at the 1976 Olympics, the boycott of several African countries to denounce apartheid

The Montreal Games were marked by protests from 22 African countries. They demanded the exclusion of New Zealand, which had previously sent its rugby players to South Africa, then under the apartheid regime.

As the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics approaches, we look back to 1976. The Olympics are held in Montreal, Canada, and see the emergence of an African force in world sport. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) strikes a major blow by demanding that New Zealand be excluded from the Olympics, on the grounds that it allowed its rugby team, the famous All Blacks, to tour South Africa to play the all-white Springboks.

The fight against apartheid became one of the OAU’s main political objectives. Negotiations were then initiated with the IOC, but they failed. As a result, 22 African countries decided to boycott the Montreal Games on the eve of the opening ceremony. Only two countries on the continent, Senegal and the Ivory Coast, refused to join the movement and sent delegations to Canada.

The OAU protest movement was actually a reaction to the bloody repression by South African security forces against the township of Soweto in the suburbs of Johannesburg. On June 16, 1976, a demonstration by schoolchildren and high school students turned into a riot. The violence of the repression left 600 dead and several tens of thousands of people, mainly blacks, arrested.
The reaction of the OAU, which met in a summit just before the Montreal Games, was extremely strong. Not only did the pan-African organization condemn the Soweto massacre, but it also called for armed struggle against the apartheid regime and supported the delivery of arms to the African National Congress, the movement of Nelson Mandela, who was then in prison.

It would take 1991 for South Africa to be reintegrated into the Olympic movement. The South African regime had been excluded from the Olympic Games since 1964. In June 1991, the government abolished the Population Classification Act, a pillar of apartheid, this was one of the two conditions mentioned by the IOC for a definitive reintegration of South Africa into the Olympic committee. The second was the merger of the federations of each sport, until then divided between white and non-white populations, which would take place gradually.

The IOC decided to reinstate South Africa into the Olympic Committee on 9 July 1991. South African athletes were allowed to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games and won two silver medals.