TEAM FOR SOUTH AFRICA M.C.C. Choice “Ominous”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31773, 2 September 1968, Page 22

TEAM FOR SOUTH AFRICA M.C.C. Choice “Ominous”

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND.

The exclusion of the Coloured Cape Town-born batsman B. D’Oliveira, from the English cricket team to tour South Africa this year had ominous significance for New Zealand sports administrators “in their unwholesome wooing of South African apartheid sports groups,” says the Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality.

A statement on behalf of the association was issued today by the secretary (Mr T. O. Newnham).

“The New Zealand Rugby Union, which has been . publicly challenged by Mr Richard Thompson (reader in sociology at the University of Canterbury), both in the press and at a recent public meeting in the Town Hall, to say whether or not it has received assurances that Maoris would be welcomed in a New Zealand team for South Africa, remains silent,” the statement said.

“Was the answer given for them by the applause with which South African Nationalist Party members at a rally at Potchefstroom last week greeted the announcement that D’Oliveira had been left out of the M.C.C. touring side?

“Is Mr Vorster’s message to all sports bodies wishing to tour South Africa ‘Bring a national side but make sure your non-white players are out of form’?” The association last week sent a cablegram to the secretary of the M.C.C. team immediately after it heard of D’Oliveira’s exclusion, expressing members’ disgust at what they called the “unsporting selection” of the side. Mr Newnham said tonight that the D'Oliveira case could well be a preview to the

Rugby union selection of the New Zealand team to tour South Africa next year. “C.A.R.E. once again challenges the New Zealand Rugby Union, and indeed ail our sport bodies which seek to arrange tours to South Africa, to say whether or not they are covertly negotiating on this basis. “We believe that to fawn to apartheid in sport is to poison race relations at home.”