Consequences/Aftermath
Some consequences of the 1981 Springbok Tour was that South Africa never toured New Zealand again till after apartheid in South Africa had ended in 1994. During the tour no one was killed but many were injured by police and their batons. Hundreds of people were arrested by police and in Hamilton alone over fifty people were arrested in a period of an hour. There was one tour that toured South Africa before Apartheid ended and the team was known as the New Zealand Cavaliers. They were the New Zealand Cavaliers because the NZRFU wanted to have nothing to do with the tour. During the Tour many New Zealanders believed that New Zealand was the source of embarrassment hosting South Africa which every other country in the world had decided to ignore because of their treatment of the black South Africans with its rules of segregation and the Afrikaans belief in white supremacy. The tour caused the country to be divided between pro tour people who were often the farmers and people that lived in towns outside of the big cities and anti-tour people who lived in the big cities such as Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. Pro tour supporters held the belief that the tour should go ahead because politics should have nothing to do with sport. The anti-tour supporters believed that the issues of apartheid in South Africa needed to be addressed by the world and that by New Zealand inviting the Springboks to tour was only further fuelling apartheid to continue. New Zealand was frowned upon for letting the Springboks tour and New Zealand was even accused of breaking the Gleneagles Agreement which was put in place by the Commonwealth to stop any Commonwealth country from having any sporting contact with South Africa while they were in apartheid.
''I think the most important impact of the tour in New Zealand was to stimulate the whole debate about racism and about the place of Maori in our community.– John Minto
New Zealand lost is innocence by letting the South African rugby team tour New Zealand. The world saw New Zealand in a different light and the issues of racism came to the surface. The tour and the allowing of the tour to go ahead showed the New Zealand had an underlying problem of racism. This knowledge that New Zealand gained John Minto thinks helped to improve the situation for Maori in New Zealand. The Waitangi Tribunal which was set up in 1975 got more attention from the New Zealand citizens after the tour and more Maori grievances were being addressed.
In the 1974 the Labour Party lead by David Lange won the election by a landslide which took Robert Muldoon out of office.
In the 1974 the Labour Party lead by David Lange won the election by a landslide which took Robert Muldoon out of office.