History professor Catsam provides illuminating historical context for recent intersections of sports and political activism in this well-crafted study of the 1981 U.S. tour of South Africa’s national rugby team. The Springboks, who, Catsam writes, “embodied their home country’s white supremacist apartheid policies,” arrived in the U.S. during Ronald Reagan’s first year as president. His administration had adopted a policy of constructive engagement with the apartheid regime, a shift from the approach of Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter. In fact, the invitation from the United States of America Rugby Football Union to the Springboks was sent on the very day of Reagan’s inauguration. But the prior leg of the team’s tour, in New Zealand, was marked by major protests, and concerns about a repetition in the U.S. led to cancelling matches scheduled for Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City, whose match was shifted to Albany, despite efforts to cancel it on public safety grounds that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Through extensive research and interviews—including with members of the team—Catsam assiduously captures how the uproar around the team’s tour primed “the pump of an American anti-Apartheid movement,” ultimately playing a part in the evolution of American policy. This account of an obscure yet impactful moment in history will fascinate sports fans.
— Publishers Weekly
Catsam's ardent account of the South African national rugby team’s controversial 1981 tour of New Zealand and the U.S. examines the politicization of sport during the apartheid era. Rugby, like every other part of society in twentieth-century South Africa, was racially segregated. By the late 1970s, anti-apartheid pressure meant that the Springboks national team was effectively banned from international competition. But, with the election of Ronald Reagan, who was politically sympathetic to South African regime, advocates for the Springboks saw an opening and charged into it. Meanwhile, a few rugby organizers belatedly tiptoed toward racial integration, and center Errol Tobias became the first person of color to play a test match as a Springbok. The 1981 international tour would be disrupted by protests, civil disobedience, a court case, and a pipe bomb. But it would also lay the foundation for later international engagement, including South Africa hosting the 2010 World Cup. Informed by conversations with key figures and access to records from the South African Rugby Board, Catsam emphasizes the bureaucratic and social challenges of “rugby diplomacy.” His descriptions of the matches themselves reveal a fan’s love for the sport.
— Booklist
Catsam offers an informative, detailed narrative of how the sport of rugby became entangled with the American anti-apartheid movement emerging in the 1970s and 1980s…. Catsam argues well that there are times when sport cannot be separated from politics—allowing the Springboks to play without protest in the US was just as political as condemning them and the Americans who welcomed them. Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
— Choice Reviews
Lifts the lid on American collaboration with sports apartheid in a valuable collage of rugby, Springboks, and racism.
— Peter Hain, leading anti-apartheid campaigner and co-author with André Odendaal of Pitch Battles: Sport, Racism and Resistance
It took four decades for a behind-the-scenes look from an American perspective on the controversial and bloody South African rugby tour of 1981 to New Zealand and the United States. Derek Catsam made it worth the wait.
— Heindrich Wyngaard, South African journalist, broadcaster, and author
As a player who was part of the 1981 Springbok rugby team that toured New Zealand and the USA, we as sportsmen wanted to contribute to the game—but in Flashpoint, Derek Catsam provides a complete perspective, including the political views that played out in the background. The role of the anti-apartheid movement in America as well as the foreign policy of the time is excellently reproduced.
— Theuns Stofberg, former Springbok captain and member of the 1981 Springboks team
Flashpoint is a pioneering and ground-breaking publication that fundamentally contributes to deepening our understanding of an important period in international sports history. [It] not only offers an enriching account of an important event but also lays the foundations and provides a proper framework for the study of USA-South African sporting relations during apartheid.
— Hendrik Snyders, Head of the History Department, National Museum of South Africa, Bloemfontein
Derek Catsam’s Flashpoint is an imaginative and illuminating study of the interplay among race, sports, and politics. Written with passion and verve, this fascinating book relates the saga of the Springboks, an all-white South African rugby team that undertook an ill-fated but highly consequential tour of the United States and New Zealand in 1981. Catsam’s artful and enlightening exploration of a pivotal moment in the evolution of the American anti-apartheid movement takes us inside the “scrum” of history, revealing the roots and complexity of an important struggle for human rights and racial equality.
— Raymond Arsenault, author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice and Arthur Ashe: A Life
Catsam tells a fascinating story in his book, one that serves as a powerful counterweight to the portrayal of the sport as a racial equalizer in the 2009 Clint Eastwood film Invictus, a motion picture about South Africa's triumph during the post-apartheid 1995 Rugby World Cup. Catsam adeptly illustrates how sports can be a valuable window into political struggles, and how those who often protest that sports should not mix with politics are at best naïve and at worst mendacious. He provides an immense amount of detailed information in his accounts, which strengthens his argument immensely. On the whole, this excellent book provides a lively account of a moment in sports history that has been largely forgotten, but that proved to have had an important impact upon the anti-apartheid movement.
— Peace and Change
Catsam chronicles the [1981] Springbok tour of the United States and firmly places the protests on American soil in contrast to the larger anti-apartheid movement globally.… Catsam draws from an impressive range of sources. He uses archives and libraries in six different countries and should be commended for accessing over a dozen in South Africa and the United States. Moreover, Catsam uses player biographies and autobiographies to great effect. In particular, he uses them when recalling episodes and matches on the tour.… Catsam clearly has a talent for writing a good story. The lengths to which the American organizers and their South African counterparts went to fool would-be protesters, the media, the public, and Springbok players themselves is staggering. This is engrossing reading and first-rate.… [T]his is an excellent book and an important contribution to the scholarship on rugby and anti-apartheid protests. Catsam highlights and shows the lengths to which rugby officials went to ensure the tour was a success. He details their collaboration, acquiescence, and subterfuge with great skill.
— Journal of Sport History