with Rachel Mackintosh
Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 21st August 2022
Burning Down the House was part of the soundtrack of my adolescence.
The song came out two years after the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand that had united a nationwide protest movement from across the political and socio-economic spectrum, where tens of thousands of us had marched together periodically in the year leading up to the tour, and twice a week from 19 July — my mother’s birthday and the day our family went to the airport at dawn to protest the Springboks’ arrival — to 12 September — the fourth anniversary of Steve Biko’s death from severe beating in custody and the date of the final test match of the tour. The second match — against the Waikato provincial team on 25 July — was called off after protesters invaded the pitch. Apart from that one match, the tour went ahead. The movement didn’t achieve its aim of stopping the tour.
The introduction to the subject of the tour on the NZ History website has the subheading, “A country divided”.
For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/burning-down-the-house/
