Boycott On South Africa Has Opposite Effect

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30316, 17 December 1963, Page 14

Boycott On South Africa Has Opposite Effect

(N.Z. Prets Association—Copvrtaht)

LONDON. December 16.: The vaunted boycott oni South Africa had merely! driven more whites into the apartheid camp and had had! little or no effect on the South African economy, says a special correspondent of i the "Yorkshire Post" un a visit to South Africa after an absence of four years. For every lost market fori South African industrial and, agricultural exports new cus-l tamers were appearing. They included many in the Far East and Communist bloc I— specially Czechoslovakia, which was selling arms to South Africa through a Cape Town import company. ( Egypt has continued to advertise for South African' tourists. Thousands of men from Nyasaland are crossing the Limpopo river into the Republic each year to work in the gold mines; canned pilchards are being bought byTanganyika and Uganda: and even Ghana, one of South Africa's chief verbal enemies. Ilia# been buying gold-mining I equipment. Giving his impressions of Cape Town, the correspondent says that skyscrapers are going up all over the place, immigrants are being wel-| corned with open arms to try j to shorten the unemployment I list, and houses are in acute demand. The impression of a boom - was confirmed by a look at

; South Africa’s economic ! statistics. Industrial produc- | tion was running more than 10 per cent higher than in 11962. while retail sales were up 9 per cent | “In materialistic terms, i South Africa is becoming a land of milk and honey in a ’continent in which both commodities are generally in ; short supply,” the corresi pondent says.