progress in sport throughout the 1960s and

1970s in at least some contexts, notwithstanding the persistence of racial discrimination in sport.

59

Terence Ranger, “Pugilism and Pathology: African Boxing and the Black Urban Experience in Southern Rhodesia,” in

Sport in Africa: Essays in Social History, William Baker and James Mangan, eds. (London: Africana Publishing, 1987), p.

196-197. 60

Ibid, p. 199 61

Ibid, p. 204-206. 62

For a comparison between soccer and boxing, see Preben Kaarsholm, “Si ye pambili, Which Way Forward? Urban

Development, Culture, and Politics in Bulawayo,” in Sites of Struggle: Essays in Zimbabwe’s Urban History, Brian

Raftopoulos and Tsuneo Yoshikuni, eds. (Harare: Weaver Press, 1999). 63

Richard Giulianotti, “Between Colonialism, Independence and Globalization: Football in Zimbabwe,” in Football in

Africa: Conflict, Conciliation and Community, Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti, eds. (New York: Palgrave

MacMillan, 2004), p. 86. 64

Ibid, 87. 65

Ossie Stuart, “Players, Workers, Protestors: Social Change and Soccer in Colonial Zimbabwe,” in Sport, Identity and

Ethnicity, Jeremy MacClancy, ed. (Herndon, VA: Berg, 1996), p. 172. 66

Giulianotti, op. cit., p. 85. 67

Ibid, p. 86-87.

Athletics in particular held promise for black athletes. But discrimination did exist. Badenhorst’s

observation about sport for black Africans in Johannesburg applies equally well to Rhodesia: “like all

attempts at domination, coercive or non-coercive, the process was never complete and never

completely dualistic.”68

Racial discrimination existed in Rhodesian sport, just as it existed in

Rhodesian life more generally, but it was never total and sport remained a site of contested control until

Zimbabwe’s independence. Some observers have claimed racial discrimination did not exist at all in

sport. According to Strack, sports were “a major example of multiracial cooperation in Rhodesia,” and

different communities simply had different preferences as to which sports they would play.69

This

understates the extent to which race did play a role. On the other hand, it is also not true that sport was

rigidly segregated along South African lines, in which white athletes were forbidden by law from

competing with or against black athletes.70

The sporting sphere in Rhodesia was a patchwork quilt.

Some sports had always been and largely remained sites of black African autonomy; other sports were

almost completely reserved for whites; and still other sports had parallel, segregated regimes, both in

law and in practice. This section is an attempt to theorize these distinctions.

The first observation is that sports requiring specialized equipment, facilities, coaching, or

training tended to be dominated by the white settler community and had little black African

participation. Although black African-controlled clubs did exist in golf, courses were not seen as

priorities given the soft interest in the sport among the black African community generally and leading

black African players often were unable to compete in major events.71

Non-white athletes also faced

overt racial discrimination in field hockey. No integrated teams existed anywhere in the country in

1974 except at the University of Rhodesia.72

Two women’s field hockey players of mixed-race descent

were denied a chance to compete for the national team because they were not white.73

Like golf and

field hockey, tennis allowed some multi-racial competition, unlike South Africa, but this competition

appears to have been rare.74

Disability and wheelchair sport was also generally reserved for white

Rhodesians, and Rhodesia’s Paralympic teams in had always been composed only of white athletes.75

According to the International Olympic Committee’s investigative report prior to Rhodesia’s expulsion

from the Olympics, shooting, badminton, and yachting were also generally restricted to white

athletes.76

These sports required economic means to participate.

The second observation is that where a Rhodesian sport was heavily intertwined with its South

African partner, the sport’s leagues, competitions, and teams tended to be racially segregated. Cricket

and rugby were the paradigmatic examples. Field hockey was another such sport, tending to follow

South African rules for racial segregation on the playing field, especially when competition took place

inside South Africa.77

For sports in which Rhodesia was excluded from international competition for

either the illegality of its regime or for racial discrimination, these sports tended to become more

dependent on South Africa for competition. This probably increased the pressure on Rhodesian sports

68

Cecile Badenhorst, “New Traditions, Old Struggles: Organized Sport for Johannesburg’s Africans, 1920-50,” Sport in

Society, Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 139. 69

Harry Strack 70

Charles Little, “Rebellion, Race and Rhodesia: International Cricketing Relations with Rhodesia During UDI,” Sport in

Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 532. 71

Dorothy Keyworth Davies, Race Relations in Rhodesia: A Survey for 1972-73 (London: Rex Collings, 1975), p. 342-43. 72

IOC Investigating Report, 23 Oct. 1974. British Olympic Association Library. 73

Davies, op. cit., p. 343. 74

For more on Rhodesian competition in the Davis Cup, the premier men’s international tennis event, see Harry Strack,

Sanctions: The Case of Rhodesia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1978), p. 223-224. As Strack notes, Rhodesia

remained eligible to compete in the Davis Cup because it did not violate federation rules as South Africa had (although

