Tennis and apartheid: how a South African teenager was denied his dream of playing at Wimbledon

Some 1971 tour players, from left, Hira Dhiraj, Hoosen Bobat, a Dutch friend, Jasmat Dhiraj, Charmaine Williams and Oscar Woodman. Williams toured at her own expense. Courtesy the 1971 players/UKZN Press

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, Hoosen Bobat from Durban, was excluded from achieving his dream of 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.

I tell Bobat’s story in the new book Tennis, Apartheid and Social Justice. I am a scholar who has published numerous books and papers on the histories of black exclusion and organised black resistance during apartheid, and on social justice and transformation.