Dropped balls, kicked into touch

Just heard a police spokesman, Rob Pope I think it was, on Radio Live confessing it was all a wee bit "confusing" for them but nothing much needed to be done. Sounds more like the NZRFU every day. The Police and the Rugby Union in NZ have a very close overlap in membership and mentality - thuggish, arrogant and just plain thick. They are never wrong and they never admit they could ever have been wrong in the past [see UPDATE below].

RNZ. Only was 1967 until they dropped all-white teams to South Africa as a policy. Did they do the haka when they toured before then? There were thousands marching against the NZRU racism in the 60s - well before 1981. They have a lot to apologise for. This government, though - the Tories - knights them.


The problem with the NZRFU's apology - I can't find it on their website - is that it just doesn't seem genuine. It's all a bit late, and when elders like Sir Colin Meads wants any apology conditional so that it doesn't mean he apologises for any of his collaboration with the Apartheid regime one wonders at the sincerity.

No statement, but I did find this:
That's their official history of the All Blacks above; ironically it's a total white-wash.

If they apologise why is this Pakeha Mythology "history" you see above you in black and white still on their website? If they have properly addressed their Apartheid history then why are they saying on their website that the team that gave them the haka and the black shirts are not capped, but that the racist all-white teams that toured South Africa have been? They can't even de-segregate themselves FFS and here they are purporting to say sorry but that no-one is responsible.

If this was South Africa this NZRFU-type organisation would have been disestablished years ago, because could it not also be true to say that the NZRFU operated a coloured or non-white team as well that ran by the name of NZ Maori? That is also the history is it not as part of 100 glorious years of NZ Maori rugby? 100 years of what? The NZRFU is saying that the Maori didn't exist before 1910 therefore your team from whom we stole the haka and the black shirts are not capped... but... all those players on those all-white tours are deemed to have been "genuine national selections" and are therefore capped. That is what they say the history is.

The solution would be to cap the other team and start again with the Aotearoa Rugby Union in the same way that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had to be totally reformed into the Northern Ireland Police Service, or the disestablishment of the British South Africa Police.

Just to be clear the NZRFU give as their reason for disqualifying the 1888-9 Natives team as not being a real NZ team as it was not "a genuine national selection" - and yet they do not describe the South African all-white selections as being anything less than genuine national selections. Four (another site says 5) white players in the 1888-9 team = not genuine national selection, no Maori players in teams to South Africa officially until 1967 = genuine national selection. That's the NZRFU logic - the thinking of a pine tree.

If you look at the Encyclopedia of New Zealand 1966 entry for Rugby Union Football you won't see anything about it. Like it didn't happen and wasn't happening. Thousands marched in the main centres in 1960 against the NZRFU all-white teams policy - which they still had in 1966 when this was published. And not a single word or any mention whatsoever about that racism and about that notable fact connected to rugby. The official histories are just white-washed Nazi propaganda bullshit and that includes the NZRFU. They neither thought to admit to it in 1966 any more than they care to think about it now. Why boast about treating people as second class citizens when your official policy is: being the least racist white country in the British Empire? Better not to acknowledge it if at all possible. Minute detail about all sorts of things about rugby union and their overseas tests, so much detail in this official history, but nothing about our Apartheid policy?
The only mention in 1966 about South Africa wasn't the fact the NZRFU sanctioned all-white teams on all three occasions they had toured, no it's the climate that is important. Can't admit to any racism when the publicity office has spent £100,000 on posters proclaiming NZ the least racist white country in the British Empire. Just don't say anything. Pretend it's not happening and if it ever gets raised just say it was just the way that it was. They are why it was the way it was of course, it couldn't have happened without them. They would rather cause an international boycott of the Olympics than have to stop being racist. It doesn't get either more stubborn, or more stupid, than that - classic National Party Rugby Union Police thuggery.

Why is it that the most violent games of rugby ever recorded occurred between all-white teams in South Africa? Here's a hint - it ain't the fucking "altitude differences, and the heat" - it's what happens when the National Party Rugby Union Police teams of white countries get together on the paddock - artless, gruesome, thuggery.

That team of 1888-9 gave them the haka and the black shirts from what I understand and yet they are being described as not genuine? - when their racially selected teams to South Africa are? That's a typical sort of official and institutional racism that exists today - it exists to protect the collaborators, Pakeha and Maori, from admitting to the misdeeds of the past.

[UPDATE 11Am Sat: Just started listening to the NZRU's CEO, Steve Tew, on this TV3 footage and the first thing he says is that the Union has issued an apology - which he describes as "genuine and unreserved" for "decisions we took" - and yet immediately after that he says (by way of reservation)

"in doing so we are very mindful not to be critical of our predecessors, at the time they were faced with very difficult and complex decisions and they did at the time what they thought were best..."

Now I don't want to even watch another second of that so-called "apology". I have heard enough. He's made it clear for us: those racist maggots - like the newly knighted Colin Meads - are all still part of the Broderbund of the NZRFU and they are not sorry at all for what they did. These are the people Tew is protecting. The "apology" doesn't mean a fucking thing.

Unfortunately Pita Sharples in a rush to push for a Maori sporting body has misunderstood the NZRU's statement:The Minister is wrong - he thinks they have apologised and wants them to have apologised in the way he says, but they most definitely have not. When Sharples says the NZRU "recognises the failures of past rugby administrators" he is quite mistaken - they don't at all - in fact they are at pains to excuse it behind a thoroughly spurious veil of it being "complex". Not ethical or moral it must be noted, just complex and difficult. The only people who think that indulging the racism of the white South Africans by co-operating with it (and to some extent perpetuating it in NZ) is "complex" is a racist. It is only "difficult" and "complex" for people who are racists and the Maori supporters of these racists who chose to collaborate within a racist system in order to advance themselves personally. They are the only people who would try to gloss over the outrages of the recent past as mere confusion.

And the kupapa Maori boot-lickers on the Maori board of the NZRFU are all part of the same shameful outfit doing their dirty work for them.

And yes, the racist goons of the NZRFU should be giving apologies (literally) for Africa:The NZRFU and the Muldoon Tory government caused that international incident. Of course NZ in its public consciousness and history doesn't care to remember that shame. Like all the other racist motivations and actions of the recent past they are blotted out. All we remember from '76 is that John Walker won a gold medal... we don't acknowledge that this was only possible because the African countries were boycotting NZ.]

[UPDATE: Sunday 3PM: Looks as though the Maori party have been going through the NZRFU website too and are quickly coming to the same conclusions —
For the Union's "apology" (that's not really an apology) to actually be an apology it has to correct the racism of the past - not entrench it and continue to tell lies about it as they do as part of their official record.

As I have said above if they are unwilling to come to terms with having ripped off and exploited the Maori players and teams and culture for their own benefit (and that now includes in turn whoring that out to corporate interests) and if they continue to diminish and exclude and marginalise the Maori players and teams and if they continue to white-wash the history then the NZRFU should be disestablished. All of that government money and ratepayers' subsidies that keep the NZRFU afloat should be cut and should go to a non-racist national Rugby body.

As for the IRB itself - some serious questions need to be asked: When they remind us that Danie fucking Craven was in charge of the IRB until the late 70s it tells us - it is definitive and self-publicised evidence - that the IRB was essentially a white club.--]