Items

• US Negroes asked to boycott Games

  [Excerpt]: "The possibility of a boycott of the United States Olympic team next year by American Negro athletes has become more likely with statements by the sprinters, Tommie Smith and Lee Evans, that Negro leaders have asked them not to participate in the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City. In San Jose, California, Smith, who holds seven world records, said: "It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro." ... Denis Brutus, the president of the South African Non-Racial Open Committee, told me last night: "It seems likely that the Negro political leaders in the United States are seriously considerin the boycott, and I do know that one document on the question of racial intolerance in sport--which was drawn up by the American baseball player Jackie Robinson--was also signed by Stokely Carmichael." ..."
• These tarnished Olympics

  [Excerpt]: "If anyone does not believe the repercussions of apartheid stretch far and wide, they should be present at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where it has tarnished the Games as they have never been before. One only had to see last week a departing team from Afria waiting with their baggage for transport to the airport...Everywhere was a feeling of sadness and futility... This was a seminar organised by the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid and held in Havana, attended by 200 delegates including the crucial nucleus of leading African sports officials and SAN-ROC. It was at this stage that Dennis Brutus, the president of SAN-ROC, a professor of English in the African Studies Department at the Northwest University of Illinois, threw his own acknowledged ability and experience and that of SAN-ROC unequivocally behind the African protest. Brutus, an exiled coloured South African, who was imprisoned in South Africa as a result of his views on apartheid, was portrayed in oarts of the British and foreign Press last week as a somewhat sinister figure. Yet, it is he who turned to de Broglio in Havana to say: 'If they (the African countries) are prepared to go through all this--which is much more than we would ever ask--who are we to quarrel? We're with them.'"
• S Africa expelled from Olympics

  [Excerpt]: "South Africa were expelled from the Olympic movement on the best day of the International Olympic Committee congress here today. The voting was 35 for withdrawing recognition to 28 against, with three absentions... South Africa are thought to be the first country to suffer expulsio, though records here are not complete. The debate today lasted four hours. The case against South Africa was put by Abram Ordia (Nigeria) and Jean-Claude Ganga (Congo), representing the 39 countries of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa. The case for South Africa was put by Mr. Frank Braun, president of the South African National Olympic Committee... The president of Sanroc, Mr. Denis Brutus, making a flying visit to Amsterdam in the middle of his struggle against the cricket tour of England, welcome the decision and thought the Cricket Council would be bound to be affected..."
• Mr Hain aims for Springboks' Achilles heel

  [Excerpt]: "SUPPORT has snowballed beyond our wildest dreams,' says Peter hain, 19-year-old chairman of the Stop the Seventy Tour Committee formed recently to co-ordinate opposition, to next year's visit to Britain of the South African cricket team but now in the thick of the furore over the current Springbok rugger tour... It was through Denis Brutus, black South African president of SANROC (the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) that Hain met 22-year old Hugh Geach, a Reading University student in Soil Science who is now honorary secretary of STST. Brutus is one of the few activists now hounding the Springboks with first-hand knowledge of het grim realities of Apartheid..."
• Inside track

  [Full text]: "A REPORT from South Africa yesterday that a new non-white sports committee has been formed to work together with the existing white South African Olympic and National Games Association (SAONGA) towards the country's fight for re-entry to the Olympics, was received with surprise and disappointment by anti-apartheid leaders in Britain. Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-racial Open Comittee for Olympic Sports (SANROC) characterised the move as a blow to black South Africans who want multi-racial sport. There are two black sports groups in South Africa--those who agree with SAONGA president Frank Braun's proposals for organised separate black and white sports activities; and those who will not negotiate on any basis other than multi-racial sport. 'I am afraid,' says Brutus, 'that this means that the first group have agreed to co-operate with Mr Braun on what amounts to an apartheid platform.' Indeed, two members of the black group seeking multi-racial sport have been interrogated by special branch officers, adds Brutus. SANROC are retaliating by lifting their own restrictions on protests against individual athletes and officials as opposed to white South African teams."
• Countries wait to see if they can compete

  [Excerpt]: "From the Jamaican headquarters this morning came a voice of apparent calm which epitomized all the doubts still surrounding those few countries who do not yet know if their participation in these Olympic Games is going to be stopped in full stride...That visit does not seem to disturb the boycott organizers at all compared with the way they reacted here aginst New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa. Indeed, Abraham Ordia of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, has already left Montreal and today Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, was returning to Chicago where he is a university lecturer. Obviously, both felt there was no point in trying to protest about the enormous presence here of Uncle Sam..."
• Competitors' dreams destroyed by their governments

