‘Cock-eyed’ Answer On Race Problem

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32251, 20 March 1970, Page 1

‘Cock-eyed’ Answer On Race Problem

(from Our Own Reporter)

TIMARU, March 19.

In thinking of the race problem in South Africa, people in New Zealand tended to measure it against the yardstick of conditions in their own country, and often this gave a cock-eyed answer, the South African ConsulGeneral in New Zealand (Mr P. H. Phillip) told a gathering of Rotary Clubs in Timaru.

Mr Phillip made a plea that the world—while not necessarily approving—should at least give the South African Government credit for making a sincere attempt to solve its racial problem. “One of the chief difficulties is that you have a multi-racial problem and are applying multi-racial solutions; in South Africa, it is a multinational problem and we are applying a multi-national solution,” he said. The equation that many New Zealanders tended to use was that of Maori-pakeha

in New Zealand and blackwhite in South Africa, Mr Phillip said. It was wrong to compare the African with the Maori race, which had culture of its own, and which comparatively was very advanced. He considered that a closer equation of the Maori-pakeha was the English-speaking white South African and the Afrikaans-speaking white, because, like the Maori, the English-speaking white was in the minority in his country. In both cases the gulf was sufficiently narrow to be bridged, said Mr Phillip.