Rhodesian Olympic Team

The International Journal of the History of Sport
Vol. 23, No. 8, December 2006, 1369 – 1388

Rhodesia’s ‘Rebel and Racist’ Olympic
Team: Athletic Glory, National
Legitimacy and the Clash of Politics
and Sport
Andrew Novak

This article traces the history of the Olympic participation of the Federation of Rhodesia
and Nyasaland, then the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, and then unilaterally
independent settler-ruled Rhodesia after 1965, placing heavy emphasis on the racially
integrated aspects of the sporting sphere. Rhodesia’s status in the International Olympic
Committee inevitably came under assault after 1965 owing to its white government and
international sporting sanctions. The battles of the press, the high-level diplomatic
manoeuvring, and ﬁnally the IOC debate ﬁrst to exclude Rhodesia from Munich and
then to permanently expel the Rhodesian NOC in 1975 are analysed in detail. As a
charismatic organization, the IOC operated outside the world of rules and rational
principles, devoted to certain values expressed in ‘Olympism’. Because of this com-
mitment, and the resulting belief that politics had no place in sport, the IOC was
insulated from the great changes taking place in the world at large. The newly
independent world sought to make democratic equality a part of the Olympic vision,
trumping the long-held charismatic principles of the IOC; the expulsion of Rhodesia was
the culmination of this trend.

Introduction
An unlettered machinist in a Bulawayo clothing factory, Mathias Kanda would wake
with the dawn and run until dark, emulated by the eager youngsters he passed: he was
one of them, their hope not for a medal but for a new Rhodesia. A marathon runner,
Kanda practised alongside long-distance runner Bernard Dzoma, a carpenter by
trade from Harare, then an African township outside the white capital of Salisbury.

Andrew Novak, Boston University Law School. Correspondence to: ajnovak@bu.ed

ISSN 0952-3367 (print)/ISSN 1743-9035 (online) Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09523360600922287

1370 A. Novak
They were the only two black Africans on Rhodesia’s team of 17 bound for the 1968
Mexico City Olympic Games, though their presence meant much more. Nearly three
years had passed since the white settler population of the British colony of Southern
Rhodesia had rebelled against the world and declared their state sovereign. Kanda
and Dzoma were part of an integrated team in a segregated land, paradoxically both
the team’s heroic legacy and the cause of its downfall. The team never made it to
Mexico City, the victims of a clash between politics and sport that led to Rhodesia’s
exclusion. [1]
Kanda had run before, with a disappointing finish at the 1964 games in Tokyo,
Japan, representing the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Dzoma would run
again, chosen along with six other black Africans for Rhodesia’s ill-fated 1972
Olympic team bound for Munich. For Dzoma, an Olympic dream would be twice
destroyed by last-minute high-stakes diplomacy. It was an inglorious road the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) had traversed before: apartheid South
Africa, a participant in the Olympics for over 50 years, was expelled from the
Olympic movement after it had done the unimaginable, requiring its Olympic team
to be whites-only. Though Rhodesia’s teams had always been racially integrated, the
participation of another sanctioned white-ruled state could not be justified. Facing a
worldwide boycott, a repeat of the South African controversy, the IOC chose to
exclude Rhodesia rather than face the collapse of the Munich games. The Rhodesian
team watched the opening ceremony from the stands. At least one man must have
noticed the tiny gap between Puerto Rico and Romania: Avery Brundage, president
of the IOC for 20 years, had wagered his career on Rhodesia’s presence. He lost the
debate and then surrendered his presidency. Kanda had faded into obscurity four
years before, after his exclusion from Mexico City, seen only once more at an athletics
meet in Bulawayo years later. Dzoma, educated, unlike Kanda, did some coaching for
short time but gave up athletics for a job in Mutare. [2] This is a story of politics and
it is a story of sport, chronicling an event of great diplomatic importance while
serving as a eulogy to a small team from Southern Africa.

Olympism as Charismatic Authority
For the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Olympics
were a spectacle of an ancient sporting ethic, a religious ritual in which the modern
athlete honours his country and flag by honouring his body and skill. These rituals
were symbolic homage to the glorious sporting festivals of ancient Greece, dating
back to 776 BC. They were free from politics, commercialism and base self-interest.
The symbols of Olympism – five coloured rings; four-year rhythmic intervals; the
motto ‘citius, altius, fortius’ (faster, higher, stronger); and, notably, the Olympic
Charter itself – were all related to this religio athletae, and de Coubertin was its
modern-day prophet. [3]
Sociologist Max Weber delineated a threefold typology of pure forms of legiti-
mate authority: the legal-rational, the world of rules and laws, hierarchies and

The International Journal of the History of Sport 1371

bureaucracies; the traditional, backed by immemorial custom and ancient rituals; and
the charismatic, which exists outside the limitations of both rules and traditions, an
authority based around a leader who can command a supernatural status.
Charismatic authority, Weber writes, is inherently unstable, unbounded as it is by
rules, and eventually either erased (‘routinized’ in Weber’s words) or, if possible,
transferred to an office, a position or an authority (‘institutionalized’), the occupier
of which must prove his or her worthiness (‘authenticity’) through devotion to the
faith, the symbols, the ritual. [4]
De Coubertin was a charismatic leader and the International Olympic Committee
was a charismatic organization, outside the mere mortal world of the ordinary. His
charisma, institutionalized in the Olympic movement, ‘has come to permeate the
organizational structure, the ideology, and the representatives of Olympism’,
Cantelon and McDermott write. [5] De Coubertin could have had no better heir
than Avery Brundage of the United States, a former athlete and committed disciple of
Olympism, who for 20 years as president of the IOC (1952–72), the charismatic office
of de Coubertin, meticulously sought to replicate the Olympic vision and protect the
integrity of the faith. The Olympic movement had expanded so rapidly from the 13
competing nations at Athens in 1896 to more than 120 by 1972 that new states, new
philosophies and new faiths had been absorbed into the movement. Lest he risk the
dilution of the charisma with which he had been entrusted, Brundage fought these
forces – the commercialism, the professionalism, the doping, the politics – that had
found their way into the Olympic movement unwelcomed. Outsiders didn’t
understand his devotion to the charismatic faith: like all religious devotees, his
actions at times appeared incomprehensible to observers. They had a logic only in the
context of the faith.
De Coubertin believed that athletes were ‘an aristocracy, an elite’, the chosen ones
who proved their superiority in a company of equals. [6] In the age of imperialism,
de Coubertin’s ‘athletic aristocracy’ fused with the notion of white supremacy,
forming the belief that only white men could have the strength, diligence and beauty
to be athletically dominant. The exclusion of Jews from athletic clubs and sports
teams in Nazi Germany must be related to an insidious corruption of de Coubertin’s
athletic ideal. The discrepancy between Nazi doctrine and Olympic ideals sparked an
international controversy over the right of Jews to participate in the German team
at the 1936 Berlin games, sparking the first Olympic boycott movement. Avery
Brundage, then president of the United States Olympic Committee, managed to
prevent an American boycott of the games. His faith in the Olympic ideal was too
strong to see it debased by politics, and indeed the Nazi sporting ethic may have been
driven to its demise more through the gold medals won by African-American athlete
Jesse Owens than by any potential boycott. [7] It would not be the last time Brundage
was at the centre of the clash between politics and sport.
In apartheid South Africa, sport became associated with power, white and male,
derived from the Afrikaner myth of a divinely ordained volk to rule over South Africa.
When, in the early 1950s, the South African government began to extend racial