Rhodesia would withdraw in the face of a threatened boycott). 75

Novak, “Paralympics,” op. cit., p. 47, et. seq. 76

IOC Investigating report, 23 Oct. 1974, British Olympic Association Library. 77

Davies, op. cit., p. 343.

federations to comply with South African racial controls. “Well into the 1970s,” Little writes,

“Rhodesian teams competing in South Africa always deferred to ‘local custom’ by not including non-

European players.”78

The third observation is that even where competition and organization of sports were

multiracial, secondary discrimination still existed in robust form.79

As one official noted, “The world

knows our soccer on the field is multi-racial,” but “off the field there is a colour-bar for players and

officials in clubhouses, changing rooms, and hotels on the road.”80

Stands in sporting venues, for

instance, were often segregated. One spectator of a multiracial tennis match noted that he had to sit in

the “Non-European” section; organizers also moved white spectators out of section.81

The Bulawayo

City Council refused to permit a proposed boxing tournament in City Hall because of the participation

of black African athletes in violation of the racial restrictions in the Hall’s lease.82

Because of the

importance of private clubs in organizing sport in Rhodesia, the decision of whether to permit

multiracial membership was left to the club itself to determine. One sports club that permitted

multiracial tennis on its courts did not allow non-white participants to become club members or to be

guests at the club house.83

Another all-white soccer club even banned from the clubhouse the black

president of the Rhodesian Football Association and the mixed-race wife of its own goalkeeper.84

Over

time, some clubs did begin to integrate, especially in the field of athletics; one exclusively white club

did open its doors to mixed-race and black athletes in the early 1970s.85

The government, for its part,

refused to intervene in the rules of private sports clubs, and many remained exclusively white.86

However, where sports were not organized around private clubs, but by business interests in mining

towns and among railroad employees, or by the University of Rhodesia and other integrated

educational institutions, multiracial sport was more common.87

The fourth observation is that where sporting venues were segregated by other law, competition

was segregated accordingly. This was true especially of swimming, where public pools were sharply

segregated by the Land Tenure Act.88

The international swimming federation, FINA, expelled

Rhodesia in 1973 because black Africans did not have the same opportunities as whites in competition,

training, or facilities.89

The IOC’s investigating report detailed a specific instance where the Salisbury

City Council refused to permit a multiracial swim competition.90

The segregation of sports on public

elementary school property was the most comprehensive government intervention on the playing field.

This policy was apparently quite controversial when first implemented, and remained a frequent target

of the political opposition.91

One opponent noted that an inter-school athletic event even excluded a

78

Little, “Rebellion, Race, Rhodesia,” op. cit., p. 532. 79

The famous anecdote of South African golfer Papwa Sewgolum, who had to stand outside in the rain while his teammates

were served drinks in the clubhouse by the Indian staff, illustrates this point. Sewgolum had just won the Natal Open that

day. He paid his check through the clubhouse window. Colin Tatz, “Race, Politics, and Sport,” Sporting Traditions, Vol. 1,

No. 1 (1984), p. 22. 80

Davies, op. cit., p. 335. 81

C.G.. Desai, “Letter to the Editor: Color Bar in Sports,” Moto (May 1971). 82

Davies, op. cit., p. 339. 83

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 128. 84

Ibid. 85

“Unfriendly Act,” Der Spiegel, No. 28, 1971. 86

IOC Report of the Commission of Enquiry for Rhodesia, 23 Oct. 1974, p. 20. British Olympic Association Library. 87

“Unfriendly Act,” Der Spiegel, No. 28, 1971 (on mining towns); Thompson, op. cit., p. 7 (on railroad companies); IOC

Investigating Report, 23 Oct. 1974, op. cit. (on University of Rhodesia’s sports). 88

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 83. 89

FINA Report, 22 Oct. 1973, Zimbabwe Correspondence File 1973, IOC Documentation Centre. 90

IOC Report of the Commission of Enquiry for Rhodesia, 23 Oct. 1974, p. 9. British Olympic Association Library. 91

Several times opposition members of parliament grilled the Minister of Education about multi-racial sport on school

property. See, e.g., Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates, 9 August 1968, p. 1253-1254; 25 April 1969, p. 1504; 29 November

1972, p. 418.

young female athlete who held the high jump record in the district because of her race.92

A group of

citizens wrote letters to the Minister of Education and about 200 schools pleading for the reinstatement

of multi-racial school sport.93

Multiracial sport among school children could and did take place off

school property, such as at police or other government-run fields or on the grounds of private schools.94

On the other side of the debate, parents argued that multiracial school sport lent itself to Communist

subversion.95

The government argued that since schooling was compulsory for white and mixed-race

students and those of South Asian descent (though not for black Africans), allowing multi-racial school

sport would amount to “enforced integration.”96

In 1968, when the policy was first implemented,

opponents of the separation even appealed to the International Olympic Committee in order to bring

pressure to bear on the Ministry of Education.97

The ban on racially integrated school sport became an

increasingly prominent hook on which to base Rhodesia’s exclusion from the Olympics. Once the

team was expelled, the ban on multiracial school sport was singled out for another round of criticism.98

