Bantu Africans Prefer Soccer

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32395, 7 September 1970, Page 7

Bantu Africans Prefer Soccer

The most popular form of football among the Bantu people in South Africa was soccer and there were a reported 1000 Bantu soccer teams in the Johannesburg area, the the Con-sul-General for South Africa in New Zealand (Mr P. H. Philip).

He was replying to a correspondent Richard Thompson, who, in a letter to the editor of “The Press,” wrote.— “Mr Philip, South African Consul-General in New Zealand, was recently reported as saying that ‘the Bantus did not play Rugby.’ The statement is untrue. In the words of Sir de Villiers Graaff. leader of South Africa’s United Party, Rugby is played in most Coloured and Bantu schools and there are many Bantu and Coloured senior Rugby clubs.’ It is hard to believe that the Consul-General could be unaware of the existence of the South African Rugby Board, which, together with other non-white bodies, has been invited by the English Rugby Union to participate in their centenary congress in the 1970-71 season. If the ConsulGeneral knows nothing of the matches between the African and Coloured Springboks he is not competent to express

an informed opinion on the! standard of non-white Rugby! in his country.” Mr Philip said he had never claimed that the Bantu; played no Rugby at all. “What I have said is that they play very little Rugby in comparison with the whitej or Coloured sectors of the! population.” Mr Philip also quoted an| article in the March issue of “Report From South Africa” on Bantu sporting pre-1 ferences and facilities. The article in the magazine, which is published by the director of information at! the South African Embassy,; London, placed great emphasis on soccer and hardly mentioned Rugby at all, he said.

Mr Philip also quoted a report in a Wellington newspaper by a graduate of the University of Victoria which supported this view. On June 3, this year, Mr J. Mehl, who had been in .South Africa for five months ; while employed by the department of nature conservation, at Stellenbosch, was quoted as saying that the African was basically interested only in soccer. Mr Mehl, who is vicecaptain of the Stellenbosch | University soccer team, said !that Cape Town had a population of 650,000. “This is made up of 200,000 whites, 350.000 Coloureds, 90,000 Africans and about 1000 Asians (mainly Indian and Malay). Whereas the Coloureds play all the ‘recognised’ sports of the whites (cricket, soccer, Rugby,’etc.), the African is basically interested only in soccer," Mr Mehl said.