How Times Have Changed

Marie from Waikanae

Looking at the media stories surrounding the 1981 Springbok tour has got me thinking. John Minto was centre stage back then, but the movement itself started over 50 years ago (was it really that long) with Trevor Richards. In the early 70's, I was one of the founding members of HART, encouraged by Richards and a couple of my mates from that hotbed of sedition, Helen Connon Hall for young ladies at Canterbury university. We were young, but we weren't always very ladylike. We tried to raise awareness of apartheid and people didn't know much about it back then. When I asked people what they thought of it, they thought it was a new brand of soap powder.
"Waddaya think of apartheid?"
"Aw, dunno, luv, I haven't tried it yet".
But the movement grew and soon a whole lot of people were opposed to apartheid. Some years later, somewhere there is a press photo of myself as sitting president of Canterbury University with two other past presidents, one of them the infamous Leonardo, and Trevor Richards. We had made the front page.
But it was about more than just the tour. It was a rights based movement and it lobbied for a fairer society. We also encouraged people to boycott South African produce, wine, cigarettes etc. We reverted to Cold Duck (yuck).
I was in New York when the 1984 tour went ahead and I missed all the action. Probably just as well, I would have got my head bashed in. But I danced around my Manhattan apartment in glee. It had to stop now. It was costing the country millions in security. Sadly, it had come down to money. It seems to take precedence over everything else.
Seeing the Mayors photo with an arm around Minto in this weeks Kapiti News also got me thinking. Its a long way from the rights based fair society we fought for to the behavior I witnessed in this weeks council meeting. Our representative Councillors for Waikanae and Waste Management were gagged and bullied, effectively denying us representation. The chief perpetrators of this were the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and the Chief Executive. Sue me for that too if you like, I have around 50 witnesses. I left the meeting disgusted, shaking my head and thinking "Wow, have you changed".