1372 A. Novak
discrimination to the world of sport, the IOC had no choice but to react. Sport in
South Africa had always been implicitly segregated by tradition but not, until the
1950s, by law: by government mandate, whites and non-whites organized separately
and could not compete together on the playing field or jointly represent South Africa
abroad. The isolation of South Africa from international sports followed rapidly and
its status in the Olympics was inevitably questioned. In the face of a worldwide
boycott, the team faced suspension from the 1964 Tokyo games, the revocation of its
invitation to Mexico City in 1968 and permanent expulsion in 1970. Frank Braun,
representing the South African Olympic Committee at the meeting where it was
expelled, criticized the IOC’s decision invoking the Olympic Charter as the legal basis
on which to expel the team. In so doing, he highlighted that a charismatic document
was being used as a legal-rational one. He told the committee:

No single article of the [Olympic] charter was intended to withstand the rigors of
litigation in law. Rules 1, 24 and 25 [of the Charter], which are being used as the
basis for the case against South Africa, are striking examples of the lofty ideals, the
hopes of Baron de Coubertin. . . . It is not within the power nor was it ever con-
templated by our founders that the internal affairs of a member country . . . could
be the subject of investigation, control or denouncement by the International
Olympic Committee. [8]

Braun was entirely correct: never had the IOC expelled one of its members on the
basis of the Olympic Charter. But de Coubertin’s charismatic revelation was
confronting another force that had become integrated into the Olympic movement.
As the IOC expanded after the Second World War to include the newly
independent world and the Communist bloc, the charismatic authority held by the
IOC president and executive committee began to dilute. For decades, the IOC
executive committee chose its members based on adherence to the charismatic vision:
independently wealthy white men, often aristocrats, unconnected with governments,
who fervently believed in the sacredness of Olympism and the destructiveness that
external forces had on the movement. The new nations of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean
and the Middle East demanded a more democratic structure, one that accounted for
their views as well. Cantelon and McDermott write: ‘What Brundage came to realize
with the South African crisis was that there were other equally valid perceptions of
Coubertin’s Olympism, which countered his’ – including ‘defining fair play as
representative democracy’, which must be extended to black South Africans. [9]
These new nations protested against the IOC’s charismatic vision, demanding that
the IOC recognize political equality as a prerequisite to fair play. The South African
expulsion was significant in the history of the Olympic movement, because the
democratic forces had outvoted the charismatic. The charisma, as Weber warned, was
dissipating.
For Africa, another battle immediately appeared on the horizon: white settler-ruled
Rhodesia, a state under international sanction after its unilateral declaration of
independence in 1965, sought to participate in the Olympics, as it had before its


rebellion. The threatened boycott and exclusion of Rhodesia from the Olympics was
the high water mark of African and developing world unity in the IOC. Africa’s day as
well would soon be over, failing in 1976 in efforts to expel New Zealand, among the
most flagrant violators of sporting sanctions against South Africa. [10] The IOC
resisted the boycott threats and 33 nations walked out after the opening of the
Montreal games. Africa had won the 1968 vote over the revocation of South Africa’s
invitation to Mexico City and won again in 1972 with Rhodesia’s exclusion. By 1976,
the vote was lost: as Soldatow writes, the alliance between the Communist bloc and
the Afro-Asian nations had been broken. [11] Many critics at the time of Rhodesia’s
expulsion protested that the Olympic values of de Coubertin were gradually eroding,
victimized by politics. In retrospect, however, the controversy did not destroy this
charismatic vision; rather, the Olympic movement began to coopt issues of human
rights and anti-discrimination into its sporting ethic. This essay will follow the
history of the Rhodesian Olympic teams, particularly how they challenged racial
discrimination and national legitimacy and were at the centre of a controversy that
had profound effects on the Olympic movement itself.

The Road to Mexico City: Athletic Glory and Rhodesian Legitimacy
Sport played an important role in Rhodesian society, particularly among the closely-
knit frontier communities of European settlers, secluded as they were on the
periphery of the British Empire. Sport became a means of contact and shared
identity, contributing to the formation of a distinct white settler culture separate
from South Africa. As sports diffused throughout the British Empire, the
accompanying social distinctions and norms spread also. Although South Africa
after 1948 established a ministry of sport to enforce strict segregation on the playing
field, sport in Rhodesia tended to follow the British tradition of sporting autonomy,
keeping leisure and government separate. [12] Sporting events, leagues, clubs and
teams were never segregated by law in Rhodesia as they were in South Africa, but the
question of just how integrated the sporting sphere was in practice was a matter of
sharp debate. By the 1970s, pockets of integrated and multiracial sport existed
alongside whites-only or segregated sport, in a dizzying mosaic that was itself an
indicator of a lack of government ability or will to impose a racial solution on sport.
Sport became an arena of contested control between blacks and whites. Stuart
describes how black African football associations, financially and organizationally
independent of settler control, cooperated with a liberal white-run charity until the
1940s, when the Bulawayo City Council sought to take over sporting activities. The
result was the 1947–49 football strike, which preserved the autonomy of football. [13]
‘Boxing, on the other hand, came under municipal control early on’, Kaarsholm
writes. Ranger describes how government officials preferred to standardize and
regulate the ‘dangerous’ sport of boxing in the 1930s and 1940s, rather than
suppressing it altogether. [14] Sport was seen, after all, as a cost-effective means of
social control. At a time when Rhodesia appeared to be following South Africa’s lead

1374 A. Novak
to greater segregation, as African land tenure, wages and rations came under
increasing oversight in the late 1940s, state penetration into the sporting sphere
remained incomplete and contested.
Sport’s relative autonomy from the segregated political sphere allowed black
Africans to make considerable progress in Rhodesian sports. Giulianotti notes that
the first multiracial football match was held in 1948 and black Africans were chosen
for the Rhodesian national team by the early 1960s. In athletics, Kennedy adds, the
first multiracial athletic meet was held in 1958, where Yotham Muleya finished
second in the three-mile race. In 1962, Lote Ndlovu won the 10,000 metres against
teams from South Africa and Portugal, becoming the first black African from the
colony to win an international event. A multiracial boxing match in Bulawayo in
1961 included teams from South Africa and Rhodesia. [15] Not all was progress,
however: in 1968, the Ministry of Education banned multiracial sport in public
schools, in the face of opposition from both blacks and whites. Some even
complained to the IOC, claiming the ban violated the Olympic Charter, as a way of
placing pressure on the government to stop discrimination. [16] Two Rhodesian
boxers competed at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and the country gained
independent representation in the British Empire Games after 1934. [17] These early
teams were de facto limited to whites.
The 1960 Rome games marked the appearance of several African teams for the first
time, including the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (designation RHO),
composed of modern-day Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The team included five
women, diver Sandra Morgenrood and swimmers Meg Miners, Hillary Wilson,
Lynette Cooper and 13-year-old Dottie Sutcliffe. Natalie Steward of Bulawayo,
swimming for Britain, won a bronze medal. Four boxers were on the team, including
19-year-old Jaggie van Staden, the country’s greatest post-war amateur boxer, as well
as wrestler John Evert and clay pigeon shottist Bill Gulliver. The two yachtsmen, Alan
David Butler and Chris Bevan, landed in fourth place, giving Rhodesia ‘her finest
hour’ according to Byrom. [18] Butler was an opposition Member of Parliament
until Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front swept the legislature in May 1965;
he was chosen for the 1964, 1968 and 1972 teams before his tragic death shortly
before the opening of the Munich games. Finally, two track and field athletes rounded
out the team: the legendary Terry Sullivan, the holder of numerous Rhodesian
records for the mile race, and a black African schoolmaster, Cyprian Tseriwa, the first
black Rhodesian to represent the country in the Olympics. Although the ‘great
hearted African’, as Chronicle reporter Martin Lee called him, finished 28th in the
10,000 metres, he had still broken the Rhodesian record that he already held, with his
fast time. [19] Bernard Dzoma would break Tseriwa’s record 12 years later in
qualifying for the Munich team.
The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland dissolved in 1963 after ten tumultuous
years; Nyasaland became independent Malawi in 1964. Northern Rhodesia (RHN)
and Southern Rhodesia (RHS) competed separately in the 1964 Tokyo Games,
marching in the opening ceremony in two contingents, the North in light blue


