Cape Crusaders crossed a line at Cape Town Stadium that had nothing to do with rugby

The behaviour of some South African All Blacks fans at the Cape Town Stadium welcome event shamed themselves and the team they claim to love. Cape Town, they chanted, was the All Blacks’ home town. During those tours, Māori players were classified as “honorary whites” to gain entry to apartheid South Africa, a humiliation that New Zealand Rugby consented to. But ambivalence is not the same as what was on display in Cape Town. In short, there is a difference between inherited support and manufactured antagonism, and what happened at Cape Town Stadium fell firmly into the second category.