The Meeting Place - A New Zealand History Blog

The rugby rivalry between New Zealand’s All Blacks and South Africa’s Springboks became part of each country’s sporting legend as a result of the Springbok tours of New Zealand in 1921, 1937 and 1956, and the All Black tours of South Africa in 1928 and 1949. The racism of white South Africans impacted on this sporting relationship, commencing with South African shock at having to play a Maori team in 1921. Their refusal to play the New Zealand Maori team on their 1937 tour prompted calls from Te Arawa and other iwi for a boycott. South Africa’s introduction of apartheid policies in 1948 resulted in the New Zealand Rugby Union agreeing to South African demands to exclude Maori players from All Black tours of South Africa. This led to huge protests against the 1960 All Black tour under the slogan ‘No Maoris, No Tour’. But despite a petition signed by 160,000 people, the government refused to intervene. South Africa offered to reclassify Maori players as ‘honorary whites’ for later tour

As the New Zealand Wars dragged on in the late 1860s, the conflicts took on a harsher and more racially tinged edge. With British imperial troops progressively withdrawn from New Zealand after 1865, colonial troops and their Maori allies assumed sole responsibility for pursuing the war instead. In July 1868 the Wellington Independent newspaper called for no mercy to be shown Maori ‘rebels’ (see The Treaty of Waitangi Companion , p. 145). Its call for ‘rebels’ to be ‘slain without scruple’ was repeated in equally shocking terms after colonial troops were routed at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu in September 1868.  Death of Major von Tempsky at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, 7 September 1868, C-033-006, ATL   In a lengthy editorial that reflected on the deaths of Gustavus von Tempsky and others at the hands of Titokowaru’s force, the newspaper called for the ‘extermination’ of Taranaki Maori, declaring that:     There is no use blinking the ugly facts of the case. There are a certain numb