blazers, the 31-member team from the South in green with white trim. During the
games, Northern Rhodesia became independent Zambia (ZAM) and the new flag was
hoisted during the closing ceremonies. The 1964 Southern Rhodesian team included
two swimmers, Marilyn Sidelsky and schoolgirl Jenny Wood, who would finish sixth
and break her own record [20], along with two divers, Sarie Bezuiduenhout and
Lindsey Grant-Stuart. The third diver, 20-year-old Terry Rossiter, whom the Herald
called ‘the luckless lad from Salisbury’, hit his head on the three-metre board
attempting a backward dive during practice, requiring stitches; he was told soon after
that his mother had passed away. He managed, nonetheless, a very respectable
performance in the games. The team also included clay pigeon shooter Johannes
Lamprecht; yachtsmen Alan David Butler, Anthony Crossley and Mike McFadden; a
field hockey team with Dereck Brain as goalkeeper; and boxer Jannie Gibson, whose
Olympic career lasted 2 minutes 56 seconds. Finally, the track and field contingent
included sprinter Johan du Preez and two black marathon runners, Mathias Kanda,
who finished 51st, and Robson Mrombe, who came in at 56. [21]
After Zambia’s independence, the days of white minority rule in Rhodesia seemed
numbered; the intransigent white community in response gave a landslide electoral
victory to white Rhodesian nationalist Ian Smith, the protagonist of the unilateral
declaration of independence in November 1965. Despite international isolation and
comprehensive United Nations trade sanctions on the country, to the IOC nothing
had changed: NOCs are provided to territories and citizens and not to governments,
and indeed must be autonomous of government control. Rhodesia received an
invitation to the first Olympics after UDI, the 1968 winter games in Grenoble, France;
since the country’s athletes were not up to world standard in winter sports, Rhodesia
declined to send a team. As Little writes, ‘if the primary motivation for [Rhodesian]
participation was to gain international publicity for the regime, then it is unlikely that
the Rhodesians would have declined the invitation to attend the Winter Olympics’.
[22] Indeed, France resisted British efforts to introduce sporting sanctions on
Rhodesia and Africa, for the most part, did not compete in the Winter Olympics.
Instead, the clash would be delayed until Mexico City that summer.
The Organizing Committee of the Mexico City Games, despite opposition within
the Mexican government, pledged to respect the absolute precondition of the IOC for
hosting an Olympiad: all member states, regardless of political orientation, must be
invited. A Mexican representative even flew to Rhodesia to hand-deliver the Olympic
invitation. Meanwhile, the IOC stumbled into the greatest controversy in its history
by agreeing to readmit apartheid South Africa, suspended four years earlier, after
South Africa agreed to send an integrated team to Mexico City. The team would be
chosen in racially segregated championships, since multiracial sport was still
forbidden. The Mexican organizers panicked at the decision and the IOC faced the
largest boycott yet, led by the African national Olympic committees (NOCs).
The IOC eventually caved in and revoked South Africa’s invitation. [23] Desperate to
avoid a repeat of the controversy, the Mexican government placed considerable
pressure on the organizing committee to keep Rhodesia out; in this mission,

1376 A. Novak
they were joined by the British government, which sought to deny the Rhodesian
regime the recognition granted by Olympic participation.
Little writes that ‘it was actually the government of the United Kingdom,
Rhodesia’s former [sic] colonial ruler, that had been the primary instigator of the
exclusion’. [24] At British insistence, the UN Security Council passed a resolution on
29 May 1968 requiring member states to refuse Rhodesian passports and deny
admittance to Rhodesian nationals. Brundage and the IOC deplored the resolution
and reminded Mexico City organizers that Olympic athletes travelled not on
passports and visas, but on Olympic identity cards. Little notes that the resolution
was largely symbolic, as ‘the vast majority of white Rhodesians had some form of dual
citizenship, usually either British or South African, and were able to travel freely
under the passports of these other nations’. [25] In fact, possibly the only two athletes
who could not travel on foreign passports were Kanda and Dzoma. The British
government also considered ‘stop listing’ the team members, a sanction imposing
travel restrictions on political supporters of the regime, later abandoning this idea as
the team didn’t meet the requirements for stop listing. Because of these constraints,
as well as British public opinion, it was necessary that Mexico City organizers
should disrupt communications, refuse to answer telegrams and ‘lose’ paperwork in
the mail.
Throughout this diplomatic manoeuvring, the Rhodesian Olympic Committee was
resolute: ‘It is our firm intention to send a team unless we are definitely barred, but
we cannot see on what grounds (except political) we could be barred’. [26] Brundage
warned the organizers that they must resist government intrusion into sport, or the
consequence might be sanction against the Mexican Olympic Committee. By the end
of August, the Rhodesian NOC still had not received final entry forms or identity
cards and their frantic telegrams to Mexico City had never been acted upon.
Brundage and the IOC continued to protest, but Mexican officials stonewalled. Faced
with a financial obligation to the Belgian airline Sabena, the Rhodesian NOC bitterly
protested its de facto exclusion from the games. [27] The following January, the
president of the Mexican organizing committee explained to Brundage that he had
read ‘published newspaper stories reporting that the Rhodesian [NOC] had
announced its decision not to participate in the Games’ and therefore decided not
to send the appropriate documents. [28] This is untrue, of course: there had never
been good faith on the part of the organizing committee. The team would have
shared accommodation in the Olympic Village with the Scandinavian teams in
Building 13. It was not to be. [29]
‘Starved of international competition through political isolation and maintaining
gruelling training schedules for only flimsy local challenges’, Byrom writes,
‘Rhodesia’s ‘‘human torpedo’’ John Keyter, was eventually to get the chance of
proving he was a world-class butterfly swimmer’. The confident blond six-foot four-
inch, 195-pound Keyter had become Rhodesia’s greatest male swimmer, pocketing 11
South African butterfly titles. When Rhodesia was excluded, the spark in him went
out: ‘I can promise there will be no comeback for me’, he said. ‘My major regret is


