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ABSTRACT
The announcement by the New Zealand Rugby Football Union in 1927 that no Māori players would be selected for the following year’s All Blacks tour to South Africa, prompted heated debate within New Zealand. While some insisted that the Union should not send a team unless it was fully representative of a country in which Māori and Pākehā apparently enjoyed very harmonious relations, others argued that the exclusion was necessary to protect Māori from the endemic race problems and white prejudice of South Africa. This debate points to a much longer, and more nuanced, history of disputes over sporting contacts with South Africa than has been generally recognised. It also reveals much about New Zealand perceptions of race and racial hierarchies in the inter-war British Empire and the role of certain Māori leaders in shaping and reinforcing these attitudes.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Auckland Star, 31 May 1927, 10; NZRFU, Management Committee Minutes, 28 June 1927.
2 New Zealand Herald (Auckland), 8 Oct 1927, 12. A macron is now used for the word Māori to indicate the correct pronunciation of the vowel. However, it was not used in contemporary sources or for names of entities such as the New Zealand Maori team or Maori Advisory Board.
3 The Press (Christchurch), 12 Oct 1927, 12. See also NZRFU, Management Committee Minutes, 19 Oct 1927.
4 Brief exceptions include Murray and Merrett, Caught Behind; Ryan, “Anthropological Football”; Templeton, Human Rights and Sporting Contacts, 27–30; Thompson, Retreat From Apartheid, 12–18.
5 Allen, “Beating Them at Their Own Game”; Grundlingh, “Playing for Power?”; Ryan, “A Tale of Two Dinners”.
6 The Press, 7 June 1919, 10.
7 Quoted in Van Der Merwe, “Race and South African Rugby,” 163–64.
8 Ibid., 164; Poverty Bay Herald (Gisborne), 5 Nov 1919, 2.
9 Poverty Bay Herald, 10 Sept 1921, 8.
10 New Zealand Herald, 15 Sept 1921, 4; 16 Sept 1921, 6.
11 Daily Telegraph (Napier), 10 Sept 1921, 5; Evening Post (Wellington), 13 May 1922, 9.
12 Poverty Bay Herald, 16 May 1922, 4; NZ Truth (Auckland), 26 Aug 1922, 7; Poverty Bay Herald, 30 April 1925, 6.
13 Richards, Dancing on Our Bones, 11–13; Mulholland, Beneath the Maori Moon, 43.
14 Dominion (Wellington), 10 Sept 1948, 5.
15 The Press, 7 May 1926, 16.
16 Ryan, “A Scheme for the Betterment of the Game among the Maoris,” 183, 191.
17 Evening Post, 17 Aug 1927, 7; New Zealand Herald, 31 Aug 1927, 17.
18 Reeves, The Long White Cloud, 1898, 57; 1924, 62.
19 Ibid.
20 Anderson et al., Tangata Whenua, 318–51.
21 Bennett, “Maori as Honorary Members of the White Tribe,” 34–37.
22 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 155–56; Bennett, “Maori as Honorary Members of the White Tribe,” 38–43.
23 Brookes, “Gender, Work and Fears of a ‘Hybrid Race’,” 503–04.
24 Soutar, Whitiki Whiti E!; Anderson et al., Tangata Whenua, 311–32; Belich, Paradise Reforged, 189–215.
25 Poverty Bay Herald, 22 Aug 1922, 9; Ryan, “A Scheme for the Betterment of the Game among the Maoris,” 187–90.
26 “Maori Conference at Putiki,” 1–2. See also Sissons, “Post-Assimilationist Thought,” 49; Walker, He Tipua, 212–20.
27 Ballantyne, Webs of Empire, 24; Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race, 1–17.
28 See in particular Tregear, The Aryan Maori; Smith, Hawaiki: The Whence of the Maori; Best, The Maori.
29 Atkinson, “The Aryo-Semitic Maori”.
30 Belich, “Myth, Race and Identity in New Zealand,” 16–22; Ballantyne, Webs of Empire, 27–34; Sorrenson, “Polynesian Corpuscles,” 10–11, 15–17; Sorrenson, Maori Origins and Migrations, 29–32.
31 Luker, “The Half-Caste,” 316–17.
32 Broad summaries of newspaper content are derived from PapersPast, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/.
33 New Zealand Herald, 19 May 1926, 16.
34 Auckland Star, 24 Aug 1926, 16.
35 Sorrenson, “Buck, Peter Henry”.
36 For slightly different versions of Buck’s statement, see The Press, 14 Sept 1921, 6; New Zealand Herald, 14 Sept 1921, 8. Among many editorials and reports, see for example, Auckland Star, 15 Sept 1921, 4; The Press, 15 Sept 1921, 6.
37 Sun (Napier), 13 Sept 1921, 7.
38 Te Rangi Hiroa, “The Passing of the Maori,” 369.
39 Ibid., 374.
40 Sorrenson, Na To Hoa Aroha; Buck, Vikings of the Sunrise, 19–26.
41 Templeton, Human Rights and Sporting Contacts, 29.
42 Jordan, “First Impressions,” 42–58; Walvin, “Black Caricature,” 59–74; Lilly, “The Black Africans in Southern Africa,” 42–49; Nederveen Pieterse, White on Black, 102–05.