The fifth and final observation is that multiracial teams from outside the country were often

treated differently than multiracial teams from inside the country. As Godwin and Hancock write,

Rhodesians distinguished between local and overseas black athletes.99

The visit of Caribbean cricketer

Gary Sobers to Rhodesia received wide praise among white cricket fans; Sobers, a black athlete, even

had his photo taken with Prime Minister Ian Smith.100

In 1971, Rhodesia hosted the first international

athletics event in which black and white South Africans competed against each other.101

Ten white

athletes and ten black athletes were chosen in separate tryouts, as per South African rules, but once in

Rhodesia they could compete together. In 1972, black Rhodesian boxers defeated four white South

African boxers in a multiracial competition in Salisbury.102

As a corollary, Rhodesian teams were

probably more likely to select non-white athletes for competition abroad than they were for domestic

competition. A Rhodesian school hockey team even chose an athlete of South Asian descent to tour

South Africa, prompting worries that the team would run afoul of South African law.103

A Rhodesian

weightlifting team even boycotted a South African event when its multiracial team was denied entry.104

In 1971, a multiracial athletics team was selected to tour West Germany, the first Rhodesian team to

visit Europe.105

However, as noted above, when Rhodesia sent teams to compete in the South African

Games, the Currie Cup, or other major sporting competitions hosted by South Africa, its teams

complied with the regulations for those sports.

In short, the reality of Rhodesian sport was complex and ambiguous. Black Rhodesians had

made enormous progress in sports by the 1970s. Track and field star Artwell Mandaza held the

unofficial world record for the 100 meter race and became the Rhodesian Athlete of the Year for 1970;

92

Letter to the editor, “Double Standard in Rhodesian Athletics,” Rhodesia Herald (Apr. 16, 1971). 93

Davies, op. cit., p. 346. 94

Editor’s Note, Rhodesia Herald (April 16, 1971) (note that the editor’s note does not directly respond to the letter to the

editor preceding it, op. cit.). 95

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 47. 96

Davies, op. cit., p. 346. 97

“We’ll Protest to Olympic Body—Angry Coloureds,” Sunday Mail (Feb. 25, 1968). 98

“Comment: No Setback for the Appeasers,” Bulawayo Chronicle (Aug. 24, 1972), p. 10. 99

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 47. 100

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 47. See also, Michael Manley, A History of West Indies Cricket (London: Andre

Deutsch, 1988), p. 194-195 (explaining the uproar in the Caribbean over Sobers’s visit). 101

Salisbury Radio, 17:45 GMT, 26 May 1972. Records of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, PREM 15/1220

(1971-72 Sport). 102

Davies, op. cit., p. 339. 103

“S. African Tour—Asian Selected,” Rhodesia Herald (June 18, 1971). 104

“Snub to Rhodesians: Contest Was ‘Not in SA Tradition,’” early October 1971, in FCO 7/672 (clipping in the Records of

the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office; source unreadable). 105

Salisbury Radio, 5:00 GMT, 24 May 1971. Records of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, PREM 15/1220

(1971-72 Sport).

soccer champion George Shaya became a finalist for the honor in 1976 and became Rhodesian Soccer

Star of the Year five times.106

Athletics in particular was well-integrated; the International Amateur

Athletic Federation found that Rhodesian track and field was multiracial and did not include racially

exclusive clubs or competitions; in addition, the administration of the Rhodesian Amateur Athletic

Union was also multiracial.107

Rhodesian track and field stars had also won impressive victories in the

South African Games and other important competitions. Outside of athletics and a few other sports

such as cycling, however, integrative trends were much less unidirectional. The IOC’s commission of

inquiry in 1974 found “complete contradictions,” as reports surfaced of both true multiracial

competition and, simultaneously, sharp racial discrimination.108

Lord Michael Killanin, the president

of the IOC, expressed concern that in many sporting spheres in Rhodesia, progress was being erased.109

After the ban on multiracial school sport, local governments attempted to enforce racial segregation in

their local sports facilities and parks; multiracial events in public swimming pools required a permit.110

The IOC found that the combination of the Land Tenure Act, segregated school sports, and racially

segregated private sports clubs were the major obstacles to truly multiracial sports opportunities.111

Like South Africa, racial discrimination in domestic sport prevented Rhodesia from complying with the

Olympic Charter.112

Racial discrimination in Rhodesian sport appears to have been considerably less

extensive and complete than in South African sport, but this was not enough to save the Rhodesian

participation in the Olympic Movement.

