ISTANBUL

In March 1960, South African police gunned down 69 Black people and wounded 180 others in Sharpeville, a township south of Johannesburg, in one of the worst massacres of the apartheid era.

The mass killing of people protesting apartheid sparked global outcry and triggered a chain of events that eventually led to a sports boycott of South Africa, including a ban from the Olympics.

Today, as Israel continues its deadly war on Gaza and oppressive policies in Palestinian territories – described by many rights groups and international organizations as an apartheid – calls are growing for Israel to be treated just like apartheid-era South Africa.

With the 2024 Paris Olympics just over two months away, activists, politicians and athletes alike are demanding Israel’s expulsion from the world’s biggest sporting event.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is running a “#BanIsrael” campaign on social media, calling for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to bar Israel “until it ends its crimes against Palestinians and recognizes our UN-stipulated rights.”  

‘Deny Israel the opportunity to use sports for self-glorification’

Recognized by the IOC in 1952, Israel would be making its 18th appearance at the Paris Olympics, scheduled to run from July 24 to August 11.

Rob Nixon, a South African author and professor at Princeton University, sees a lot of similarities between Israel’s actions today and South Africa’s apartheid era, which ran from the late 1940s to early 1990s.

South Africa kept trying to present itself as a normal nation and “a bastion of civilization against barbarism,” just as Israel is doing now, he said.

Nixon, who supports a wider sports boycott of Israel, believes there is a very strong argument to be made for excluding Israel from the Olympics and other international events.

“There’s a very serious charge leveled against Israel, which is this charge of a plausible genocide,” he said, referring to the case filed against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa.

They have killed civilians, journalists and health workers, while using water, food and fuel as weapons of war, along with a number of other offenses through which “the Geneva conventions are being broken and basic humanitarian principles are being broken as well,” he said.

At such a time, it is imperative to make Israel feel that “people are watching and judging, and they’re saying this is unacceptable and there should be consequences,” he told Anadolu.

Nixon’s views were backed by Peter Alegi, a professor of history at Michigan State University in the US, who emphasized that sports sanctions on Israel could give a major boost to the “larger Palestinian quest for freedom, equality and justice.”

“By putting the spotlight on Israeli athletes, we can increase global awareness about the war on Gaza and its effects, and also deny Israel the opportunity to use sports for self-glorification,” he told Anadolu.

This would be in line with the principles and essence of sports, which is that they must be fair, democratic and accessible to all, he said.

“Right now, Palestinians, of course, are being denied all of those things in sports and, of course, outside the playing field,” he added.  

Taking down apartheid through sports

Apartheid South Africa was banned from the Olympics starting from the 1964 event up until the Barcelona Olympics of 1992.

It was also suspended by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) from 1961 to 1992, while the governing body of cricket suspended it indefinitely from international competitions from 1970 until 1991.

For rugby, while South Africa remained a member of the International Rugby Board through apartheid, it was barred from first two Rugby World Cups in 1987 and 1991.

Alegi said the first sports boycott linked to South Africa was in 1934, some 14 years before apartheid began, at the British Empire Games, known today as the Commonwealth Games.

The event was supposed to be held in Johannesburg that year but was moved to London because the white minority in South Africa “refused to allow unencumbered access to facilities to African and Asian athletes,” he explained.

However, the British still allowed South Africa to field an all-white team in London, suggesting that “there were limits to this kind of liberalism in sports at the time,” he added.

During South Africa’s apartheid era, from the late 1940s to early 1990s, rugby and cricket were the most popular sports, said Alegi, pointing out that both have “long been closely associated with British imperialism and British culture.”

“So, it is perhaps no surprise that rugby and cricket were not as quick in embracing the possibility of sanctions on apartheid South Africa,” he said.

South African historian Saul Dubow explained that white South Africans viewed rugby and cricket as prized national sports.

“Rugby, in particular, was a potent symbol of white and, particularly Afrikaner, masculinity and prowess. South African national teams were high performers on the world stage, (so) direct connections were made between the projection of national power and sporting achievement,” he told Anadolu.

In the late 1960s, anti-apartheid activists in Britain, followed by Australia and New Zealand, started focusing on targeting rugby and cricket as a way to put a spotlight on the injustices of the apartheid regime.

Their aim was to compel the British, Australian and New Zealand governments to disengage and stop playing South Africa in rugby and cricket.

Alegi recalled a famous campaign by the British anti-apartheid movement to disrupt the South African rugby team’s 1969-70 tour of Britain and Ireland.

“It was a series of demonstrations, including at the matches themselves, by activists to stop South Africa from playing against England in rugby, and then later also in cricket,” he said.

While South Africa was already banned from the Olympics, the success of this campaign increased pressure on the IOC to expel South Africa, which it did in May 1970, he added.

Similarly, when the South African rugby team went to New Zealand in 1981, hundreds of protesters stormed the field to prevent a game, leading to the rest of the tour being canceled.  

The power of boycotts

According to Alegi, the international sports boycott of South Africa proved to be an effective tool in the “broader quest for freedom … waged and fought for many years.”

“You can see that rugby, cricket, football and also the Olympics were part of a much broader fight … Sports was politics by other means,” he said.

Nixon, the Princeton professor, reiterated the need to curtail Israel’s attempts to gain acceptance through visibility.

“In the case of Israel, we can see even with the Eurovision song contest, the political mileage that they get out of visibility and acceptance. That was very much the case in South Africa as well,” he said.

Dubow stressed that sports boycotts can prove effective “in combination with broader political processes.”

“In regard to the effectiveness of sports boycotts and the delegitimization of apartheid, it is important to bear in mind that around 30 years elapsed from the first sports and cultural boycotts to the end of apartheid,” he said.

Also, he pointed out, that sports boycotts had “cumulative, not immediate effects, and some sports were more affected than others.”

“The effectiveness of the sports boycott had much to do with white morale and the sense of being a pariah. They were only effective in combination with broader political processes within as well as outside of the country,” said the historian.

“It took time to persuade international sports administrators and enthusiasts that there could be ‘no normal sport in an abnormal society,’ a key slogan for the anti-apartheid movement.”