Boycott of the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976: the emergence of an “African force”

While the final preparations for the Paris Olympic Games are underway, can we still believe in the “apoliticism” of the Games? The Montreal Olympic Games provide one example – among many others – of the political use of the Olympic Games.

For the first time in its history, and only the second French-speaking city since Paris in 1924, Montreal hosted the Olympic Games in 1976. The stakes were high both for the city – which hopes to obtain world status against its rival Toronto – and for Quebec, which jealously guards its French-speaking identity within a predominantly English-speaking Canada.

Four years after the Munich Games and the tragedy of the execution of the Israeli delegation by the Palestinian Black September commando, security issues are on the agenda for the Montreal Games.

But apart from the withdrawal of Taiwan, under pressure from China, geopolitical questions seem to focus on the Cold War and its sporting metaphor: the Olympic competition between the United States and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). One week before the opening of the Games, no one imagines the thunderclap – with worldwide resonance – that will fall on the Montreal Olympiad.

As a historian and researcher, I have co-edited several works and devoted several works to the history of the Olympic Games. Here I take the example of Montreal in 1976 to explain how the Olympics often served as a political forum.

The emergence of an African geopolitical force

Since 1963, when it was created, the Organization of African Unity (OAU – 32 African countries at the time – which became the African Union in 2002) set itself two main political goals. On the one hand, the decolonization of the last African territories under Western supervision, on the other hand to bring down the South African and Rhodesian Apartheid regimes. The composition of the International Olympic Committee, after decolonization, was disrupted by the entry of new independent countries. The balances of the Cold War were modified, and under pressure from representatives of newly independent nations and the glacis of communist countries, South Africa was excluded from the Olympic Games in 1964, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1972.

Same upheaval at the UN, where pressure on South Africa increased after the decolonization of African and Asian countries during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962, for example, a “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” aimed squarely at South Africa was adopted, and in 1969 the General Assembly called on all States to end cultural exchanges. , educational or sporting with the “racist regime of South Africa”. But these international pressures are countered by the right of veto or the abstention of certain Western countries, notably the United States, and have no binding value.

Between 1974 and 1975, the last Portuguese colonies (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome) became independent. The main political objective therefore became for the OAU the fight against Apartheid. Despite the organization’s calls for a boycott of South Africa and the action of its members within the UN “Special Committee to Study the Apartheid Policy of the Government of the Republic of South Africa” , the concrete weight of the OAU in the isolation of South Africa is weak, a reflection of its geopolitical role on a global scale.

In 1975, the report of the UN Special Committee again insisted on the fight against countries which continued to maintain links with South Africa and Rhodesia, particularly in sport.

A massive boycott

In this context, the OAU will organize in 1976 the request for the exclusion of New Zealand from the Olympic Games in Montreal, on the grounds that it authorized its rugby team in 1976 to tour South Africa for playing against the all-white Springbok team. The threat of a boycott by African countries is the major geopolitical event of these Olympic Games and comes less than a week before their opening: the pressure on the IOC is therefore maximum.

An event catalyzed the OAU’s reaction: the massacre in Soweto, in the suburbs of Johannesburg. On June 16, 1976, a demonstration by schoolchildren and high school students turned into a riot. The incredible violence of the police repression resulted in the death of 600 demonstrators and the arrest of tens of thousands of people, mainly black people.

The OAU met from June 24 to July 3, 1976 in Port-Louis (Mauritius), on the occasion of the 27th ordinary session of the organization’s Council of Ministers. Her reaction was violent: in addition to condemning the massacre, she called for armed struggle against the South African regime and supported the delivery of weapons to the liberation movements.

A resolution directly concerns New Zealand, clearly inviting the IOC to exclude this country from the Olympic Games. It is July 15, two days before the opening of the Games. Many African delegations are already present in Montreal.

The sports movement is therefore defeated by the decision of African States, at a time when complex negotiations are underway with the IOC. The failure of this negotiation led to the boycott of 22 African countries. Two countries refuse to participate in this movement, faithful allies of France: Ivory Coast and Senegal. The boycott is therefore a decision of the OAU member states, without the African delegates to the IOC or the National Olympic Committees having the slightest influence on the decision. It is a real thunderbolt on the Olympic Games, which are losing part of their sporting appeal in favor of an indictment of the racial policy of South Africa and the countries complacent towards it.

Mediatically and politically, by using the Olympic stage, the OAU has just achieved a masterstroke: the world press only talks about the boycott, which highlights the question of Apartheid.

What consequences?

The consequences of the boycott of African countries are significant. First of all, Africa asserts itself as an autonomous power in the field of international sports diplomacy, which here plays a compensatory role in relation to the relative ineffectiveness of the OAU within the UN, particularly for the promoting sanctions against South Africa. The postcolonial links of African nations are rehearsed: the boycott is followed almost equally by former British and French colonies, the former belonging mainly to the Commonwealth and the latter to France’s African “pre-square”.

The economic break with the former metropolises in the field of sports diplomacy is clear, except for Senegal and Ivory Coast which vote with France, denoting their political and economic dependence on the former metropolis.

In this context, the IOC asserts in the crisis both its independence, its powerlessness and its conservatism. Its independence since, contrary to the exclusion of Rhodesia in 1972, it maintains its position, arguing that rugby is not an Olympic sport and that New Zealand’s sports policy does not depend on the IOC. Its helplessness, since the boycott is ultimately a success. In this context, the decision to boycott comes from the OAU: the States, facing the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), have the last word.

Its conservatism, since if the IOC gives in under pressure to exclude South Africa: it does not anticipate the aftershocks of this shock wave, of which the rugby matches between South Africa and New Zealand are the developer. There is in fact a double issue, for the OAU, in the fight against compromise with Apartheid: an undeniable moral issue, Apartheid recalling in a radicalized form the old colonial domination; a geopolitical issue to the extent that the OAU also bases its “pan-African” coherence on this fight.

Finally, the boycott of the Montreal Olympic Games reveals the complexity of international sporting relations, which goes far beyond the simple East-West confrontation. Here he illustrates the efforts of the OAU to realize a true “African force” on the world stage, by circumventing the blockages of the UN to attack the IOC. The 1976 Olympic Games were therefore indeed a political scene, on a global scale.