The Rhodesian Invitation to the Munich Olympics: British and African Responses

In 1968, Mexico City officials initially did invite Rhodesia; the head of the Munich organizing

committee, Willi Daume, even personally hand delivered the invitation to the Rhodesian Olympic

Committee.113

At this point, however, British influence came to bear on the organizers. Documents

from the archives of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office show that Britain’s Labour

government conceived of a strategy to lobby African and Caribbean governments behind the scenes to

help pressure the Mexico City organizing committee to prevent Rhodesian participation.114

The effort

was partially successful. Kenya, Jamaica, and Ghana did publicly call for a boycott in the event

Rhodesia attended.115

The British continually frustrated the Mexican officials, however, by refusing to

condemn Rhodesian participation publicly; Britain was perfectly willing to lobby behind the scenes but

did not want the public consequences that such British pressure would trigger.116

Mexican City

organizers were stung by Britain’s lack of guidance and public support. The British government’s

Rhodesia policy in general was highly controversial with Parliament and Britain’s two longtime

representatives on the IOC were strongly in favor of the free and full participation of all teams in good

standing, including Rhodesia.117

Documents reveal that the Mexican officials were clear that any

106

Glen Byrom, D. McDermott and B. Streak, Rhodesian Sport Profiles: 1907-1979 (Bulawayo: Books of Zimbabwe,

1980), p. 196 (Mandaza), and p. 168 (Shaya). 107

Statement by Frederick Holder, April 5, 1971. Avery Brundage Papers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 108

IOC Minutes, 1-3 June 1974. IOC Documentation Centre, Lausanne. 109

Letter, Killanin to Plaskitt, 20 Feb. 1973, Zimbabwe Correspondence File 1973, IOC Documentation Centre. 110

Godwin and Hancock, op. cit., p. 83, 127. 111

IOC Report of the Commission of Enquiry for Rhodesia, 23 Oct. 1974, p. 23. British Olympic Association Library. 112

IOC Minutes, 22 May 1975. IOC Documentation Centre, p. 25-26. 113

It was only the fifth invitation to be handed out. “Rhodesia Invited to the Olympics,” The Guardian, March 30, 1971. 114

This was excellently explained by Little (2005), op. cit., p. 47. 115

“Kenya Seeking Games Ban on Rhodesia,” East African Standard, Aug. 16, 1968. 116

Telegram, Crosec (London) to Nairobi, Aug. 2, 1968, FCO 36/318. British National Archives. 117

A.D. Brightly to Faber, Feb. 13, 1968, FCO 36/317; Telegram, Crosec (London) to Salisbury, Jan. 15, 1968, FCO 36/317.

British National Archives.

failure of communication between Mexico City and Rhodesia was intentional.118

This behind-the-

scenes maneuvering, vigorously condemned by the IOC before and after the Games, was successful in

its ultimate goal, and Rhodesia withdrew.119

In 1972, British policy had made a dramatic reversal. The Conservative government opted not

to protest Rhodesian participation in other countries’ sporting events, although they did not lift the ban

on Rhodesian sport participation in the United Kingdom itself.120

In March 1971, Willie Daume, the

president of the Munich Games, personally travelled to Rhodesia and hand-delivered the invitation to

Munich, only the fifth one handed out.121

British officials speculated that the invitation was the result

of an intensive Rhodesian lobbying campaign at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne and to West

German organizers in Munich.122

Almost as soon as the invitation was delivered, the first African

countries lodged protests with the Chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt.123

As these protesting

nations rightly explained, West Germany had pledged to informally comply with mandatory UN

sanctions on Rhodesia in a 1968 letter to the Secretary-General.124

It was in response to these early

protests, and to Munich organizers confusion as to the state of German sanctions, which led to the

Luxembourg Agreement in late 1971.

Heath’s Conservative government made the change of policy clear. In November 1971, Britain

voted against a General Assembly resolution calling for all states to ensure the exclusion of Rhodesia

from the Olympics.125

British officials were also content to allow Rhodesian athletes to compete

abroad as individuals if they did not represent Rhodesia as a national team.126

Foreign Minister Alec

Douglas-Home told the U.S. government that the issuance of an invitation to Rhodesia did not imply

recognition of the regime; Olympic teams are provided to territories and do not need to be independent

states.127

Host governments, including West Germany, must decide their own obligations under

Security Council Resolutions; Britain would not intervene.128

The rhetoric of the British government had changed as well. Before Mexico City, British

officials protested that Rhodesia’s multiracial Olympic team, and indeed its multiracial sporting sphere,

“was not the point,” instead characterizing the real issue as “acceptance of Rhodesia given U.D.I.”

since national prestige was “greatly involved” and parading under the national flag would lend

legitimacy to the regime.129

Again and again, the Labour government ignored suggestions that

Rhodesian sport was less segregated than South African sport; the real issue, according to Wilson’s

government, was recognition of an illegal regime.130

To the new Conservative government, the fact

that Rhodesian sports teams tended to be multiracial was a critical distinguishing factor. In 1971,

several British officials hinted at using Rhodesian multiracial sport as a tactic to prevent an African

boycott of the Munich Games.131

One official noted that sporting contacts with Rhodesia involved

118

Telegram, Hope (Mexico City) to FCO London, August 17, 1968; Telegram, Hope (Mexico City) to FCO London,

