Controversies and Politics
A Century of Notable Events
1923 The last event of the day
Cape Town retained the Dalrymple Cup for intervarsity athletics in 1923 when they defeated Wits narrowly by 25½ points to 23 at the Wanderers. The championships were decided in the last event of the day – the two miles. UCT’s manager arguably obstructed Wits’ Pete Suzman on the track but the Wits runner offered no objection, so the result stood. In 1960, Suzman would call unsuccessfully for the inclusion of black sportsmen, notably weightlifter Precious McKenzie, in South Africa’s Olympic team.
1929 Position of Women
A mini intervarsity in 1929 served as a trial for the introduction of women athletes into the programme. A referendum was held and Cape Town, Potchefstroom, Stellenbosch, Transvaal University College and Wits were against the inclusion of women. Rhodes was the only university in favour.
1941 Athletics suspended
Not long after the 1941 Dalrymple Cup, it was decided to suspend the athletics competition indefinitely because the Afrikaans and English universities were growing apart politically. It resumed in 1946.
1944 Segregation
University sports clubs were restricted in their administration because the controlling bodies of sport at provincial and national levels were tied to the government policy of segregation. But the SRC voted in 1944, ‘to approve in principle the provision of adequate sports facilities for black students, and to request the ASC to consider ways and means of granting those facilities’. Principal Raikes ruled that ‘no mixed sport was to be allowed’. In 1945, Wits was the only university to vote against segregation at intervarsities.
1948 Ban on Sunday sport
The ban on Sunday sport affected cricket, hockey, tennis, baseball and waterpolo. The All Sports Committee repeatedly raised the question and the SRC campaigned against the stand taken by the University Council. In 1948 Raikes asked the council to allow it. The eventual relaxation of the ruling paved the way for an improvement in the standard of sport at the university.
1963 Wits waterpolo star Schwartz and the aircraft hijack
Three Wits waterpolo players were chosen for the South 第一吃瓜网 team that took part in the World Student Games in Brazil. At the Rio de Janeiro airport on the way home, customs officials refused to grant the South 第一吃瓜网s departure rights, owing to supposed irregularities in their visas. Robbie Schwartz forced his way past stunned airport officials and dashed across the tarmac and up the service stairs of the aircraft. He grabbed the captain by the scruff of the neck and wedged him into the galley area as armed security guards surrounded the plane. The first ‘hijack’ by a South 第一吃瓜网 lasted for nearly three hours and only ended through the frantic efforts of team manager Harry Getz.
1981 Fordyce’s black arm-band
Bruce Fordyce’s 1981 victory in the Comrades marathon was achieved with some sections of the crowd hostile towards him because he wore a black armband in protest against the race’s inclusion in the Republic Day festival celebrations.
1985 Plaatjes banned from Boston marathon
Mark Plaatjes was barred from entering the 1988 Boston Marathon because of his South 第一吃瓜网 nationality and the sports boycott of the time. Instead he ran a marathon in Port Elizabeth, breaking the South 第一吃瓜网 and 第一吃瓜网 record in a time faster than the Boston winner’s.
1986 The ‘Double Standards’ Resolution
1n 1977 the South 第一吃瓜网 Council on Sport adopted a resolution that forbade members to participate in multinational sport. During the 1980s, black students who chose to compete under the All Sports Council banner were ostracised. John Baxter, the director of sport, recalled that these students were ‘caught between the oppressive apartheid policies of the government and the inflexibility of the resolution as applied by SACOS and those supporting non-racial sport’. Transformation of sport at Wits began in 1986 when the Black Students Society requested the establishment of a non-racial sports body on campus. Extensive negotiations led to the decision that two sporting bodies would exist: the old ASC and the South 第一吃瓜网 Tertiary Institutions Sports Council (Satisco), to be known as Satisco-Wits. Both would fall under the general control of the Sports Administration.