Greg Barron writes ripping thrillers and his latest Savage Tide has all the hallmarks of equalling last years super sucessful Rotten Gods. Greg is touring extensively over the next four months so do check out his website and pop along to one of his talks. I’m sure you will be entertained. Today Greg blogs about moral courage, specifically during the period of SA apartheid. With the great Nelson Mandela currently in hospital and the world praying for him, it is a timely reminder of the progress that has been made in the name of humanity, unfortunately, the world still has a long way to go.

“Every boy needs a hero, and I was lucky enough to find one among my high school teachers. His name was Jim Roxburgh, and he was a big, shaggy man, wide across the shoulders and heavily bearded. We all knew that he was a former Rugby International, had played for the Wallabies. But he wasn’t a hero because he played a game, but because on those broad shoulders he carried a burden of pride, and anger, and good old fashioned humanity.

Years earlier, in the late sixties and early seventies, when Jim was playing for Australia. South Africa was a divided country. A minority white government, led by the National Party, was determined to keep the black majority and white minority separate. Also segregated was a third group labelled as “coloured.” This was ugly system with an ugly name: Apartheid.

In 1969, so the story goes, Australia’s Wallabies toured South Africa. Young Jim Roxburgh wore the Australian jersey with pride. He played prop, a relative lightweight against the hulking 130 kg Springbok forwards, yet playing with the determination and bravery he was famous for. But things happened on that tour that would change him forever. Rugby audiences were generally all-white, but on this tour, in an attempt to display racial unity, black crowds were rounded up and forced to watch and cheer. In Pretoria, one of the flimsy, temporary stands that were used to hold them collapsed, and the Aussie players helped carry the maimed and injured to ambulances while many of the South Africans merely watched.

During one game, the black crowd started cheering for the Australian team in a show of protest against the system under which they lived. South African police responded quickly. They used dogs, batons and sjamboks—hippo hide whips—to subdue the crowd, battering them into silence, while the Aussie players watched helplessly from the field. I still remember the English lesson when Jim told us this story. We were a bunch of rowdy country boys, but you could have heard a pin drop while he talked, choking up then, more than a decade after the event, trying to tell us something important in that slow, careful way of his. He told us of something that should offend all humanity. Something that never should have happened.

Savage CoverTwo years later, in 1971, the Springboks crossed the Indian Ocean to tour Australia. Jim joined six of his team mates in a stand that will go down in history. Seven national Rugby Union players: Jim Roxburgh, Tony Abrahams, Jim Boyce, Paul Darveniza, Terry Forman, Barry McDonald and Bruce Taafe, refused to take the field for the Wallabies against the visitors. Rugby’s “Magnificent Seven” as they have been called, would not play the representatives of a regime that not only didn’t consider non-whites for selection in any sport, but treated their own people with brutality and contempt.

Our Prime Minister at the time, William McMahon, condemned Jim and his comrades as a “disgrace to their country.” They suffered abuse and catcalls from diehard fans. They were blacklisted from playing Rugby, and only one of the seven was ever selected to play for Australia again. Their careers were over. Yet they folded their arms and explained that they saw playing against the Springboks as tantamount to condoning the apartheid regime. The “Magnificent Seven” stood firm.

As I said, Jim was an English teacher, and a good one. But the main thing he did for me was much deeper than grammar. He inspired me, especially as the years passed and I learned more about what he did and how powerful a symbol it was at the time—most definitely helping the Australian government towards a decision to officially sever all sporting ties with the South African regime in 1972.

Every boy needs a hero, and moral courage is the greatest of human attributes”.

Invitation art

 

Greg’s new novel, Savage Tide will be released on Monday from HarperCollins Australia. Find out more at gregbarron.com or on Facebook/gregbarronauthor