5AA Australia: Across The Ditch – John Key’s Offence Goes Global

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5AA Australia: Across The Ditch with Peter Godfrey and Selwyn Manning.

HART-Protesters-Rugby Park Hamilton - 1981

It seems New Zealand’s prime minister John Key has lost his Midas touch. On Sunday he spied a golden opportunity to bask in the international glory of attending Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in Pretoria.

John Key decided to shoulder-tap a couple good ole boys, cronies, to accompany him in his official delegation. So, Don McKinnon, Jim Bolger, were in, and Pita Sharples and David Cunliffe were added onto the official New Zealand delegation.

By Sunday evening John Key was facing the full blast of New Zealanders who took offense at the inclusion of Jim Bolger (a former National Party prime minister and cabinet minister in the Robert Muldoon government); and Don McKinnon (recently made a Sir, the former Commonwealth secretary general, former National Party deputy prime minister and former senior politician in the Robert Muldoon government).

What offended thousands of New Zealanders was Bolger and McKinnon both supported Muldoon’s decision to allow the 1981 Springbok Rugby tour of New Zealand to take place. Muldoon had provided New Zealand’s Police force with long handled attack batons to absolutely deal to those protesting against South Africa’s then Apartheid regime.

It was the closest New Zealand came to civil war in the 20th Century. Our towns and cities were demarcated by batons and barbed wire. Men, women, children, the elderly were struck down in their thousands by baton weilding police. The game against the Springboks at Rugby Park in Hamilton was called off after protesters stormed onto the field and Police received radio calls from a pilot threatening to crash his aircraft into the grandstands if the game commenced.

At the time Nelson Mandela was still a prisoner on Robben Island. When he and his fellow political prisoners heard that Kiwi protestors had caused the game to be cancelled, Mandela said it was like the sun began to shine, and all the prisoners began to rattle the bars of their cell doors.

Back in Hamilton, Muldoon’s Police pulverised the protesters then stood back while an angry crowd of Rugby supporters stormed through the streets of the Waikato city hunting down protestors who sought refuge in ‘safe houses’.

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Weeks later the third and final test match was held at Eden Park in Auckland. Again the city was divided not only by those supporting the tour and those against it, but by barbed wire, containers lined the streets, and riot police divided into squads and began to ambush protesters and beat the living daylights out of them. Another pilot Marx Jones flew his Cessna aircraft repeatedly between the grandstands of Eden Park, dropping flour bombs onto the field, one hitting All Black, Gary Knight.

By the end of the tour New Zealand’s domesticity was in ruins. Hundreds were seriously injured, a woman had a miscarriage after being beaten by Police, and our courts were filled with protesters who had been charged and convicted for resisting Muldoon’s Police batons.

McKinnon and Bolger justified themselves at the time politically. They supported their leader Muldoon. Years later, after Nelson Mandela was freed, and people like Steve Biko were long dead, Jim Bolger and Don McKinnon softened their stance against those who sought freedom for South Africa’s indigenous peoples.

For many though, what was left were scars that could not heal. Look at the black and white photo above. There you will see a young John Minto, an even younger Simon Minto (probably the most peaceful person I have ever met), and Kevin Hague (later to become a highly respected Green Party MP). They were joined by others, a priest, young women, older women, Geoff Chapple (who wrote the book: The Tour). They stood there, bravely linking arms, terrified, realising that they were in the middle of a cauldron of hate. After the Police escorted them off the field, the crowd was let loose to deal to them all.

Rugby supporters hunted them down, invaded ‘safe houses’ and attacked them. John Minto’s face still displays the scars from that day’s injuries.

And again, this week, John Key resurrected the deep seated feelings of anger and alienation by selecting Bolger and McKinnon (two people who politically stood by while all this happened) to accompany him to South Africa to pay honour to a man Bolger once called a terrorist.

Anti-Apartheid leaders were not asked to join the official party. Hone Harawira, who was as a young man on the front lines of the Anti-Apartheid movement, travelled alone to South Africa in an attempt to attend Nelson Mandela’s memorial.

For all this, New Zealand’s prime minister has been criticised for his decision to exclude rather than include, not only in New Zealand (see John Armstrong’s sage message to Key here), but also in the USA and elsewhere, including in the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.

6 COMMENTS

  1. This article made me cry. Not for the death of Nelson Mandela, he was, after all, oldish. No I finally cried for the woman who suffered a miscarriage because of the police beating. Today that child would be a thirty two year old human, a worker, a carer, a voter, who knows? My point is, at the time I remember hearing the news on the radio. I was standing in the kitchen, scrubbing a carrot. Actually, I can’t remember, whether I cried or not, but I think I did, until someone came in and said that well, there was nothing could be done about it. So I stifled my anger, which a lot of people must have done to a certain extent, and today it broke free again and I cried for the lady who was brutalised and dehumanised. I also cried a little just from fear, living in a police state. My rant. Thank you for allowing comments.

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