PITCH BATTLES, sport, racism and resistance

503pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, London, 2021

Lord Peter Hain and South African sports historian André Odendaal on international and domestic campaigns for equality in sport in South Africa over the decades.

Peter Hain led the organised disruption of the all-white 1969/70 South African rugby and cricket tours to Britain. The ‘Stop the Seventy Tour’ campaign brought about the cancellation of both tours and foreshadowed apartheid South Africa’s expulsion from the Olympics and the sports boycotts. 

"A brilliant study of how sports played a crucial role in ending apartheid." Mihir Bose, author of Sporting Colours