Abstract: As nations across the world grapple with the implications of the invasion of Ukraine by choosing to sever sporting and other cultural, political, and economic ties with Russia, my project offers a timely and important ethics-based examination of a related case, that of the international anti-apartheid sport boycott. African allies in the anti-apartheid struggle wrestled with the ethics of non-participation, the study of which contributes an interdisciplinary intervention to extant historiographies of sport, ethics, power, politics, race and global issues.

In this talk, I focus on Kenyan efforts to censure South Africa by boycotting major international para sport competitions. I argue that Kenyan leaders made no exception for para sport. They held athletes with disabilities to the same commitment to total disengagement with South African teams as was demanded of athletes in other realms.