that I never had the chance to swim in the Olympic Games’. [30] The same was true
of diving champion Don Liebermann, 20, the winner of 16 Rhodesian and 12 South
African titles. The team also included secretary, yoga enthusiast and mother-of-four
Joan Mitchell in small-bore shooting and five other shooters; weightlifter and lingerie
manufacturer John Orkin; and three boxers. Rhodesia’s field hockey team was on
standby, first reserve for the African continent, though its chances of going were slim.
The five-man yachting team included the seasoned Butler and 1964 competitor and
future 1980 Zimbabwe Olympic team manager Crossley. Last, but certainly not least,
were Mathias Kanda and Bernard Dzoma in athletics. [31]
John Cheffers, the Australian athletic coach of Kanda and Dzoma, reflects on the
contradictions he found in Rhodesian society. Quality athletic facilities existed for
the black African community, but they sat unused without proper training or
equipment. He met many white Rhodesians interested in promoting good
sportsmanship and multiracial competition, but was nonetheless confounded when
a storekeeper refused to sell milk to Kanda. The reality of Rhodesia was complex and
ambiguous. Dzoma would run ten miles before breakfast to make it to work in
downtown Salisbury by 8.30 a.m.; after work, he would join Cheffers and Kanda for
an evening of training against the stopwatch. Cheffers and the two runners came
from different worlds but, after a hard day of practice, their worlds were intimately
bound together. Cheffers would drop Kanda off first, long after darkness had
fallen, and then drive Dzoma into the bus station in the centre of the city.
Dzoma disembarked, bade farewell and walked towards his Harare bus. ‘But he never
caught this bus’, Cheffers recalls; ‘he bypassed it and either ran or walked the four
miles home. He never told me of this, and I never asked him or let on that
I was aware of his secret . . . . And it didn’t worry me either; the exercise was good for
him’. [32]
The air was thin on the Rhodesian veld, especially in the Inyanga Mountains where
the athletes had trained, and the two African runners would have started with an
enormous advantage in high-altitude Mexico City. Cheffers, alone, travelled to
Mexico City on his Australian passport, watching the events in which Kanda and
Dzoma would have participated. ‘The times recorded in the middle- and long-
distance races were relatively poor’, he remembered after the games. ‘Ruefully I
watched [Mamo] Wolde of Ethiopia, [Neftali] Temu of Kenya, and [Mohamed]
Gammoudi of Tunisia win gold medals in times that Bernard Dzoma and Mathias
Kanda were capable of running’. [33] Almost 40 years later, these moments continue
to haunt Cheffers, now retired from teaching at Boston University: ‘We had great
success’, he recalls; ‘so much so that I believe Mathias Kanda might have medalled in
the marathon, and [Bernard] Dzoma would certainly have acquitted himself well in
the final of the 5,000 metres’. [34] Considering the most immortal memories of the
1968 games, from black power salutes on the medal stand to an African sweep of the
long-distance races, the participation of a small team from Southern Africa would
have had the potential to change not merely the lives of two runners or the divided
state from which they came, but Olympic history itself.

1378 A. Novak

The Munich Controversy: African Unity and the Rhodesian Expulsion
Despite rumblings of dissent ever since 1968, Rhodesia’s participation in the 1972
Munich games only turned into a crisis in the weeks before the opening of the games,
when Ethiopia and Kenya, the favourites in men’s track and field, joined a host of
Olympic lightweights in calling for Rhodesia’s exclusion. The cruellest of ironies
accompanied this decision to boycott Rhodesia’s presence. Under a painstaking
agreement worked out the year before, Rhodesia was required to participate under
the same conditions that applied in 1964, the so-called ‘Tokyo conditions’: the team
would participate as the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (RHS) under the old
pre-secession flag incorporating a Union Jack and hold identity cards listing the
athletes as British subjects. On the medal stand, ‘God Save the Queen’ would play. To
the astonishment of the international community and the horror of right-wing
elements in Rhodesia, the Rhodesian Olympic Committee unconditionally accepted
the compromise. On 15 August 1972, the ‘Southern Rhodesian’ team arrived at the
Olympic village and stood at attention, hats in hand, as a German Air Force band
played the British anthem and two sailors hoisted the old colonial flag. [35] The
Rhodesian men’s compound, shared with Portugal, was on a street in the Olympic
Village named after Helene Mayer, the Jewish woman added to the 1936 German
Olympic team after IOC protest. [36] The irony continued to mount.
The 44-member Rhodesian contingent was the country’s largest team yet, and by
every indication its best. Despite falling out of the limelight after 1968 because
of injuries, Bernard Dzoma, almost 31, qualified with a 10,000-metre run in
Mozambique where he broke Tseriwa’s 1960 record. The nine other track and field
athletes to go to Munich represented the most diverse athletic squad ever sent abroad:
sprinter, relay team member and Rhodes University student Nigel Hodder; quarter-
milers Philemon Tabanemenwu and Alfred Ncube; 21-year-old javelin thrower Bruce
Kennedy; Vyangi Fulunga, who narrowly missed the team in 1968; sprinter Jean
Fowlds and athletes Adon Treva and Terry Finnigan. The tenth member of the team,
Artwell Mandaza of Mangula Mine, was the fastest man in Rhodesian history, having
broken the records set by Johan du Preez years before; the first black Rhodesian
sportsman of the year in 1970, he never stopped running after Munich and remained
a major coach and competitor in black Zimbabwean sport after 1980. With them
were coaches Peter Hodder, Nigel’s father, and Stutti Dhliamini from Swaziland, a
50-year-old Bulawayo welfare worker, one of the first black Africans to pass
the coaching exam. Besides the ten track and field athletes, the team included six
swimmers; a water polo team; three divers, including 1968 competitor Don
Liebermann and his cousin Robin; seven yachtsmen, including a last-minute
replacement for David Butler following Butler’s fatal car crash a month earlier; two
archers; the renowned shooters; and two judoka, Derek Eltze and Mike Job. [37]
Although there were questions of racial discrimination in Rhodesia as early as 1959
when the NOC was admitted, it was not until the IOC Congress in Dubrovnik,
Croatia, in 1969 that the African NOCs first explicitly demanded an investigation


