Students To Hold Apartheid Protest

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31942, 20 March 1969, Page 1

Students To Hold Apartheid Protest

As a protest against South Africa’s apartheid policies, and to mark the anniversary of the Sharpville massacre, the University of Canterbury Students’ Association will hold an open forum on the Avon River bank tomorrow.

To be held from 12.15 p.m. opposite the Christchurch public library, the forum will have a number of speakers on the AU Black tour of South Africa.

Black tour, politics could not be separated from sport when matches were watched by a segregated crowd of spectators, Miss Hobbs said.

As well as those 'opposing the tour, it was planned to invite representatives of the Rugby Union to attend and others known to be sympathetic to the tour, said the association's public relations officer (Miss M. Hobbs). The subject would be

thrown open to public discussion after scheduled speakers had spoken and people would be invited to contribute their views, she said. The decision to hold the forum came after a move from the president of the New Zealand University Students’ Association (Mr P. Rosier) that a meeting by way of protest be held in commemoration of Sharpville Day.

A resolution to this effect had been passed at the annual meeting of the Canterbury University Students’ Association at which there had also been expressions of opinion opposing the New Zealand Rugby tour and sending athletes to Rhodesia.

The Students’ Association objected to the apartheid policies of the South African Government, and maintained that in the case of the All