Waldheim talks with Vorster

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32860, 8 March 1972, Page 17

Waldheim talks with Vorster

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

CAPE TOWN, March 7.

The United Nations SecretaryGeneral (Dr Kurt Waldheim) will leave for Namibia today to see the territory whose future has deadlocked South Africa and the United Nations for 26 years.

Dr Waldheim, the first Secretary-General to set foot in South Africa for 11 years, flew to Cape Town yesterday and spent 45 minutes with the Prime Minister (Mr John Vorster). They will continue talks today before the South African Foreign Minister (Dr Hilgard Muller) and the United Nations party set off for their on-the-spot inspection.

South Africa has rejected repeated United Nations calls to leave the territory which it first administered under a mandate of the now-defunct League of Nations 50 years ago.

Rival demonstrators greeted Dr Waldheim at the airport yesterday. University of Cape Town students waved banners proclaiming “No apartheid for South-West Africa.” A handful of students from Stellenbosch University thrust forward placards reading: “We have nothing to hide." Unrest is simmering in Namibia.

A strike by 13,000 Ovambo

contract workers threatened to paralyse the territory’s economy in January and Ovamboland has been placed under emergency regulations allowing detention without trial and restricting entry to Government permit-holders. One of them, the Bishop of Damaraland — another south-west African territory —the Rt Rev. Colin Winter, planned to present petitions from African organisations in the territory protesting against living and working conditions. Dr Waldheim’s brief from the United Nations Security Council asks him to seek ways of gaining independence for the peoples of Namibia.

The South African Government, on the other hand, is committed to a different course of self-determination for the territory’s peoples. It says that the economies of South and South-West Africa are totally linked and that South Africa itself can best judge what is best for the future of the territory. What the United Nations party will see and who they will talk to in South-West Africa is not known. It will travel in aircraft provided by the Government and is due to return to Cape Town on Thursday for further talks.

Whatever the outcome, the fact of Dr Waldheim’s presence is seen in political quarters as a major diplomatic advance achieving a much-needed dialogue.