into Rhodesia’s status. [38] Rhodesia was eligible to compete in Munich, of course,
but the invitation was complicated by the fact that West Germany, unlike Mexico,
was not yet a member of the United Nations and thus technically not bound by UN
mandatory sanctions, although informally West Germany tended to comply. At the
IOC executive committee meeting in Luxembourg in 1971, under African pressure,
the members agreed on ‘Tokyo conditions’ under which Rhodesia would parti-
cipate [39] The political pressure mounted, with condemnation of the Luxembourg
agreement coming from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the
United Nations General Assembly, which adopted Resolution 2796 (December
1971), calling on states to ensure Rhodesia’s exclusion. A split opened in the German
government: Interior Ministry officials confirmed the pledge made to the IOC six
years earlier, while Foreign Ministry officials believed the image of West Germany in
black Africa was at stake. [40] The West German organizing committee was not open
to the same political pressure as its Mexican counterpart had been subject to.
Herr Willie Daume, the chairman, warned West German government officials that he
would cancel the games if they reneged on their written obligations to admit all
teams. [41]
A number of African governments, backed by the coalition that had lobbied for
South Africa’s expulsion, accepted the compromise in Luxembourg but later were
under pressure to reject it, on the premise that the IOC had artificially constructed a
nationality for the purposes of the games and that, if the Rhodesians should
participate as British subjects, they should produce British passports. Guyana,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Tanzania were the first to threaten boycott. As Julius
Nyerere, the president of Tanzania, revealingly stated, ‘We are not quarrelling about
passports but about things which are going on in Rhodesia’. [42] The African press
was firmly in favour: the Ghanaian Times editorialized that Africa ‘must tell
[Brundage] to go to hell with his racist ideas and apparent disrespect for the black
African!’ [43] In a front-page editorial, the Nigerian Daily Times condemned the
Nigerian government for not supporting the boycott outright: ‘Africa is being
hoodwinked into helping the racist regime win respectability’. [44] As the Olympic
flame left Olympia, Greece, en route to Munich, the list of countries threatening to
boycott lengthened: Egypt, Ghana, Jamaica, Mali, Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, Upper
Volta, Zambia.
The British Government, unlike 1968, was nowhere to be found. Edward Heath’s
Conservative government had succeeded Harold Wilson’s Labour one. With the
transition came a change in British policy towards Rhodesian athletics: ‘It was
decided after the Election that we should in [the] future restrict ourselves
to . . . prevent[ing] Rhodesian participation in international competition in this
country’ only, and no longer protest against other nations’ sporting events. [45] No
longer would Britain lobby African countries to demand Rhodesia’s exclusion, as it
had in 1968. Instead of considering diplomatic manoeuvres to frustrate Rhodesian
entry, the British government in 1972 discouraged the boycott: ‘We want to do what
we can to prevent Rhodesian participation becoming a controversial issue at

1380 A. Novak
Munich’, a Foreign Office official noted. [46] London was trying to prevent a public-
relations disaster that would aggravate growing criticism of British Rhodesian policy.
As the boycott gathered momentum outside, the IOC executive board sought a
compromise solution behind closed doors. Brundage warned that any Olympic team
that boycotted due to government pressure would be sanctioned by the IOC, viola-
ting the sacrosanct line between politics and sport. [47] At issue were the nationalities
of the Rhodesian team members, particularly whether Rhodesians were legally British
subjects (and that they were not South Africans) and could prove this with official
documents other than their Olympic identity cards. The issue was largely fake: not all
Rhodesian team members held Rhodesian passports (perhaps a majority of the team
did not), and a few did indeed hold UK passports. [48] More relevant, perhaps, was
the fear that the Ian Smith regime sought to use Olympic participation as a way of
earning international legitimacy for the regime.
Brundage and the executive board considered some last-minute off-the-cuff
proposals: that the team should participate under the Olympic flag; that the African
NOCs be persuaded to boycott only those events in which Rhodesia took part; that
the Rhodesians be asked to voluntarily withdraw. Finally out of options, the executive
board agreed that a vote of the entire International Olympic Committee should
be held before any decisions were made. ‘The political momentum seemed to
switch from African withdrawal to Rhodesian expulsion’, the New York Times
predicted. [49]
Some 77 members and honorary members attending the 73rd session of the
International Olympic Committee gathered on the afternoon of 21 August 1972 for
one of the most momentous meetings in recent years, electing a new IOC president
for the first time since 1952. When the matter of Rhodesia arose, several members of
the IOC urged that the session not be moved by politics and that the boycott of a
handful of small teams was minor compared to the destruction of the Olympic
movement and its ideals. Other IOC members felt that Rhodesia had not complied
with the Luxembourg agreement, and it was better to sacrifice one small team rather
than dozens and risk the financial loss of the games. ‘The discussion continued
among the members . . . [appealing] to Brundage to try and find a solution to the
problem which would suit all sides. This would be his last great act as President of the
IOC’. [50] Brundage was frank with the committee: the executive board unanimously
agreed that Rhodesia was in full cooperation with the Luxembourg agreement; the
African NOCs would withdraw if Rhodesia participated, regardless of whether the
team complied with the agreement; if the boycott continued, the Munich games
might collapse. But if the session supported the Rhodesians, it was likely the team
would withdraw, diplomatically allowing everyone to save face. He was confident,
even at this late point, that the session would support Rhodesia and save the Olympic
ideal.
The question was put to a vote. The resolution was to uphold the decision made in
Luxembourg to conditionally extend an invitation to Rhodesia: 70 ballot papers were
distributed.


In the end, the result was explosive: 31 votes for the resolution, 36 against, with
three abstentions. The invitation to Rhodesia to compete in the games of the XXth
Olympiad was withdrawn.
‘It was the first time in 20 years that President Brundage had asked for the
confidence of the IOC’, the meeting minutes indicate. ‘He felt it was obviously time
for him to leave the presidency’. [51] ‘It was a blatant intrusion of politics’, he told
the press, his voice shaking. ‘They had a gun to our heads. It was political blackmail –
nothing but blackmail – and we gave in’. [52] The Western press condemned the
decision: ‘Rhodesia had been invited under false pretenses’, the Oregonian wrote.
The team would have participated ‘as British subjects, rather than as residents of
the independent nation of Rhodesia. This was a sham and so was their elimination
on the grounds they had no British passports’. [53] As the Los Angeles Herald-
Examiner editorialized, the Olympic ‘ideal collapsed . . . when the very men pledged to
keeping the Games free and above political trickery and aggrandizement surrendered
to the demand that Rhodesia be dumped’. The editors concluded: ‘It is enough to
blow out the Olympic torch’. [54]
The teammates were allowed to remain in the Olympic Village and attend the events
in which they would have participated. Judoka Mike Job recalls that the team was
‘welcomed and consoled by associations, societies, officials and the man in the street,
given awards and gifts and consolation certificates and medals’, adding: ‘It was a great
six [week] holiday, completely unforgettable’. Sprinter Artwell Mandaza noted his
conflicted feelings towards the boycott: ‘It’s a great disappointment because I know
my speed would have won an Olympic medal’, he said. ‘On the other hand, it is quite
fair for the black African nations who know what they are fighting for’. [55] Mandaza
held an unofficial world record of 9.9 seconds in the 100 metres, achieved the previous
year at the Bantu Games in South Africa; his fastest official time, 10.2 seconds, was
ranked 11th in the world. The irony was rich: Jesse Owens had won four gold medals
on German soil in spite of racial discrimination. The age of Jesse Owens had passed.
Some right-wing Rhodesians applauded the decision, voicing outrage that the
government would permit the dishonour of the athletes to parade under a foreign
flag and anthem, describing the Olympic fiasco as an ‘act of contempt against
Rhodesia and her independence’. The Chronicle was more even-handed than much of
the Western press: ‘it must be acknowledged that Rhodesia is not entirely blameless
so far as mixing politics and sport is concerned’. The editors noted that ‘Our Olympic
team is multiracial, all right. But what of sport at our government schools?’
Undoubtedly, there was hypocrisy at Munich – ‘But only at Munich?’ [56] Lord
(Michael) Killanin of Ireland, Brundage’s successor as president and prophet of
Olympism, notes in his biography that ‘It was a humiliating decision’, the ‘first time
since the Olympic Movement was revived [that] a properly recognized NOC had its
competitors withdrawn’. He adds: ‘But in the massacre which was soon to follow, it
was a subject that quietly slipped away’. [57]
The Munich Games are remembered for the most tragic clash between politics and
sport, the attack on the Israeli Olympic team by Palestinian terrorists in the early

