Even before the Springboks left on their tour of Britain in late 1969, there was trouble. Only six Northern Transvaal players had been included in the 30-man team and eight were from Western Province, two of them bolters from Stellenbosch. Just a few days before Northerns had beaten Province in the Currie Cup final. Northern knives were out.
In this febrile provincialism, Danie Craven, president of the South African Rugby Board, was the usual suspect. The Matie guru must have had a hand in selection, it was suspected. But it was hard to accuse Craven openly.
He was still respected in world rugby and his influence with the rugby mandarins of the Home Counties kept the tour going ahead in the face of growing opposition in Britain.
The Broederbond, who had long tried to unseat Craven because it considered him “not loyal enough”, at least had two of its own, coach Johan Claassen and captain Dawie de Villiers, on board.
The manager, Corrie Bornman, was not a Broeder, but he was the confidante of Transvaal rugby boss Jannie le Roux, who was.
The management would be ill-equipped to deal with anti-apartheid protest fallout.
In the first match, bad went to worse. The Boks lost to Oxford University. For a team that prided itself on beating the best, it was humiliating to lose to a bunch of students.
On five rugby tours to Britain, between 1906 and 1961, the Springboks lost just once and drew once in 20 Tests. On four of those tours they won all the Tests, including a 44-0 rout of Scotland in 1951; they are known as the “Grand Slam tours”.
The one in 1969/70 would be known as the “Demo Tour” as protesters shared the stage.
Back home, with no TV evidence, white South Africans (for there was no known black support for the tour) relied on their newspapers, and the coverage was slanted. Even the liberal Rand Daily Mail was not innocent.
In a front-page report on the Oxford match, it gloated that the Boks might have lost, but that the protest had flopped.
Only Terry Baron, a reporter for Sapa, attempted to get the protesters’ side of the story, and was excommunicated by the Bok team.
A Bok favourite, Mannetjies Roux, aggravated matters when, during a match in Coventry, he pursued a protester and “bliksemed” him, according to a report. At home he was hailed, but even Brits sympathetic to the Boks were aghast.
Earlier, in classic puritanism, the SABC cancelled live coverage of a match against Combined Services at Aldershot because it fell on Dingaan’s Day, December 16.
The Boks did win 16 of their 26 games, but didn’t win a single Test. They lost to England and Scotland and drew with Wales and Ireland. In another classic, it was a “f*kop”.
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