43 Thompson, Political Mythology of Apartheid, 27, 69–70.
44 Dubow, Scientific Racism, 1; Rich, Hope and Despair, 13–15, 21–32.
45 Sorenson, “Uneasy Bedfellows,” 28–33; Templeton, Human Rights and Sporting Contacts, 5.
46 McIntyre, Dominion of New Zealand, 116–22; Belich, Paradise Reforged, 29–30.
47 Potter, News and the British World, 12–35; Potter, “Webs, Networks and Systems,” 628–29, 638–39.
48 Potter, “Webs, Networks and Systems,” 633.
49 McKinlay, “The New Zealand Metropolitan Press,” 1–2.
50 Ibid., 9.
51 Dubow, Racial Segregation, 4, 15, 30; Worden, Making of Modern South Africa, 73–77; Lubbe, “The Myth of Black Peril,” 109–10.
52 Worden, Making of Modern South Africa, 77; Lubbe, “The Myth of Black Peril,” 109.
53 New Zealand Herald, 27 Oct 1920, 6 See also 30 July 1923, 6; 15 Dec 1925, 10.
54 Evening Star (Dunedin), 16 Jan 1919, 4; Wairarapa Daily Times, 22 April 1922, 4.
55 Evening Post, 25 Oct 1924, 11.
56 New Zealand Herald, 29 Oct 1927, 8.
57 Evening Post, 10 Nov 1927, 13. See also New Zealand Herald, 9 Feb 1923, 6.
58 Evening Post, 10 Dec 1924, 6; New Zealand Herald, 23 March 1925, 10; Grey, The Parliamentarians, 16–17.
59 New Zealand Herald, 9 July 1927, 10.
60 Seekings, “Not a Single White Person,” 379–83.
61 Otago Daily Times, 25 Oct 1923, 8.
62 Keegan, “Gender, Degeneration and Sexual Danger,” 460–63; Lubbe, “The Myth of Black Peril,” 107–13.
63 New Zealand Herald, 28 July 1928, 7; Attwell, Drifting to Destruction; Kearney, Representing Dissension, 7–8.
64 Poverty Bay Herald, 8 June 1927, 12.
65 Auckland Star, 21 Sept 1927, 4; New Zealand Herald, 5 Oct 1927, 14.
66 New Zealand Herald, 6 Oct 1927, 14; 8 Oct 1927, 14.
67 Auckland Star, 21 Sept 1927, 4; Waikato Times, 4 Oct 1927, 6.
68 Brookes, “Gender, Work and Fears of a ‘Hybrid Race’,” 505–06; Graham and Curnow, “Graham, George Samuel”.
69 Brookes, “Gender, Work and Fears of a ‘Hybrid Race’,” 507; New Zealand Herald, 10 Sept 1927, 12.
70 Evening Post, 8 Oct 1927, 8.
71 Auckland Star, 11 Oct 1927, 9.
72 New Zealand Herald, 26 Oct 1927, 8.
73 Poverty Bay Herald, 26 Oct 1927, 3.
74 The Press, 12 Oct 1927, 12.
75 Ibid.
76 Otago Daily Times, 26 Oct 1927; 11.
77 New Zealand Herald, 6 Oct 1927, 14.
78 Auckland Star, 19 Oct 1927, 14 See also 20 Oct 1927, 6.
79 Evening Post, 10 Nov 1927, 13. See also Gisborne Times, 6 Feb 1928, 3.
80 The Sun, 8 Oct 1927, 9.
81 Gisborne Times, 6 Jan 1928, 6.
82 Evening Post, 13 April 1928, 6; 14 April 1928, 11.
83 Auckland Star, 2 July 1928, 8.
84 The Press, 2 July 1928, 10; New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1928, 16.
85 Lyttelton Times, 5 July 1928, 10.
86 The Press, 2 June 1928, 15.
87 Lyttelton Times, 5 July 1928, 10.
88 Burrows, Pathway among Men, 47
89 Williams, Cricket and Race, 25, 33–35; New Zealand Herald, 7 Dec 1933, 10.
90 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Oct 1932, 9.
91 Evening Star (Dunedin), 25 May 1931, 6; 7 April 1933, 5; Daniel Gorman, “Amateurism, Imperialism, Internationalism and the First British Empire Games,” 628.
92 For example, Auckland Star, 22 Feb 1930, 9; Evening Post, 4 Oct 1934, 5; Otago Daily Times, 13 Sept 1935, 8; 9 Nov 1935, 14; Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond, 84–95, 136–55; Sparks, Mind of South Africa, 147–82.
93 The Press, 24 July 1936, 10. For full details of the subsequent debate, see Ryan, “Anthropological Football.”
94 Rotorua Morning Post, 27 July 1936, 4; The Press, 27 July 1936, 10, 13; 28 July 1936, 10.
95 The Press, 14 Sept 1936, 8. It is not known who these tribal representatives were, or which NZRFU officials were present – aside from Dean.
96 Dobson, Doc, 157; The Press, 9 Nov 1936, 17.
97 Sorrenson, “Polynesian Corpuscles,” 10.
98 Evening Post, 28 July 1939, 16.
99 Templeton, Human Rights and Spirting Contacts, 27–30; Thompson, Retreat from Apartheid, 12–18.
100 Templeton, Human Rights and Sporting Contacts, 30–53; Battersby, “New Zealand, Domestic Jurisdiction and Apartheid”; Booth, The Race Game; Nauright, Sport, Culture and Identities; Archer & Bouillon, The South African Game.