In 1971, black tennis players from South Africa toured Europe, trying to escape the restrictions of apartheid. But even in the UK they faced exclusion. It’s time for this history to be faced
Today, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, hosts of the famous Wimbledon Championships, pledges to be diverse and inclusive. But in 1971 an 18-year-old university student from Durban, Hoosen Bobat, was excluded from becoming the first black South African to play in the Wimbledon men’s junior tournament. This was due to apartheid, and the collusion of the all-white tennis union in South Africa and the International Lawn Tennis Federation, with Wimbledon toeing the line.
As a scholar who has published books and papers on the histories of black exclusion and black resistance during apartheid, and on social justice and transformation, I tell Bobat’s story in Tennis, Apartheid and Social Justice. The book documents the 1971 first international tour by a squad of black South Africans who played under the auspices of the non-racial Southern African Lawn Tennis Union.