August 21, 1968, FCO 25/549, British National Archives. 119

Strack, op. cit., p. 226. 120

Confidential Note on Rhodesia and the Olympic Games, McCluney to Simcock, Apr. 19, 1971, PREM 15/1220. British

National Archives. 121

“Rhodesia Invited to Olympics,” The Guardian, March 30, 1971. 122

123

“Bonn Ponders Olympic Ban on Rhodesians,” The Times (London), April 2, 1971. 124

“Bonn Unsure on Invite to Rhodesia,” Morning Star, Apr. 2, 1971. 125

126

127

Telegram, Douglas-Home to Washington, DC Embassy, April 5, 1971, FCO 36/981, British National Archives. 128

Confidential Note on Rhodesia and the Olympic Games, McCluney to Simcock, Apr. 19, 1971, PREM 15/1220. British

National Archives. 129

Telegram, Hennings (Salisbury) to FCO London, December 6, 1967, FCO 25/549, British National Archives. 130

Ibid. 131

Memorandum, Mansfield to Goring-Morris, Apr. 29, 1971, FCO 26/981, British National Archives.

“different considerations” than South Africa since sport was multiracial.132

Not everyone in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office agreed with Heath’s changed direction

on Rhodesian participation. First, Britain had always been faithful to West German requests to bar East

German teams from British soil, at least until a change of restrictions in 1970 by the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO).133

Surely, several officials noted, West Germany should return the favor.

Second, it was not at all clear initially that Britain could accept the Luxembourg agreement, since it

required an illegal, rebellious regime to use the colonial flag and anthem. In 1968, the British

government had scoffed at Mexico’s suggestion that Rhodesia comply with the Tokyo conditions, since

the Rhodesians still recognized Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state.134

This changed in late 1969

when Rhodesia became a Republic, adopting a new flag and anthem.135

The West German organizers,

like the Mexico City organizers before them, had hoped the British would object to the Luxembourg

Agreement so that the West German government would not have to make the decision about whether it

could allow a Rhodesian team into the country. The British refused to take the bait: the West Germans,

one diplomat wrote, “are trying to put the onus on us and would then no doubt say that we had told

them that the Rhodesians should not be allowed to participate.”136

The British lamented that the West

Germans were not as good at administrative delay as the Mexico City organizers had been.137

By May

1972, it was clear that the British had accepted the Luxembourg agreement; since Rhodesian

independence was illegal, after all, use of the Southern Rhodesian colonial flag and anthem was the

correct use.138

The West German Foreign Ministry and the Munich Games organizing committee continually

attempted to shift responsibility away from West Germany to the IOC instead.139

West Germany did

prevent a Rhodesian athletics team from touring the country in 1971, even though the team would have

been the first multiracial team from Southern Africa ever to tour Europe.140

Artwell Mandaza,

however, slipped past West German customs officials by traveling on a temporary British passport; in a

100-meter event in Cologne, he set an unofficial world record.141

British officials did not protest

Mandaza’s presence. More importantly, the West German Foreign ministry was keen to avoid any

controversy that would draw blame from the IOC, such as performing “legalistic tricks with Olympic

passports,” a decision that would have to be made by the full German cabinet.142

A number of other

landmines from 1968 were avoided in 1972: by choosing the Portuguese national airline TAP instead of

the Belgian airline Sabena, the Rhodesian team would be flying through Portugal, a country that had

relations with both Rhodesia and West Germany. West Germany would have no basis to challenge the

landing credentials of the plane or attempt to seize it in compliance with their informal sanctions.143

According to the British Embassy in Bonn, the West Germans were hopelessly divided. The

foreign minister and the minister for overseas aid were concerned about the image of West Germany in

Sub-Saharan Africa and sought to prevent a boycott at all costs.144

The minister of the interior,

however, supported the admission of Rhodesia to the Games.145

The foreign minister personally

132

Letter, P.R.A. Mansfield to Fingland, Feb. 9, 1971, FCO 36/981, British National Archives. 133

Letter, D.A.S. Gladstone to A.K. Mason, March 27, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 134

Letter, G.W. Harding to D.J. Swan, May 3, 1968, FCO 25/549, British National Archives. 135

136

Addendum by Mansfield, June 14, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 137

R.A.C. Byatt to Mansfield and Smedley, June 13, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 138

Ibid. 139

140

Letter, J.D. Campbell to Goring-Morris, July 5, 1971, FCO 36/982, British National Archives. 141

“Visa Ban on Athletes,” The Guardian, June 1, 1971. 142

Letter, Sophia Lambert to A.K. Mason, Feb. 3, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 143

Salisbury Radio, 16:00, March 15, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 144

Telegram, Hibbert to FCO London, July 18, 1972, 36/1296, British National Archives. 145

Ibid. See also, “West German Differ Over Rhodesia and the Olympics,” Bulawayo Chronicle, July 21, 1972, p. 1.

requested that organizing committee president Daume should ask for a new meeting of the IOC to

make a formal decision on Rhodesian participation.146

In the end, the West German government

refused to act absent an IOC directive, despite the prevailing opinion in the British Foreign and

Commonwealth Office that they eventually would.147

The Munich Games organizing committee firmly

placed any responsibility for keeping Rhodesia out of the Games on the West German government.148

In early August, Rhodesian athletes received their Olympic identity cards, allowing them to enter West

Germany without passports.149

Their identity cards were marked “British subjects.” On August 5, the

sailing team arrived in Kiel, and on August 11, the rest of the team arrived in Munich.