1382 A. Novak
hours of 5 September 1972, taking 17 lives. Brundage gave the most important speech
of his career at the memorial service, before an audience of tens of thousands
worldwide. His charismatic persona was evident: ‘The Games of the Twentieth
Olympiad have been subject to two savage attacks. We lost the Rhodesian battle
against naked political blackmail. We have only the strength of a great ideal’. Shivers
of embarrassment roiled through the crowd at the equation of the Rhodesian
expulsion with the terrorist attack; Mandell called it ‘grotesque self-indulgence’. [58]
To Brundage, however, they differed only by degree; political interference was a
slippery slope that had the potential to destroy Olympism. ‘The Games must go on’,
he told the crowd. And with those words, the charismatic authority of de Coubertin
triumphed. As Guttman writes, ‘To have stopped the games would have been to have
lost the dream’. [59]
Determined to put the Rhodesian issue to rest before the Montreal games, Lord
Killanin authorized an investigation into racial discrimination in Rhodesian sport in
1973. The legal argument against Rhodesia’s IOC membership hinged on two
separate factors, namely that Rhodesia was an isolated rebel state, and that
the country practised racial discrimination. The Munich exclusion followed from
the former, that Rhodesian passports were unrecognized and the government was
under sanction. In the matter of principle, at least, Lord Killanin refused to expel
Rhodesia for having an unpopular form of government; he believed, rightly,
that racial discrimination in Rhodesia was both a stronger legal argument against
the country’s participation and a less dangerous precedent against the Olympic
Charter.
In February 1973, Lord Killanin expressed his concern before the IOC executive
board in Lausanne that racial discrimination in Rhodesia was actually increasing. ‘As
far as apartheid is concerned’, he said, ‘the situation was deteriorating rapidly’,
writing a few weeks later that he was ‘receiving clippings of more and more South
African type legislation creeping into Rhodesia. It would appear to vary a certain
amount from sport to sport’. [60] Because of the upcoming IOC congress in Varna,
Bulgaria, in October 1973, to which Rhodesia was invited, Killanin agreed to send the
commission before the congress. The pressure mounted: FINA, the international
amateur swimming federation, investigated and expelled Rhodesia in 1973. Public
swimming pools, unlike sports courts and ﬁelds, were sharply segregated by the
Rhodesian Land Tenure Act. The FINA commission ruled that black Africans did not
ˆ
have the same opportunities as whites: ‘les Africains n’ont ni les memes occasions et
ˆneurs ou professeurs experts’; and ‘des competitions multi-
installations, ni les entraı ´
´ ´
raciales ne sont pas frequemment organisees’. [61]
On 28 April 1974, the Rhodesian NOC greeted the IOC investigating commission
members. The members visited various clubs and federations, conducting inter-
views with players, sports administrators and coaches. At the June 1974 executive
board meeting in Lausanne, they offered a provisional report illustrating the
complexities and contradictions in Rhodesian sport: ‘There are indeed multiracial
competitions, preliminary heats of various sports undertaken together, but, if there


are multiracial clubs and associations, there are also more restricted ones only for
whites, others only for Africans, and again others only for Asians or Europeans’,
the chairman of the commission noted. ‘In our enquiries we came across com-
plete contradictions since, although all the official side of sport such as the NOC,
clubs and associations, as well as white and non-white leaders and athletes, assured us
there was no discrimination, others stated the opposite’. [62] There were no easy
conclusions.
The Rhodesian issue was raised for the last time at the 1975 IOC congress in
Lausanne. The final report of the commission had been produced the previous
autumn, noting that some sports were, in fact, well integrated, such as football,
basketball, cycling, athletics, judo and weightlifting, while others were much less
integrated or altogether whites-only: shooting, field hockey, tennis, badminton, golf,
yachting, boxing and swimming. The commission highlighted segregated school
sports and the existence of whites-only private athletic clubs as major obstacles to
integrated sport. Still, at provincial and national levels, multiracial sport was more
often the rule than it was at lower levels. Rhodesia boycotted a South African
weightlifting event when its multiracial team was denied entry and South African
multiracial competition often took place in Rhodesia; however, on other occasions,
Rhodesia sent segregated teams to South Africa. Incidents of discrimination were not
uncommon, but also not universal. Some African interviewees complained that
sports competitions were multiracial, but the seating for the audience was not. The
government, for its part, denied any involvement in sports. The fact, however,
remained that discrimination did exist to a fairly considerable extent, and existed, at
least in part, because of the autonomy of the sporting sphere. ‘The question is whether
the National Olympic Committee and other sports authorities are doing all they
possibly can in the face of these restrictions and whether they can ultimately influence
the Government to amend, ease or abolish these restrictions’, the final report
concluded. [63]
After 67 ballot papers were distributed, the IOC voted on whether Rhodesia
conformed to the Olympic rules and regulations, based on the commission’s
evidence. By a vote of 26 to 41, the IOC permanently expelled Rhodesia from the
Olympic movement. [64]
In 1980, Zimbabwe (ZIM) marched for the first time last among the nations of the
world at the Moscow Olympic Games, invited hastily only a few weeks before. The
newest Olympic team won gold in the newest Olympic sport, women’s field hockey.
Field hockey, according to the IOC commission, had been one of the most segregated
sports in Rhodesia and there had not been a single multiracial team anywhere in the
country except at the university in 1974. [65] The 16 Zimbabwean ‘Golden Girls’ of
hockey had scored 13 goals in five games and conceded only four. With the last goal
against the Austrians, scored just six minutes before the end of the game, almost
assuring victory, the small section of Zimbabwe supporters burst forth in song. They
sang ‘Zulu Warrior’, an old Southern African folk song, to the all-white team. There
was some irony in this as well. [66]

