South African view stated

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32665, 22 July 1971, Page 3

South African view stated

(New Zealand Press Association)

BLENHEIM, July 21. “It isn’t the whole Church or all the churches who are opposed in a militant sense to the South African Government’s policies,” said the South African Consul-General in New Zealand (Mr P. H. Philip) in Blenheim.

After an address to the Blenheim South Rotary Club, Mr Philip was asked why, if his explanation of South Africa’s multi - racial issue was so reasonable, the South African churches did not see the reasonableness of it. The opposition was a fairly small minority, he said, “and very nearly all this minority are not South African-born. They are ministers, priests, and clergymen who have come from overseas, who have the ideas about South Africa which are common overseas, and who tend to come with a crusading spirit —knights in white armour on white horses who are going to put everything right." He was not suggesting they were not perfectly sincere, idealistic people, said Mr Philip, "but they are the sort of people who say there is only one answer here and that is one man, one vote, and by saying that, you mean an African Government—T don’t like white supremacy, so let’s have black supremacy instead’.” That did not solve anything but simply switched the problem around, he said. “What we say is: ‘I don’t like supremacy white or black, so let’s all split up and each country govern itself’,” he said. "In our view their good in-,

tentions are those good intentions which pave the road to hell. In some cases they have done so: in the northern part where about three million Africans have died as a result of perfectly well-mean-ing people who didn’t understand the problem in many cases.”

Mr Philip said that in the last count there were something like 1450 priests and clergymen of all churches in South Africa who came from overseas, and of those about 1400 were moderate,' ordinary people who didn’t get their names in the paper—“and who don’t get on television from time to time.”