Human Rights and Sporting Contacts

the long version

Malcolm Templeton gives an account of the development of New Zealand attitudes to South Africa, especially as they came to be dominated by the international struggle against apartheid, and particularly the vexed issue of sporting contacts. He records the positions taken by successive New Zealand governments as international pressure intensified for economic sanctions and sports boycotts against South Africa; and the shifts in public opinion on what had become by 1981 one of the most bitter controversies the country had known.