SOUTH AFRICAN RUGBY TEAM TOURS NZ

40 years on: Photographer Ans Westra in the thick of the 1981 Springbok protest

Zoë George05:00, Aug 28 2021


ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Police and protestors face off during the Springbok tour protest in Wellington

The 1981 images are “grunty”. They capture a moment in time that divided the country, but also brought to light the issues New Zealand was facing too.

It was August 29, the day of the second test between the All Blacks and Springboks. There had been protests up and down the country, including violent clashes in Wellington, on Molesworth Street, exactly a month before.

On this day, thousands of people were marching from all over Wellington towards Athletic Park in Newtown to protest. There were anti-tour demonstrators with placards and wearing helmets, and they were facing off against police with batons drawn.

In the middle of them was Ans Westra, a 45-year-old who had made a name for herself as a photographer, notably for her images of Māori.

She wasn’t much interested in rugby, but she was very interested in social documentary.

So on that day in 1981, Westra set out with her trusty Rolleiflex camera, and rolls upon rolls of black and white film – her preferred medium because it allowed her to focus entirely on the image or scene without distraction of colour. She headed first to the Hutt Road, then up towards the game.

She took some of the most dramatic photos of the clashes that day.

One such scene included a lineup of police with batons, poised ready to advance against protestors.

JOSEPH KELLY
Suite Gallery's David Alsop with photographer Ans Westra.

“It's a very dramatic, telling image. In isolation that is really tough content and a difficult thing for New Zealand society to handle as being something we were part of,” said David Alsop, Westra’s friend, Suite Gallery owner and archive manager. “But she captured it in such an elegant and direct, honest way, which is what she is known for.”

Westra, now 85, lives a quiet life in Wellington, but her legacy, and of what happened on that day 40 years ago, will live on through her work.

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Westra had photographed rugby previously when the British Lions visited Athletic Park in 1971. “In one of her classic images of the All Blacks versus the British Lions ... the rugby ball is nowhere to be seen,” Alsop said.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY/SUPPLIED
Ans Westra wasn’t interested in rugby, but photographed the All Blacks and British Lions in 1971

But the Springbok tour was something else. It brought together a key component of New Zealand culture with pressing societal questions.

“It was that event that became a catalyst for New Zealand actually trying to get our head around our own mess,” Alsop said. “The way we were able to do that was because we started to support a cause for someone else that was different, but it gave people … a voice and momentum grew from that.”

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Ans Westra took thousands of photos of the Springbok tour protest in Wellington

For New Zealanders old enough to remember the tour, even vaguely, the photos are a reminder of the heightened tensions at this important cultural and national moment.

“We were on one side or the other. We knew someone who was a protester or had gone to a game. It was a divisive episode for New Zealand,” Alsop said.



ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Police with batons and helmets during the 1981 Springbok tour protest in Wellington

Two of Alsop’s other favourites involve police and protestors coming face to face. “Here Ans is at the battle-line, right in the thick of it,” he said.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Ans Westra photographed the battle lines during the 1981 Springbok tour protest in Wellington

Westra was never one to shy away, Alsop said, but she knew her limits. “Ans was always courageous, and she remains that now,” he said.

“She was extremely courageous with her willingness to get into situations many people would have shied away from,” he said.

“The protests. She wasn’t scared of being there. She was staunch. If she knew she was in danger, she would have moved and avoided any tricky situations. For the most part, she rolled her sleeves up and just got in there.”

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Police and protestors during the 1981 Springbok tour in Wellington

Another image that speaks to Alsop is of a young boy in Newtown with a motorcycle helmet perched on his head. Newtown was a “real hotbed” of protest activity, being just a stone’s throw away from Athletic Park.

The image brought back memories of his childhood and the tour. He was just nine when the Springboks came to visit his hometown of Rotorua. He and his family liked rugby. They followed it. He came from a school that had a strong, “ingrained” rugby culture.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
An image from Ans Westra's 1981 collection, documenting the 1981 Springbok tour protest in Wellington.

He vividly remembers cars lining the streets close to his home in the city the day the Springboks played Bay of Plenty, of hearing stories about how people ran onto the runway at Rotorua airport trying to block the plane carrying the Springboks.

Being so young at the time of the tour, it’s almost like Alsop could put himself in the child’s shoes, imagining children watching the action, possibly from behind the safety of fences.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY/SUPPLIED
Ans Westra photographed children who were part of the Springbok tour protest in Wellington in 1981

“I wondered if these kids knew what was going on. I wondered if they knew why people had placards. I wonder if they knew why people had cycle helmets on, cricket batting gloves on and protective items,” he said.

“The photographs show kids playing amongst the debris of the aftermath of the protests and I wondered how they felt about that and how affected those kids would have been about the events that had just unfold before their eyes.”


ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY/SUPPLIED
Protestors photograhed by Ans Westra during the 1981 Springbok tour

One of Westra’s goals was to return the “precious objects” back to the subjects of her images – the New Zealand public. That’s been done through the digitisation of her images, available via the National Library online.

There’s still thousands more images to go. Alsop’s best guess is there’s between 300,000 and 350,000 in all, which will take another two to four years to digitise.

“The far-reaching aspects of it and all the benefits and opportunities that came with the project, I didn’t really have a sense of the magnitude of what we were doing when we started. Ans had always talked about returning her images to the people, and now we’ve done that,” he said.

“We’ve completed the circle through the images being digitised and accessible to the public.

“People are able to ... see families, see events, see a whole side of New Zealand they would not be able to see if we hadn’t done that work.”