  [Excerpt]: "As the Olympic Games began today with the modern pentathlon participants climbing into their saddles at 8 am, more than one tenth of the competitors felt close to tears. They were the members of African countries whose governments, rather than sports federations, have forced them to withdraw, after having arrived here, in protest over New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa. They were the young men and women, many of whom had never travelled abroad before, who were left, wandering disconsolately, in the Olympic village yesterday while the Queen formally opened the games in the glittering bowl of a stadium which they will now never enter... "Why couldn't they have put off the New Zealand rugby tour until after the Games were over?" [Michael Boit] asked. He must have known, in his heart, that such a dramatic move was never contemplated either by the New Zealand or South African rugby authorities. He must have known, too, that the ment who engineered this African boycott, Jean-Claude Ganga, Abraham Ordia, and Denis Brutus, were never seekign a compromise. They wanted, at whatever price, to use the Olympics as a publicity stage against the apartheid policies of South Africa..."
• Boycott threat to Games

  [Full Text]: "A mass boycott of the British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh next July has been threatened by the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa and the South African Non-Racial Committee for Olympic Sport if the South African cricket tour of England is not called off. The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa which includes 36 countries in its membership has cabled the British Government stating that African countries will withdraw from the Edinburgh games in protest at what they regard as racism in cricket. Mr. Denis Brutus, the chairman of Sanroc, said in London last night: "At a recent meeting of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa which was held in Cairo our representatives had never seen such militancy expressed on the question of the visit of the South African cricketers. We in Sanroc are now proposing to cable all member countries of the Commonwealth Games Federation asking them to boycott the games. The latest development in the controversy over the cricket tour indicates to us that many very prominent people in Britain are giving their support to the M.C.C. We feel so strongly about this blatant racism that we regretfully have to fight back," he said. The chairman of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa is Mr. Abraham Ordia, a member of the Nigerian National Olympic Committee and the secretary is Mr. Jean-Claude Ganga from Brazzaville. It was, at first, the Kenyan Minister for Sport who suggested that no sportsman from his country would run in Edinburgh against anyone who had competed in the all-white South African games last year. He has been given the full support of black Africa and it is felt that Asian and West Indian members of the Commonwealth will soon follow suit. Mr. Brutus said: "I hope that even at this late date it is not too late for a change of mind in Britain. But the most recent developments suggest the South Africans will still play here with far-reaching effects upon international sport."
• Apartheid's arch-enemy wins right of asylum

  New York writer Trevor Fishlock reports: "Dennis Brutus, a leading opponent of apartheid who headed the campaign to have South Africa expelled from the Olympic Games, has won his fight against deportation from the United States. A judge in Chicago granted him political asylum..."
• Apartheid and Sport: The Logic of Denis Howell's Approach

  "If the Minister for Sport, Mr. Denis Howell, has his way we will be deprived next year of the opportunity of seeing the South African cricket team in action. Choosing his words with care, Mr. Howell said in a television interview at the week-end: 'I personally don't think the South African team should come. I Have no time for sport based on racial considerations. Their sport certainly is, and the selection of their team certainly is." ...By this I mean far more than the cancellation of the New Zealand rugby tour in 1964, or the fiasco over the MCC tour last year. I could take the story back as far as 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation excluded from membership the all-white official South African Table-Tennis Association in favour of an unofficial group whose rules allowed ping-pong across the colour line. But it is best to begin with 1962, when the "South African non-racial Open Committee for Olympic Sports"--Sanroc--was formed. This group worked originally inside the Republic but it has since exiled itself to London since its president, Denis Brutus, left his home country in 1966 after a 22-month term served mostly on Robben Island..."
• 19 nations join in Olympics protest

  [Full Text]: "The number of countries which have withdrawn from the Olympic Games in protest at the New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa increased to 19 yesterday with the news that the team of Mali has been instructed to return home by their Minister of Sport. Thirteen countries have formally notified the International Committee of their withdrawal. They are Congo, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Cameroon, Guyana, Niger, Togo, Uganda and Swaziland. Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Upper Volta have verbally informed the IOC that they will not be taking part, and news was received yesterday from Cairo that Egypt is also pulling out. Before the news was received of Mali's marching orders, 303 competitors and 60 officials were listed as leaving the Olympics. This still left 6,934 competitors and 2,825 officials from 100 countries taking part with, in most cases, undiminished enthusiasm. Two of the chief boycott organizers have already left the battlefield. Abraham Ordia, of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, has flown home to Nigeria, and Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-racial Olympic Committee, has left the Queen Elizabeth hotel, where his bemused elderly victims in the IOC are also housed, to return to his university in Chicago. Both men have obviously decided to leave the possibility of further withdrawals in the hands of the remaining uncommitted Caribbean, French-speaking African and Arab governments."