The United States, Anti-Apartheid Politics, and the Olympic Games ______
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THE STRUGGLE FOR RECONCILIATION: THE UNITED STATES, ANTI-APARTHEID POLITICS, AND THE OLYMPIC GAMES ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Kinesiology ____________________________________ By Tanya Kathleen Jones Thesis Committee Approval: Professor Matthew Llewellyn, Chair Professor John Gleaves, Department of Kinesiology Professor Toby Rider, Department of Kinesiology Summer, 2016 ABSTRACT On April 24, 1968, Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), announced that South Africa would not be permitted to participate in the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. This decision was made due South Africa’s prevailing apartheid policies, which prohibited the creation of racially mixed South African teams, and even outlawed direct international competition against racially mixed teams from other countries. This transformed the Olympic Movement into a battlefield of political agendas and presented a problem for international sport federations such as the IOC that were founded on the fundamental principle that sport should be available to all irrespective of race and ethnicity, gender, religion, or political affiliation. A number of United States organizations, administrators, and private citizens sympathized with IOC president, Avery Brundage and the IOC’s predicament. Some, like Douglas Roby, president of the United States Olympic Committee and a United States representative to the IOC, even pledged their full support for South Africa’s inclusion in the Games by emphasizing his desire to keep politics and sports separate. Like Brundage, Roby argued that if South Africa were to be expelled based on its governmental policies, the Olympic Movement would be doomed to failure. The official decision in 1968 to expel South Africa from the Games would intertwine South African politics and the Olympic Games for the next 24 years. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. iv Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 A Brief History of South African Racial Discord ................................................. 3 Apartheid and the Olympic Games ....................................................................... 5 2. THE RISE OF THE NATIONAL PARTY, APARTHEID POLITICS, AND THE DISCRIMINATORY REALITIES OF SOUTH AFRICAN SPORT ......... 10 Early Attitudes Towards the Issue of South African Apartheid ........................... 16 Avery Brundage: Early Attitudes Towards Apartheid and the SAN-ROC .......... 26 Early American Attitudes Towards Apartheid, South African Sport, and South Africa’s Exclusion from the 1964 Tokyo City Olympics ............... 31 3. RISE OF THE UNITED STATES ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT AND THE 1968 OLYMPIC GAMES ............................................................................ 38 Early Rise of United States Anti-Apartheid Movement ....................................... 38 The Rise of the United States Anti-Apartheid Movement .................................... 41 The 1967 IOC Tour to South Africa ..................................................................... 44 The Growing Tension within the United States as the Mexico City Games Draw Near ........................................................................................................ 48 United States Response to South Africa’s Welcome Back into the Olympic Movement ........................................................................................................ 53 Brundage's 1968 Announcement and United States Response of South Africa’s Exclusion from the Olympic Games ................................................................ 57 Douglas Roby’s Attitudes Towards Apartheid and South African Sport ............. 59 4. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 72 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my mother, Gracie, my father, Larry, my brother Chris, my sisters Kristin and Michelle, my nieces Mariah, Natalie, and Mikayla, my boyfriend Philip, and my friends Julia, Melissa, Carlie, Andrea, and Paulina, for all the support they have given me over the process of writing this thesis. I would also like to give extreme thanks to my advisors Dr. Matthew Llewellyn, Dr. John Gleaves, and Dr. Toby Rider, for all the time they have spent reading this thesis. They have shaped my life tremendously. I could not have done it without them. It is by the grace of God and the support of my family, friends, and academic advisors, that I could complete this academic journey. iv 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION On April 24, 1968, Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), announced that South Africa would not be permitted to participate in the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. This decision was made, Brundage explained, due to the “explosive conditions throughout the world and the ugly demonstrations, rioting, and other violent happenings in many different countries during the last sixty days, there was actual danger if a South African team appeared at the Game.”1 South Africa’s prevailing apartheid policies, transformed the Olympic Movement into a battlefield of political agendas, and caused collaboration amongst newly formed African nations to threaten to boycott the 1968 Olympic Games in protest. South Africa’s discriminatory statutes prohibited the creation of racially mixed South African teams, and even outlawed direct international competition against racially mixed teams from other countries.2 This presented a problem for the IOC, an organization founded on the idealistic principle that sport should be available to all irrespective of race and ethnicity, gender, religion, or political affiliation. Under Avery Brundage’s leadership, the IOC had long appeared conflicted with which course of action to take. Expelling South Africa would cause the IOC to make a decision based on political affiliation.3 On the other hand, allowing South Africa to participate in the Olympic Games would violate the fourth fundamental principle in the 2 Olympic Charter that identified the practice of sport as “a human right.”4 Privately, Brundage opposed the decision to exclude South Africa from the Olympic Movement. Throughout his administrative career, Brundage regularly displayed a sympathetic attitude towards Pretoria and the ruling National Party government. A successful Chicago contractor and property investor, Brundage was, in the words of historian Maynard Brichford, “a hundred-and-ten-per-cent American and an old-fashioned Republican.”5 Brundage was often called a disciple of Pierre de Coubertin, therefore believing that no matter what, “the Games must go on.”6 He remained wedded to the idealistic belief that the IOC “must not become involved in political issues, nor permit the Olympic Games to be used as a tool or as a weapon for extraneous causes.”7 Thus, Brundage rationalized his opposition towards efforts to expel South Africa, insisting that to do so would drag the Olympic Movement into political warfare. Like Brundage, Douglas F. Roby, president of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and a long-serving United States representative to the IOC, had long expressed his support for South Africa’s continued participation in the Olympic Games. Roby shared close ties with South Africa, cultivating personal friendships with the white sporting administrators that governed South African sport. Roby regularly expressed his sympathy to Reginald Honey, president of the South Africa National Olympic Committee and a South African representative to the IOC, for the dilemma that South Africa had found itself in. Despite Roby and Brundage’s public and private support, an emerging anti- apartheid movement in the United States began angrily expressing its aversion toward Pretoria’s policies of systematic oppression and discrimination, and pressured the IOC to 3 exclude South Africa from the Olympic Movement. This thesis plans to explore the polarized attitudes of United States citizens, anti-apartheid lobby groups, sporting officials and athletes on the subject of South African apartheid in the years leading up to the 1968 Mexico City Games. Coinciding with the Civil Rights Movement, a growing chorus of African-American, liberal, political, and religious organizations joined voices in vocally expressing opposition against South Africa’s continued membership in international Olympic competition. Others, such as Douglas Roby and Avery Brundage expressed a far more sympathetic position. As private correspondences will reveal, Roby and Brundage worked behind the scenes to silence anti-apartheid opposition and preserve South Africa’s status within the Olympic Movement. A Brief History of South African Racial Discord South Africa’s history has been intertwined with racism and segregation since the first Dutch settlers led by Jan Van Riebeeck, merchant from the Dutch East India Company (VOC), came to the area in the 1652.8 Throughout history, Europeans have viewed colonialism