Apartheid Reason For Contract Refusal

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 17

Apartheid Reason For Contract Refusal

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, August 24.

The managing director of one of Britain’s largest building firms, Wates, Ltd, yesterday said that he had turned down the chance of expanding into South Africa because he objected in principle to the apartheid system. Last January the firm was asked by a South African company to sell to it the franchise for a new prefabricated building system it had developed. The sales opportunities for this in the South African market were very attractive, but Wates’s directors turned down the offer because they were opposed to apartheid. The directors were then invited to visit South Africa and assess the atmosphere for themselves.

Mr Neil Wates, the managing director, accepted the invitation and in a statement yesterday said he was now more convinced than ever that his company’s franchise should not be granted to South Africa, although he stressed he was expressing a personal view which did not necessarily commit his colleagues. “In South Africa I met liberal businessmen of the highest calibre who argued that economic forces were bound to bring about the downfall of apartheid,” said the statement “Notwithstanding this, the idea of doing business there is totally unacceptable to me. We could not be true to the basic principles on which we run pur business, and we should lose our integrity in the process. “We should have to oper-

ate in a social climate where the colour of a man’s skin is his most important attribute, and where there is virtually no communication between the races. We should have to operate within an economic climate which is designed deliberately to demoralise and to maintain an industrial helotry. We should in turn profit from such exploitation and ultimately end up with a vested interest in its maintenance,” Mr Wates’s statement added.