All Blacks Entertain Coloureds In Hotel

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32352, 18 July 1970, Page 1

All Blacks Entertain Coloureds In Hotel

(From T. P. McLEAN) BLOEMFONTEIN. The touring All Blacks have been visited by Coloureds in their hotel room in Bloemfontein.

I Their principal guide and friend was the All Black fiveeighths, E. W. Kirton, whom 1 they had met first. Kirton - took them to various bedI rooms of players, provided 1 them with beer, and was 1 their host while they chatted. I The teachers were especi- . ally interested to meet B. ■ Williams and S. M. Going. . Kirton said later that the ’ main enthusiasm of the > teachers was Rugby, which f they watched and played with enthusiasm, and talked about with real knowledge.

This unprecedented experience in a city which has the reputation of being the most rigidly segregationist of all places of importance in South Africa, occurred on Thursday afternoon when seven coloured secondary school teachers spent nearly two hours with members of the team.

They spoke rather sourly of the work of the president of the South African Rugby Board, Dr Danie Craven. They complained that he was too autocratic in the office and that Springbok teams of his era had been excessively interested in victory. On education they were critical of the lack of opportunities and incentive for both pupils and teachers. At their school, for example, only 10 of about 550 pupils were likely to reach the sixth form, ,

At teachers’ college there was almost no opportunity to take degrees except by correspondence. The senior member of the group, a master teaching in English and vice-principal of the school, was the only one of the seven taking a degree course. He is in his thirties. “We didn’t know whether we would be allowed to meet your team,” this man told Kirton. “It has been a great pleasure tb do so.”