John Minto: Solidarity, Forever
Minto speaking at a PSNA Ōtautahi rally. Source: Adrian Lambert Photography / @alambert_photo.
There are two John Mintos. There’s the John Minto who gently shakes your hand and leans in to catch your name. He’s easy-going and really funny, with the soft Kiwi accent of a favourite uncle.
Then there’s the other John Minto, who emerges when he furrows his brow and over five decades of activist experience suddenly appear on his face. This John Minto is the one best known to the public: voice firm, megaphone in hand, making headlines.
They’re in perfect balance. Minto, 71, has led countless protests, run for Mayor of Ōtautahi Christchurch twice, been assaulted and arrested, and lambasted on social media. But he’s as active as ever, now the National Chair for the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
He first got involved with activism while studying at Massey University in the early 1970s, where “there were big debates going on” about the upcoming 1973 Springbok Tour, and Minto was “absorbing it all”.
South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation had led to calls for Norman Kirk’s Labour Government to prevent the South African rugby union team – the Springboks – from embarking on a tour of Aotearoa. These calls were successful; the 1973 Tour was cancelled.
In Ahuriri Napier in 1975, Minto’s work became “active activism”, and his move to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland stepped it up further. In 1980, Minto took over from Trevor Richards as the new President of Halt All Racist Tours (HART).
Minto led HART in protesting the 1981 Springbok Tour. This was a much larger movement than the one in 1973, with demonstrations at rugby matches turning violent in clashes with riot squads and pro-Tour civilians. This felt important. It was an opportunity to change the whole world in these little islands. Minto believes the focus on sport was a major factor.
“It was because I thought New Zealand had this unique relationship with South Africa, through rugby,” said Minto. “So I felt that this was an issue where New Zealand could put pressure on that relationship.”
Then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon let this Tour go ahead – but both countries changed forever. The 1981 Tour is a landmark in Aotearoa New Zealand history. It asked us to decide who we wanted to be.
South Africa abolished apartheid in the 1990s. It recently filed a case at the United Nations, accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid – and used its own history as an example.
Minto became a bit of a local legend. He appears in Merata Mita’s landmark 1983 documentary Patu!, which chronicles the 1981 protests. Minto, then in his late twenties, is shown deciding the best time to meet at the bus terminal and who’s going to be in charge of the leaflets. Later, as we hear protestors sing “Solidarity Forever”, we see a photo of Minto with a cloth clutched to his bleeding forehead.
This moment returned to the national memory this past February. Images circulated of Minto at a protest in Lyttelton, once again with a bleeding forehead, getting his pepper-sprayed eyes rinsed out. History never repeats, right?
The scooter helmet worn by Minto during the 1981 protests. Source: Helmet, circa 1981, New Zealand, by Speedway. Gift of John Minto, 2008. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Te Papa (GH012029).
Minto has been the PSNA’s National Chair for a few years. They used to have a few small protests annually, on significant dates – like May 15, for Nakba Day, and November 29, for International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Minto says the PSNA successfully pressured the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to withdraw investments in Israeli banks, and was in a “long discussion” with the Labour government about potential policy changes.
Amid a massive wave of support for Palestine since October, the PSNA has been holding weekly public rallies. The organisation has grown significantly.
“The level of awareness has just rocketed up. We’ve more than doubled our database, in terms of the number of people who are receiving our newsletter… and that's a good indication of where we are right at the moment,” said Minto.
Minto admires the students of today. He says that in recent years, Aotearoa’s university campuses haven’t been as focused on activism as in previous decades. But he doesn’t blame students at all. “I think a lot of it has to do with the economic changes that were brought in by Labour in 1984. Neoliberal economics, where students now have to pay […] huge amounts for their education.”
He believes it’s skewed the aim of education away from making us better people and “into a kind of a transactional process… a way to get some skills that will allow you to become a brick in the wall of the capitalist establishment.”
Minto knows young people; he worked for years as a high school teacher. Just like in 1981, young people are at the heart of this wave of activism. In recent months, there has been an increase in on-campus protests at universities like Massey, Auckland, and UC.
“Young people are fantastic. I take my hat off to them. So many young people doing such an incredibly good job in keeping the Palestinian issue in front of the public, because that’s the most important thing,” said Minto.
“If we can keep it in front of the public, then opinion moves in the direction of Palestine, always – it never moves in the direction of Israel. It was the same in the 1970s.”
Minto is outspoken about his disappointment with the mainstream media in Aotearoa New Zealand. “They use the words ‘butchery’ and ‘slaughter’ when it comes to Israeli civilians that are killed. They refuse to use those words when Palestinians are being killed in the most arbitrary and indiscriminate ways.”
“And the public picks up all of these things, you know, without even realising it. We pick up the narrative of Israel, and we never get the narrative of Palestine.”
Springbok Tour protestors and Police on August 15, 1981. Source: Mario Grinwis / Canterbury Stories / Christchurch City Libraries. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Mario Grinwis Collection (CCL-Grinwis-07).
He’s particularly distressed by a television interview between Jack Tame and Israeli Ambassador Ran Yaakoby in April, which he calls an “absolute outrage”.
“I’ve been… taking a close interest in politics for 60 years – I've never seen anything like the Jack Tame interview. And the context in which it occurred: you've got a genocide happening, and Television New Zealand takes the criminals who are committing the genocide, and gives them 45 minutes on national television, to explain and justify and present unchallenged arguments that all fall over under scrutiny.”
A focus for the PSNA is the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which Minto calls “the most important strategy that New Zealanders can use to support the people of Palestine”.
The PSNA’s six primary boycott targets are Obela, BP, Caltex, HP, SodaStream, and McDonald’s, all companies with ties to Israel. There’s also a much longer list, but Minto primarily advocates for boycott of these six to maximise the effectiveness of the movement.
He says he really wants to stress this next point. It’s the core of his work. “HART was, or the anti-apartheid movement was, able to keep the issue of apartheid in front of the public all the time. And whenever we were doing that, public opinion was inexorably moving in the direction of support for Nelson Mandela and the liberation struggle.”
I ask Minto how much of an impact the 1981 protests had on bringing an end to South African apartheid. He says he doesn’t want to overstate it, but he does believe the protests in Aotearoa – and worldwide – brought it to a quicker end than it would have otherwise.
There are two John Mintos, because one can’t exist without the other. The student and the teacher, the listener and the speaker, the bloodied leader and the leaflet organiser. As long as the fight continues, we’ll see Minto there.
I see him again while I’m covering the Undercroft protest. He wears a beanie and puffer jacket with shorts and jandals. He’s there to support the young protestors, as he’s always done. I shake his hand and say hello; he leans in to hear what I say, but he doesn’t seem to catch it, because we’re drowned out by the chants of the protestors. They sing “Solidarity Forever”.
