CHAPTER 5

A LETTER HOME

Anthony Abrahams was now determined to oppose apartheid in any way he could, and so decided not to return to Australia with his teammates at the end of the tour. Instead, he would hitchhike through East Africa — Zambia, Rhodesia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana — observing, listening, and learning so that forever after he could speak and act with authority. ‘After my journey, I would continue on up to London to try to find work in a law office. Because on tour the Wallabies were only paid 7 rand 50 a day, just about enough for a haircut and some biscuits, my teammate Bob Woods gave me his saved pocket money because he believed in what I was doing and suspected the money would come in handy on my trip. That was kind of Bob, and if he ever reads this, I hope he knows that when our paths cross again, I’ll pay him back with interest, whatever that is!’

Abrahams farewelled his teammates at Jan Smuts Airport. ‘Ironically, considering the way I felt about them, I was standing on the tarmac with a group of South African rugby officials as the Wallabies’ plane taxied down the runway and took off. I was now on my own. Our liaison officer, Jimmy Ward, drove me to my hotel in Johannesburg. On the outskirts of town, there was a collision between a car driven by a well-dressed black man and that of an Afrikaner. The white guy took a jack from his car and was about to smash the black man’s car’s headlights. The pair shaped up to fight, which was a very brave thing for a black to do in that place at that time, when a policeman arrived. Without bothering to hear the facts, he went straight for the black, who, knowing he was on a hiding to nothing, abandoned his car and ran off. That scene summed up South Africa to me.’

In his last days on tour with the Wallabies, Abrahams wrote a letter to the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, and on his hitchhiking trip he posted it from Rhodesia. ‘I didn’t post the letter in South Africa for fear that someone would see the address and open and destroy the letter, so I waited till I was in Rhodesia, where I thought it had a better chance of getting through.’

The letter, headlined ‘South Africa and Sport’, was published in the Herald on 8 October 1969.

Sir, The issue as to whether Australian sporting teams should compete against those of the Republic of South Africa has been raised on various occasions in your newspaper. As a member of the Australian rugby union side which has just completed a tour of the Republic, the opportunity has been afforded me to experience first-hand the problems involved in this issue.

It seemed to me before departing from Australia, and it seems to me now, that Australian sporting bodies have failed to come to terms with the implications to their continuing to compete against South Africa under the present circumstances.

The general attitude seems to be that their sole concern is with a sporting activity; that politics should not be introduced into sport; that their own house is in order and that they should not concern themselves with what is essentially South Africa’s business. What these attitudes add up to is that the importance of the sporting activity transcends any ‘subsidiary’ issues.

In actuality, it is difficult to argue that sporting competition between South Africa and another nation exists in glorious isolation. It is known, or should be known, by all that teams competing against South Africa in South Africa compete against all-white teams in front of segregated audiences.

In a number of cases on the rugby tour, the non-white representation in the audiences was nominal. In one case there was no representation at all. In addition, a rugby player — or any other sportsman — is not selected to represent South Africa on merit alone. He must also be white. Should a non-white player happen, despite inferior opportunities, to warrant selection, he would not be included under almost any circumstances.

South Africa has thus made its political attitude manifest in the sporting sphere. Sporting teams of other nations competing on these terms are forced to, at least, tolerate or accept this fact. This obviously raises an important ethical issue, which other nations have been quicker to recognise than ourselves.

It also involves practical considerations. The fact that politics is involved in sport in South Africa allows a political construction to be placed on the presence of a national sporting team in the Republic. Many individuals in South Africa do seem to infer from the sporting team’s presence some sort of Australian acceptance of apartheid. Doubtless this interpretation is made elsewhere.

Whether Australian sporting bodies wish to accept the implications of current competition with South Africa is a matter that they and Australians generally must decide. But they cannot pretend that such implications do not exist.

‘My principle emotion in writing the letter,’ says Abrahams today, ‘was anger at what we’d seen and that nothing was being done about it. My words received pride of place on the Herald’s letters page, and on the same day its rival broadsheet, The Australian, ran on its front page a story — titled “Police Trail Wallaby” — reporting that I had been followed by security police while on tour. I found out about the letter and the article when I rang my parents from a post office in Zambia, and I went out the front and punched my fist into my hand, saying, “Right … It’s on! Apartheid in South Africa is now an issue in Australia!”’

Abrahams’ letter sparked a flurry of correspondence to the Herald’s editor for some days. Many agreed with the outspoken Wallaby, many did not.

As it happened, Abrahams’ African hitchhiking adventure was ended prematurely after three months by a war that made it impossible for him to travel in the northern frontier district of Kenya. He hastened to Nairobi and then London, where he lived for a year, playing rugby for Rosslyn Park club, then relocated to Paris, where he was employed by law firm Clifford Chance and pulled on his rugby boots for Paris’s Racing first-division side. Abrahams would remain in Paris for 25 years, practising business and human-rights law.

As we will see, however, he made some notable visits home to Australia to further the anti-apartheid cause that he now championed.