1384 A. Novak

Conclusion
Rhodesia’s exclusion from international sports followed rapidly from the Olympic
decision. As Strack writes, the controversy may have done considerable harm in
resolving Rhodesia’s ultimate status. ‘A great deal of sympathy was generated inter-
nationally for the Rhodesian team’, he writes. ‘The IOC decision simply reinforced a
view widely held by Rhodesian Europeans that they [were] the special victims of a
double standard’. The sanctions on Rhodesia, sporting and otherwise, could never
succeed for as long as the settler population viewed them as illegitimate and
continued to openly defy them. ‘Moreover, in one area – sports – where she had a
good record of multiracial cooperation, Rhodesia has suffered punishment by the rest
of the world’. [67] A reporter for the Rhodesia Herald noted that it was likely that the
Olympic dispute strengthened right-wing political elements against negotiations, as
the right-wing championed the IOC decision as upholding Rhodesian sovereignty.
[68] In pragmatic terms, the expulsion of Rhodesia from the Olympics probably did
not lessen racial discrimination and may have strengthened it.
Nonetheless, the Olympic movement is heavily charismatic and its decisions
impact a symbolic world as much as a pragmatic one. Although the decision may
have had ambivalent consequences for Rhodesian sport, in the long run its benefit to
the Olympic movement was positive. The IOC had acted, for the first time, against its
long-held charismatic principles in favour of a democratic majority, one whose
commitment to equality trumped the commitment to free participation. The
IOC’s beliefs in sporting autonomy, freedom from commercial and political
interference and amateurism reflected the century-old aristocratic sporting ethic
that de Coubertin’s charismatic vision installed in the IOC. By 1972, the vision
needed to be updated; it was an imperial vision in a post-imperial era. The decision
on Rhodesia was not mere political opportunism on the part of the IOC. It had a
legacy that has not been fully appreciated. The action did not, as some
predicted, destroy de Coubertin’s charismatic vision. Instead the charismatic
philosophy itself changed. ‘The practice of sport is a human right’, the Olympic
Charter says today. ‘Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport,
without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit which requires mutual
understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play’. [69] Perhaps it was
necessary, in a bitterly ironic way, to sacrifice a multiracial team to save multiracial
sport.

Acknowledgements
The Rhodesian Olympic team was the topic of Andrew Novak’s undergraduate and
master’s theses, and he would accordingly like to thank Dr Allida Black at George
Washington University and Prof Stephen Chan at the School of Oriental and African
Studies for their help and advice. In addition, credit must also go to the staff at the
IOC Documentation Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland; the British Public Records


office in Kew, UK; the British Olympic Association Library in Putney, UK; and
the numerous other archives and libraries consulted in the construction of this
article.

Notes
[1] Cheffers, A Wilderness of Spite.
[2] John Cheffers, personal communication, 2006; Byrom et al., Rhodesian Sport Profiles.
[3] Llewellyn Smith, Olympics in Athens 1896; MacAloon, This Great Symbol.
[4] Weber, Economy and Society.
[5] Cantelon and McDermott, ‘Charisma and the Rational-Legal Organization’, 41.
[6] De Coubertin, ‘The Philosophic Foundation’, 1935.
[7] Mandell, Nazi Olympics.
[8] Soldatow, Politics of the Olympics, 137–8.
[9] Cantelon and McDermott, ‘Charisma and the Rational-Legal Organization’, 42.
[10] Black and Nauright, Rugby and the South African Nation.
[11] Soldatow, Politics of the Olympics.
[12] Strack, Sanctions see also Perkin, ‘Epilogue’.
[13] Stuart, ‘Players, Workers, Protestors’, 177.
[14] Ranger, ‘Pugilism and Pathology’; Kaarsholm, ‘Si Ye Pambili’, 237.
[15] Guilianotti, ‘Between Colonialism, Independence and Globalization’; Kennedy, ‘Rhodesian
Track and Field 1970’.
[16] ‘We’ll Protest to Olympic Body – Angry Coloureds’. Sunday Mail (Harare, Zimbabwe, at the
time Salisbury, Rhodesia), 25 Feb. 1968.
[17] Thompson, The Story of Rhodesian Sport.
[18] Byrom et al., Rhodesian Sport Profiles, 81.
[19] Ibid.; ‘City Schoolgirl on Rhodesia’s Olympic Team’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 4 July 1960; ‘Bekker
is a Success After Swim Kids Fail’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 27 Aug. 1960; ‘Nathalie Wins Olympic
Bronze; Jaggie Does Well Too’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 30 Aug. 1960; ‘Rhodesia’s Game Hopes
Dimmed’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 1 Sept. 1960; M. Lee, ‘Tseriwa Plods in at No. 28’, Bulawayo
Chronicle, 10 Sept. 1960.
[20] M. Lee, ‘Jenny Wood Out, But We Can be Proud of Her’, Rhodesia Herald, 15 Oct. 1964, 22.
[21] M. Lee, ‘Olympic Flashes from Tokyo: Rhodesians March in Games Ceremony’, Rhodesia
Herald, 7 Oct. 1964, 20; M. Lee, ‘Rhodesian Olympic Teams Start Their Training at Tokyo’, 5
Oct. 1964, 2 (2); ‘Tragedy Strikes Diver Terry Rossiter’, 9 Oct. 1964; ‘Another Poor Day for
Rhodesians at the Olympic Games’, 14 Oct. 1964; ‘Luckless Rossiter Has Spell of Games glory’,
17 Oct. 1964.
[22] Little, ‘Preventing ‘‘A Wonderful Breakthrough for Rhodesia’’’, 52.
[23] Espy, The Politics of the Olympics, 106; see also Strack, Sanctions.
[24] Little, ‘Preventing ‘‘A Wonderful Breakthrough for Rhodesia’’’, 47.
[25] Ibid., 54.
[26] Letter, Plaskitt to Brundage, 26 June 1968, Brundage Papers, University of Illinois.
[27] Letter, Brundage to Ramirez-Vazquez, 31 July 1968, Brundage Papers, University of Illinois;
Strack, Sanctions.
[28] Letter, Ramirez-Vazquez to Brundage, 6 Jan. 1969, Brundage Papers, University of Illinois.
[29] ‘Rhodesians Will Be in Strange Company’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 20 July 1968.
[30] Byrom et al., Rhodesian Sport Profiles 136–9.
[31] M. Lee, ‘Our Olympic Hopefuls Will Be Chosen Today’, Chronicle Sports Extra (Bulawayo), 15
July 1968.