The British government was slowly being dragged into a public relations crisis, despite its best

efforts to remain silent. The IOC began to protest that the British government was politically

intervening in the Munich Games. This protest was made extremely effectively by David Cecil, the

Sixth Marquess of Exeter and the Vice-President of the IOC. Lord Exeter, a former Olympic champion

and head of the 1948 London organizing committee, was a prominent Conservative politician and

former MP who protested vigorously to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and to the British

Embassy in Bonn over the British government’s continued pressure on Olympic planners.150

In late

July 1972, British diplomatic efforts to exclude Rhodesia were abandoned entirely. The Foreign

Secretary announced that since Rhodesian athletes would travel on Olympic Certificates of Identity and

not on Rhodesian passports, no violation of Security Council Resolution 253 would take place.151

The Rhodesian Olympic Committee used their most effective propaganda weapon against the

boycott, showing the world that the presence of an Olympic team in Munich did not further the

political ends of a rebellious regime. In late July 1972, Alan David Butler, a charismatic former

Rhodesian Olympian who came in fourth place in yachting at the Rome Games in 1960, made a highly

public appearance before both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in London.152

He was

then the vice-president of the Rhodesian Olympic Committee, and he was due to compete in yachting

in Munich. He was a highly effective and sympathetic figure. Butler had been a liberal United Federal

Party (UFP) member of the Rhodesian Parliament and an opponent of both increased racial segregation

in Rhodesia and the repressive security legislation passed by the Rhodesian government in the early

1960s.153

After squeaking his reelection in 1962, he finally lost his Highlands South seat to the

conservative Rhodesian Front in 1965, the engineer of UDI in November of that year.154

He remained

a steadfast and outspoken advocate against UDI and the state of emergency in Rhodesia under Prime

Minister Ian Smith.155

He told the House of Commons that the Olympic team in Rhodesia was

genuinely multiracial and was worth encouraging.156

The House of Lords debated that day, with

numerous members expressing the opinion that Britain should leave the Munich organizers alone; the

decision was one for West Germany to make.157

On the defensive, Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-

Home assured the members that Britain had not been actively involved in excluding Rhodesia and

146

Telegram, Henderson to Embassies, August 7-9, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 147

148

149

Telegram, Henderson to embassies, Aug. 10, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 150

Letter, J.A.N. Graham to Rhodesian Political Dept., London, July 21, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National Archives. 151

Telegram, Douglas-Home to British Embassy Bonn, July 25, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 152

For more on Butler’s athletic career, see Glen Byrom, op. cit., p. 81. 153

154

155

Brief, Rhodesia Department, for call of Butler to Douglas-Home, July 24, 1972, FCO 36/1296, British National

Archives. 156

Record of call, Butler to Douglas-Home at the House of Commons, 4:30 p.m., July 24, 1972. FCO 36/1297, British

National Archives. 157

House of Lords Debate, July 24, 1972, Vol. 333, No. 110, Col. 1038 to 1040. FCO 36/1296, British National Archives.

would not be in the future.158

Four days later, on his way to the Olympic Games, Butler was killed in a

car accident in Belgium.159

The result was a tremendous outpouring of sympathetic press in Rhodesia,

a new round of recriminations against the British, and even a tribute on the floor of the Rhodesian

Parliament by his longtime political opponents.160

If the options of the British government were

limited before, this episode narrowed them yet further.

The British could no longer stop the boycott momentum. The British Labour Party came out in

favor of excluding Rhodesia, turning the issue partisan.161

On August 3, the Jamaican government

withdrew its Olympic team.162

The next day, the Organization of African Unity called for an African-

wide boycott.163

On August 6, the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, a major lobbying group for

African interests on the IOC, revoked its support of the Luxembourg agreement, surprising the IOC.164

On August 10, the British Embassy in Washington, DC received an urgent communication from the

U.S. Department of State expressing concern about a possible walk-out by African-American athletes

on the U.S. team.165

On August 11, Tanzania threatened to boycott, refusing to accompany the Kenyan

team to Munich.166

British High Commissions in Africa relayed to London further boycott news:

Zambia withdrew, then Swaziland, Sierra Leone, and Ghana.167

And when Olympic heavyweight

Kenya decided to boycott, the stakes suddenly increased; Kenya’s presence would be sorely missed in

the track and field events.168

Ethiopia’s withdrawal would also be painful.

