“If Britain Wants War on Africa, She Will Have It”: African Reprisals to the 1974 British Lions Rugby Tour of South Africa

Abstract

The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa announced that all independent African nations would boycott all British sport if the British Lions rugby team toured South Africa in 1974. Despite condemnation from segments of the British public, entreaties from government ministers, and African threats, the rugby tour went ahead. This article adds to a large body of scholarship on the struggle against apartheid in sport, within which the 1974 Lions tour has received little attention, and focuses on the transnational efforts to stop that tour led by Kenya and independent Africa. Calls for reprisals across the continent were not unanimous, and the disparity of African reactions challenges perceptions of the “Africa bloc” as a monolith guaranteed to maintain a united front on anti-apartheid sport activity. Reactions to the tour anticipated events two years later at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and this event became a test case for strategies designed to isolate South Africa through punitive actions against third-party nations that broke ranks.

Ncedile Saule’s Umlimandlela (at the cross-roads) as a witness to colonial and apartheid lexicology in South Africa

“…When the history of ideas is re-written in the next century, the African renaissance in the second half of this century is certain to receive a major share. There is unique enthusiasm and strength in the continent to contribute to an alternative world culture; as seen, for example, in the total boycott of the greatest show of sport and culture in August 1976 by the African states (Sikes, 2021). Many artists from Africa were at the forefront of this movement because imagination runs ahead of reality.…”

“…Many artists from Africa were at the forefront of this movement because imagination runs ahead of reality. Not only have they eschewed the harrowing memories of their colonial education, Anglo-Saxon puritanism and made-in-London aesthetics with general Shakespeare as the standard bearer for the crucifixion of native art, but they have skillfully and imaginatively used the very rod their colonial teachers wielded to discipline the African mind and curb African artistic thought (Sikes, 2021;Healy, 2022). Saule's literary works and in particular, Umlimandlela are not exempted from such endeavors.…”