Garden Place will be the venue for what’s being touted as ”a one-off historical performance” on Friday, when Chris Baigent unveils his new Springbok Tour-inspired song to the world.
The Hamilton musician, who claims to be New Zealand’s biggest Bob Dylan fan, will perform The Whole World is Watching at 12.30pm.
The song is his tribute to Hamilton; the protestors who stopped the game at Rugby Park on July 25, 1981; and to Dylan himself.
He is hoping to attract a small crowd to Friday’s show to help chant the chorus.
Baigent, who usually goes by the stage name Rivers and performs with the band River’s Edge and as one half of the duo Mimi and Rivers – said he considered the Springbok game to be the city’s finest moment.
”It seemed appropriate I write about the Hamilton event that made Nelson Mandela feel ‘as if the sun had come out’. With [Mandela’s] death last year it’s more poignant.”
Hamilton was the only city where a rugby game against the Springboks was called off during the 1981 tour.
Five thousand protesters left from Garden Place to make their way to Rugby Park, where a violent and terrifying ordeal awaited them. The 350 protesters who made it into the centre of the rugby field were surrounded by 25,000 angry rugby fans, who threw missiles at them and yelled ”We want rugby” and ”kill, kill, kill”.
The protesters chanted back ”the whole world is watching” as the footage was broadcast to South Africa.
That chant was first used in 1968 by Vietnam War protesters outside the Chicago Hilton Hotel, as they were filmed being beaten by police with batons.
The origin of the words aren’t certain but many believe they come from the lyrics of the Bob Dylan song When the Ship Comes In from the 1964 album The Times They Are a Changin’.
Dylan performed the song in 1963 at the now-most famous rally for civil rights ever held in the United States, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
At that rally Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and called for an end to racism, in his historic ”I Have a Dream” speech.