1386 A. Novak
[32] Cheffers, A Wilderness of Spite, 129.
[33] Ibid., 164.
[34] John Cheffers, personal communication, 2006.
[35] ‘Rhodesian Flag Goes Up’, Ghanaian Times, 15 Aug. 1972, 14.
[36] Groussard, The Blood of Israel.
[37] ‘Our Final Series of Olympic Men’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 8 July 1972, 10; Mike Job, personal
communication, 29 May 2006; ‘The Olympians’, Illustrated Life Rhodesia, 22 April 1971.
[38] IOC Bulletin, 1959; IOC Minutes, 23–27 October 1969 (Executive Board meeting in
Dubrovnik, Croatia), IOC Documentation Centre, Lausanne.
[39] J. Hennessy, ‘Olympic Games: Rhodesia Plan Approved’, The Times (London), 17 Sept. 1971.
[40] ‘West Germans Differ over Rhodesia and the Olympics’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 21 July 1972, 1.
[41] Letter, Campbell to Goring-Morris, 26 May 1971, FCO 36/982, Public Records Office,
Kew (hereafter PRO).
[42] McHenry, ‘The Use of Sports in Policy Implementation’, 246.
[43] J. Aggrey, ‘To Hell with Avery Brundage’, Ghanaian Times, 17 Aug. 1972, 11.
[44] ‘Front Page Comment: Olympics: Recall Our Team Now’, Nigerian Daily Times,
18 Aug. 1972, 1.
[45] Note, McCluney to Simcock, 19 Apr. 1971, PREM 15/1220, PRO.
[46] Letter, Mansfield to Smedley, 3 Aug. 1972, FCO 36/1297, PRO.
[47] IOC Minutes, 18 Aug. 1972, IOC Documentation Centre.
[48] IOC Minutes, 19 and 20 Aug. 1972, IOC Documentation Centre. It appears that the two
archers, Fred Garner and Patricia Shepard, had UK passports. Artwell Mandaza had a
temporary UK passport to allow him to train in West Germany the previous year. Kennedy
and Hodder were students, in the United States and South Africa respectively, and presumably
had student visas. Coach Dhliamini was a Swaziland national; Job and Gaskon were
presumably South African nationals. Apparently Butler also was a UK citizen. It is almost
certain that this list is incomplete.
[49] N. Amdur, ‘Rhodesia Out of Olympics After a Dispute on Racism’, New York Times, 23 Aug.
1972, 1.
[50] IOC Minutes, 23 Aug. 1972, IOC Documentation Centre.
[51] Ibid.
[52] ‘Brundage: I Fought Hard But Lost’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 24 Aug. 1972, 1.
[53] ‘‘‘Blackmail’’ Wins’ (Editorial), The Oregonian, 24 Aug. 1972.
[54] ‘Olympic Disgrace’ (Editorial), Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 25 Aug. 1972, A8.
[55] ‘Brundage: I Fought Hard But Lost’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 24 Aug.; Mike Job, personal
communications, 29 May, 1 June 2006.
[56] ‘Brundage: I Fought Hard But Lost’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 24 Aug.; ‘Comment: No Setback for
the Appeasers’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 24 Aug. 1972, 10.
[57] Lord Killanin, My Olympic Years, 119.
[58] Mandell, The Olympics of 1972, 139.
[59] Guttman, The Games Must Go On, 255.
[60] IOC Minutes, 2–5 Feb. 1973, IOC Documentation Centre; Letter, Killanin to Plaskitt, 20 Feb.
1973, Zimbabwe Correspondence file 1973, IOC Documentation Centre.
[61] FINA Report, 22 Oct. 1973, Zimbabwe Correspondence file 1973, IOC Documentation
Centre: ‘[T]he Africans have neither the same occasions and installations, nor trainers or
professional experts . . . multi-racial competitions are not frequently organized’.
[62] IOC Minutes, 1–3 June 1974 (Executive Board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland), IOC
Documentation Centre.
[63] IOC Investigating report, 23 Oct. 1974, British Olympic Association Library. See also clipping,
‘Snub to Rhodesians: Contest was ‘‘Not in SA Tradition’’’, early October 1971, in FCO 7/672,
PRO.


[64] IOC Minutes, 22 May 1975, IOC Documentation Centre.
[65] IOC Investigating report, 23 Oct. 1974, British Olympic Association Library.
[66] Byrom et al., Rhodesian Sport Profiles.
[67] Strack, Sanctions, 229.
[68] L. Miller, ‘Munich Impact on Politics’, Rhodesia Herald, 25 Aug. 1972, 1.
[69] Olympic Charter, 9.

References
Black, D. and J. Nauright. Rugby and the South African Nation: Sport, Cultures, Politics and Power in
the Old and New South Africas. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Byrom, G., D. McDermott and B. Streak. Rhodesian Sport Profiles: 1907–79. Bulawayo: Books of
Zimbabwe, 1980.
Cantelon, H. and L. McDermott. ‘Charisma and the Rational-Legal Organization: A Case Study of
the Avery Brundage-Reginald Honey Correspondence Leading Up to the South African
Expulsion from the International Olympic Movement’. Olympika: The International Journal
of Olympic Studies 10 (2001): 33–58.
Cheffers, J. A Wilderness of Spite: Rhodesia Denied. New York: Vantage Press, 1972.
Coubertin, P. de. ‘The Philosophic Foundation of Modern Olympism’. In Olympism: Selected
Writings, edited by N. Muller. Lausanne: IOC, 2000 (Orig. pub. 1935).
Espy, R. The Politics of the Olympics. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.
Giulianotti, R. ‘Between Colonialism, Independence and Globalization: Football in Zimbabwe’. In
Football in Africa: Conflict, Conciliation and Community, edited by G. Armstrong and
R. Giulianotti. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Groussard, S. The Blood of Israel: The Massacre of the Israeli Athletes, Olympics 1972, translated by
Harold Salemson. New York: William Morrow, 1975.
Guttman, A. The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984.
International Olympic Committee. Olympic Charter. Available online at www.olympic.org/uk/
organisation/missions/charter_uk.asp, accessed 21 August 2006.
Kaarsholm, P. ‘Si Ye Pambili: Which Way Forward? Urban Development, Culture and Politics in
Bulawayo’. Sites of Struggle: Essays in Zimbabwe’s Urban History, edited by B. Raftopoulous
and T. Yoshikuni. Harare: Weaver Press, 1999.
Kennedy, D. Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia: 1890–
1939. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987.
Kennedy, P. ‘Rhodesian Track and Field 1970’, unpublished article, Brundage Papers, University of
Illinois; Report to the IOC from the South African Olympic Games Association, Baden-
Baden, West Germany, Oct.. 1963, British Olympic Association Library.
Killanin, Lord M., My Olympic Years. London: Secker & Warburg, 1983.
Little, C. ‘Preventing ‘‘A Wonderful Breakthrough for Rhodesia’’: The British Government and the
Exclusion of Rhodesia from the 1968 Mexico Olympics’. Olympika: The International Journal
of Olympic Studies 14 (2005): 47–68.
Llewellyn Smith, M. Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. London:
Profile Books, 2004.
MacAloon, J.J. This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games.
London: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
McHenry, D. ‘The Use of Sports in Policy Implementation: The Case of Tanzania’. Journal of
Modern African Studies 18, no. 2 (June 1980): 237–56.
Mandell, R. Nazi Olympics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

1388 A. Novak
Mandell, R. The Olympics of 1972: A Munich Diary. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 1991.
Perkin, H. ‘Epilogue: Teaching the Nations How to Play: Sport and Society in the British Empire
and the Commonwealth’. In The Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire, Society, edited by
J.A. Mangan. London: Frank Cass, 1992.
Ranger, T. ‘Pugilism and Pathology: African Boxing and the Black Urban Experience in Southern
Rhodesia’. Sport in Africa: Essays in Social History, edited by J.A. Mangan and W. Baker.
London: Africana Publishing, 1987.
Soldatow, S. Politics of the Olympics. North Ryde, New South Wales: Cassell, 1980.
Strack, H. Sanctions: The Case of Rhodesia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1978.
Stuart, O. ‘Players, Workers, Protestors: Social Change and Soccer in Colonial Zimbabwe’. In Sport,
Identity and Ethnicity, edited by J. MacClancy. Oxford: Berg, 1996.
Thompson, J. The Story of Rhodesian Sport, Vol. 1: 1889–1935. Bulawayo: Books of Rhodesia, 1976.
Weber, M. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Vol. 1. Edited by G. Roth and
C. Wittich. London: University of California Press, 1978.

Rhodesian Olympic Team

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Featured

Featured (20)

Rhodesian Olympic Team