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Johannes A. Smit
Committee for International Relations in Sport. Its main objective was to
persuade international sports organizations to only participate in interracial
South African sports events (cf. Reddy n.d.). This strategy aimed at
preventing South African sports bodies participating in international sports
under the auspices of South Africa’s racist ideology, and lead to the founding
of the South African Sports Association (SASA) in October 1958 2 . SASA
advocated non-racial sports on the sole basis of merit, with its main aim
being ‘to fight against racism in sport and press for international recognition
of the non-racial sports bodies in South Africa’ (cf. Reddy n.d.) 3 . Principally
due to his anti-apartheid advocacy in sport as secretary of SASA, his antiapartheid
publications ranging from ‘Sports Test for South Africa’ (1959) 4 to
his publications in Fighting Talk 5
and his founding of the South African
Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) in 1963 (Odendaal 2003:180),
Brutus was banned in October 1961 under the Suppression of Communism
Act, shot and arrested in 1963, sentenced in 1964, and jailed and imprisoned
on Robben Island (cf. Brutus 2006a:41). Released eighteen months later in
July 1965 and served with three banning orders – banned from teaching,
2
Brutus found SASA with Alan Paton as patron, Chris de Broglio as first
President, and himself as secretary (cf. http://www.africansuccess.org/
visuFiche.php?id=356&lang=en). Initially, SASA comprised eight non-racial
sporting bodies, viz. Athletics, Boxing, Cycling, Lawn Tennis, Netball,
Softball, Baseball and Weightlifting (cf. Brutus 1959:36).
3
Ironically this body’s first major triumph was its stopping of the all-black
1959 West-Indies cricket tour to South Africa. For other major
accomplishments of the anti-apartheid sports campaigns during the next
decade, see point 6 below – ‘Non-racial Sports Activism Achievements’.
4
The entry under his name on the African Success: People Changing the
Face of Africa website, describes the publication as ‘an opening salvo in his
campaign to eject apartheid South Africa from international sporting
competition’ (cf. http://www.africansuccess.org/visuFiche.php?id= 356&
lang=en).
5
Cf. Brutus 1959; 1960/1961; 1961; 1962; 1963. Whereas Sustar and
Karim’s Poetry & Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (2006) does not treat
these publications in chronological order, this article will do so because of its
time-historical approach.
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