Bob Hawke Quotes
As far as we're concerned, there was no sporting organisation [that] should have anything to do with the sport in South Africa.
Hawke, Bob. Interview with Sue Onslow. Commonwealth Oral History Project, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 27 Feb. 2014.
This is an excellent example of the twisted, self-fulfilling logic of the Afrikaners in justifying apartheid. Many Afrikaners were inveterate racists, and were also usually armed which was a rural tradition of their early immigration and the Zulu and Boer Wars. Those whites would cause a riot if a black was allowed into a white audience performance. That in turn would cause chaos. Therefore mixed audiences could not be allowed. It never occurred to Botha and his colleagues that the government’s responsibility was to control and restrict the white rioters and instigators. This was not unique Afrikaner thinking; the same logic prevailed throughout the American South in the Jim Crowe segregation era.
She and a number of other whites, mostly British, sided with the majority Blacks to end the white, Afrikaner-dominated rule of South Africa.
Robert James Lee Hawke, AC, GCL was an Australian politician who served as Prime Minister of Australia and Leader of the Labor Party from 1983 to 1991. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wills from 1980 to 1992.