Nigerian participation was the most heavily contested. On August 16, the Daily Times

published a front-page article describing the efforts of the External Affairs minister to pressure the

Nigerian Olympic Committee to boycott.169

At the same time, hope was high for the Nigerian Olympic

team in the press, especially in sprinting, long jump, hurdles, and shot put.170

The Nigerian press was

unanimous, calling for African unity. Former Nigerian Chief Justice Sir Ade Ademola was the only

black African member of the Executive Committee of the IOC and one of Brundage’s closest allies.171

He warned Nigeria not to boycott. The Daily Express retorted that Sir Ademola was too honorable to

involve himself in such a messy political debate.172

Calling the multiracial team a farce and accusing

Britain and Rhodesia of being in conspiracy together, an editorial in the Daily Times stated that the

“only honourable path now is to recall our team immediately.”173

Otherwise, Nigeria would be

“bamboozled into recognizing racist Rhodesia as a political equal in the continent.”174

The New

Nigerian editorialized that the integrated team was not chosen in fair competition and displayed

“calculated racism.”175

“Nigeria’s honour is involved,” wrote the Tribune.176

Civil society

158

Record of call, Butler to Douglas-Home, July 24, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 159

160

161

News Release, Labour Party Information Department, July 26, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 162

Letter, Mansfield to Smedley, Aug. 3, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 163

164

165

Letter, Melhuish (Washington, DC) to Byatt, Aug. 10, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 166

Telegram, Phillips (Dar es Salaam) to Bonn, Aug. 11, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 167

Telegram, Le Tocque (Mbabane) to FCO London, August 19, 1972; Letter, Carter (Accra) to FCO London, August 15,

1972; Telegram, Duncan (Lusaka) to FCO London, August 15, 1972; Telegram Olver (Freetown) to British Embassy Bonn,

August 12, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 168

Telegram, Duff (Nairobi) to FCO London, August 17, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 169

“Nigeria Should Quit Munich Olympics, Arikpo Warns on Rhodesia,” Daily Times, August 16, 1972, p. 1. 170

“Nigeria’s Team in Final Preparations,” Daily Times, August 16, 1972, p. 19. 171

Telegram, East (Lagos) to FCO London, August 14, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 172

“Stuff for the Marines,” Daily Express, reprinted in “What Other Papers Say,” Daily Times, August 18, 1972, p. 3. 173

“Call it off,” Daily Times, August 18, 1972, p. 3. 174

Ibid. 175

“Boycott the Games,” New Nigerian, reprinted in “What Other Papers Say,” Daily Times, August 18, 1972, p. 3. 176

“Nigeria’s Honour is Involved,” Tribune, reprinted in “What Other Papers Say,” Daily Times, August 18, 1972, p. 3.

organizations in Nigeria, including trade unions, expressed solidarity with “their fellow Africans in

Zimbabwe” and appealed to General Yakuba Gowon, the head of state, to order a recall of the Nigerian

team.177

The Nigerian head of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, Abraham Ordia, personally

urged African teams to be faithful to the hard-won Luxembourg agreement, but even he conceded that

he could not stop the boycott.178

The British Embassy in Lagos observed that the split in Nigerian

opinion was “widening.”179

The Supreme Military Council, the acting government of Nigeria,

eventually sided with Ademola against the boycott, noting that Nigeria had pledged to support the

Luxembourg agreement and the Council’s “word shall at all times remain its bond.”180

A similar flurry of activity occurred around the continent. The Youth League of the Tanzanian

African National Union, the ruling party, “called on all progressive youths of the world to boycott if the

racialists are allowed in.”181

The next day, the Tanzanian Foreign Affairs ministry announced that

Tanzania would boycott if a Rhodesian team competed, regardless of the circumstances.182

The

Minister of National Education, who held the sport portfolio, clarified that the Tanzanian team was

ready to depart at any cost, no matter how late, if Rhodesia’s invitation were withdrawn.183

An opinion

piece in the Ghanaian Times encouraged African countries to tell Brundage “to go to hell with his racist

ideas and his apparent disrespect for the black African!”184

The week after Ghana decided to boycott,

the Times reported that the president of the Ghana Olympic Committee would fly to Munich to attend

the IOC debate on Rhodesia and then report back to the team as to whether it should participate.185

The

call to boycott came from Ghana’s head of state himself, Col. Ignatius Acheampong, after the

Organization of African Unity called on its members to boycott.186

The United Nations Sanctions Committee, which monitored Rhodesian sanctions, met on

August 18. Both Britain and West Germany refused to support the efforts of the Soviet bloc and the

African nations to tie Rhodesia’s entry into West Germany to a violation of Security Council

Resolution 253.187

The meeting fizzled, and the UN Sanctions Committee did not act. On August 22,

UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim asked the West German government to prevent a Rhodesian

team from entering lest a violation of Security Council resolutions occur.188

Again the West Germans

deferred to the IOC. Unlike Mexico four years earlier, United Nations opposition to Rhodesian

Olympic participation was a risk the West German government was willing to take.

