From 50 Years Ago: A Departure from Apartheid

 

South Africa has been readmitted to the Olympic Games after it made what can only be described as sweeping concessions on its racial policies — at least for the Olympic Games. Since 1963, when at its Baden Baden session the International Olympic Games Committee took the unprecedented decision to keep South Africa out, South Africans have missed the 1964 Tokyo Games, the 1964 

Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, and the most recent winter contest in Grenoble. Even now, it has been accepted for the Mexico City Games only, as the whole question of racial discrimination is to be reconsidered in 1970.

 

Meanwhile the International Committee possibly wants to put South Africa on probation. For the present, by South African standards, the concessions made by Johannesburg are substantial enough: South Africa is to send to Mexico City a single team, multi-racial in character, instead of two teams, one of Whites and one of non-Whites. The non-white and white members of the team are to travel together, and not separately. They are to wear the same uniform, be accommodated in the same hotels, and march as an integrated team under the same flag at the opening ceremony — all of which is a departure from earlier practice. 

 

These may not sound radical decisions on paper, but it is possible to foresee a time when the dark-skinned people of South Africa will come to represent their country more and more at international meets, even as it has happened in the United States.