Harsh words likely against N.Z.

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32874, 24 March 1972, Page 3

Harsh words likely against N.Z.

tN.Z.PA. Staff Correspondent) NEW YORK, March 23. New Zealand will face a barrage of hostile international criticism of its decision to maintain sporting contacts with South Africa.

The criticism is expected to be voiced during the closing stages of the three-day seminar on apartheid, held at the United Nations headquarters by the U.N. Committee on Apartheid.

The three anti-apartheid delegates from New Zealand attending the seminar have given the committee a full background of developments in New Zealand on the nation’s sporting ties with South Africa.

United Nations officials said last night that the committee had been surprised at the extent of recent and proposed sporting exchanges between the two countries. They believed these would be subjected to strong criticism when the committee discussed later today the campaign to remove South Africa from the international sporting field.

The three New Zealanders attending the forum, Mr T. O. Newnham, secretary of the Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality, Mr T. L. Richards, national chairman of the Halt All Racist Tours organisation, and Dr P. Hohepa, chairman of the Auckland Maori Council, gave their views on New Zealand’s relations with South Africa during general debate on Tuesday and yesterday

So far only Mr Dennis Brutus, a ceaseless international campaigner against apartheid, has joined in their condemnation of the New Zealand Government and national sporting bodies. African and Eastern European delegates have been too preoccupied with concerns dearer to their hearts—South African detention laws, nonobservance of the United Nations embargo on arms sales to South Africa, and economic relations with the Republic—to take up the question.

It appears certain, however, drat New Zealand is the nation to which attention will be given when the debate on the sporting issue begins Mr Newnham said in~ an interview this morning that he and the other New Zealand delegates had been told by Nigerian and Tanzanian diplomats that should the Springbok Rugby tour go ahead in 1973, African nations would certainly boycott the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. Mr Newnham maintained that African nations had believed in 1970, when voting for Christchurch as the venue for the 1974 Games, that New Zealand would by then have abandoned most, if not all, of its sporting ties with South Africa He believed they had ex-

pected New Zealand to abandon the Rugby tour because of its desire to have all the countries of the Commonwealth compete in the multiracial sporting festival. Proceedings at the seminar have been closely followed by representatives of the New Zealand Mission to the Upited Nations. As New Zealand is not a member of the ariti-apartheid committee, they are not entitled to speak, but may attend as observers.

Mr Richards today accused the Government of supporting New Zealand’s involvement in apartheid sport. Evasiveness, irresponsibility, and lack of moral awareness marked the sports scene in New Zealand, he said. Mr Richards invited the committee’s chairman, the Somali Ambassador (Abdul Rahim Abby Farah) to visit New Zealand to “explainSthe situation with regard 'to sports contacts with South Africa from a United Nations point of view.” He also proposed that the committee invite the Assembly to look into the New Zealand Government’s “complicity with apartheid sport,” and to request all member States to refrain from sports contact with his country until it stopped participating in sport with racist South African bodies.