INSIDE LABOUR | Remember the heroes who fought for justice on the rugby field

South Africans were united, perhaps as never before — and that includes 1995 — by the 2023 Rugby World Cup. As a result, the final game — along with the score, the closest possible to a draw — made for a fitting celebration of the 50th anniversary of the event that triggered the beginning of the end for official racist rugby.

That trigger was the almost last-minute cancellation of the proposed 1973 Springbok tour of New Zealand. It followed strike warnings and protests from a coalition of trade union, student, religious and anti-racist groups who came together in the capital, Wellington, in 1972 to form a national Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM).