P.M. DISAPPOINTS STUDENT BODY

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32860, 8 March 1972, Page 18

P.M. DISAPPOINTS STUDENT BODY

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 7.

The statement of the Prime Minister (Mr Marshall) today on sporting contacts with South Africa was described tonight as “a disappointing repetition of irrelevancies” by the general secretary’ of the Student Christian Movement (the Rev. lan D. Borrie).

Mr Borrie said: “It is both irresponsible and illogical to describe New Zealand’s policy on sporting contacts with South Africa as one of “building bridges” when the South African Government limits those contacts to teams selected on a racial basis.

“Statements about New Zealand’s opposition to the system of apartheid and pious hopes about ‘fully representative’ South African sporting teams will do nothing to change the system which Mr Marshall claims to deplore. “The time has passed when it is fruitful to think in terms of dialogue with South Africa. The only way in which the South African Government can be persuaded to modify its racial policies is through the application on an international level of those same measures of separation and ostracism which the South African Government adopts in its internal policies. “For New Zealand to continue to join with a small group of hard-line racist

countries in ignoring this reality is myopic in the extreme.

“The Government’s continued refusal to respond to resolutions passed by the

United Nations on the cessation of sporting contacts with South Africa can only be in-

- terpreted as a clear indication 3 that ours is an essentially e white racist Government.”