The IOC began floating compromise proposals, including having the British government give

the Rhodesian team members British passports.189

This set off an extensive debate in the Foreign and

Commonwealth Office about whether the British government should be seen as helping the Rhodesian

team enter West Germany, although technically Rhodesians, as British subjects, could receive British

passports.190

The boycotting Olympic committees had made the non-recognition of Rhodesian

177

“Workers Panel Calls For Boycott of Games,” New Nigerian, August 22, 1972, p. 14. See also, “Recall Team, Gowon

Urged,” Daily Times, August 18, 1972, p. 5. 178

“I Cannot Stop Boycott, Says Ordia,” Daily Times, August 18, 1972, p. 5. 179

Telegram, East (Lagos) to FCO London and British Embassy Bonn, August 17, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National

Archives. 180

Telegram, East (Lagos) to FCO London and British Embassy Bonn, August 18, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National

Archives. See also, “Nigerian Decision on Olympics ‘Shocking’,” Daily News, August 19, 1972, p. 1. 181

“Keep Smith Out of Games,” Daily News, August 10, 1972, p. 5. 182

“Tanzania Pulls Out of Olympics,” Daily News, August 11, 1972, p. 1. 183

“We Are Ready To Go If…,” Daily News, August 11, 1972, p. 10. 184

“To Hell With Avery Brundage,” Ghanaian Times, August 17, 1972, p. 11. 185

“Asare for IOC Talks Today,” Ghanaian Times, August 19, 1972. 186

Ibid. 187

Telegram, Crowe (New York) to FCO London and British Embassy Bonn, August 21, 1972. FCO 36/1297, British

National Archives. 188

“Keep Out Rhodesia, UN Tells Germany,” Daily Times, August 22, 1972, p. 1. 189

Letter, Byatt to Le Quesne, August 21, 1972, FCO 36/1297, British National Archives. 190

Ibid. The British government had in the past given concessionary passports to Rhodesian citizens in the “public

passports central to the boycott debate, but the issue was somewhat artificial.191

The Rhodesian team

members did not need their passports to enter West Germany since they had Olympic identity cards;

furthermore, most of the white athletes had passports of South Africa or Great Britain anyway, and

Mandaza at least still had an unexpired temporary British passport from the year before.192

Again

British abdicated. Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home explicitly stated that Rhodesian athletes had

already arrived in Germany, thus creating no need for the issuance of British passports to the team.193

On August 21, 1972, IOC President Avery Brundage put Rhodesia’s invitation to a vote, in his

last act as president before Lord Michael Killanin of Ireland was elected his successor. With 31 votes

in favor of upholding Rhodesia’s invitation, 36 against, with three abstentions, Brundage had lost, the

only time he had been outvoted in his twenty year presidency.194

As the British Embassy in Bonn noted

shortly afterwards, the aftermath of the Rhodesian expulsion was “surprisingly bitter.”195

Newspapers

around the world condemned the decision as a dangerous precedent for expelling regimes that fell out

of favor.196

The African press, however, was vindicated. [Summarize editorial reports in Daily Times

(Nigeria), New Nigerian, Ghanaian Times, and Daily News (Tanzania).]

Conclusion: Rhodesia and the Human Rights in Sport Movement

[As stated in the introduction, the Rhodesian boycott strengthened the African bloc and held the

alliance between the African bloc and the Soviet bloc on the IOC together. In 1976, confident by the

victories against South Africa and Rhodesia, 33 African and Caribbean Olympic teams walked out of

the Montreal Games over the presence of New Zealand, the most flagrant violator of sporting sanctions

on South Africa, especially in the non-Olympic sport of rugby. In addition, the presence of South

Africa at the Toronto Paralympics led most of the Soviet bloc and developing world to walk out.

Canada was financially hurt by this and struggled to prevent a boycott of the 1978 Commonwealth

Games in Edmonton, Alberta, where half of the participants were expected to be African and Caribbean

nations. Canada’s efforts at lobbying the Commonwealth heads of government led to the drafting of a

soft law document known to history as the Gleneagles Agreement, which led to South Africa’s sporting

isolation in cricket and rugby. The document largely prevented an African boycott of the Edmonton

Games and was an important source for drafting the non-discrimination provisions of the revised

Olympic Charter in 1981.]

interest.” The FCO was understandably reluctant to do this under the circumstances. 191

192

Memo, A.M. Tebboth, July 16, 1971, FCO 36/982, British National Archives (on Mandaza). See also, Novak (2006), op.

cit., p. 1386 n. 48 for a summary of the other known team members. 193

Telegram, Alec Douglas-Home to Prime Minister Edward Heath, August 21, 1972, PREM 15/1220 (1971-72 Sport),

British National Archives. 194

IOC Meeting Minutes, Aug. 23, 1972, IOC Documentation Centre. 195

Telegram, Henderson (Bonn) to FCO London, Aug. 24, 1972. PREM 15/1220 (1971-72 Sport), British National

Archives. 196