Rhodesian expulsion hailed, attacked

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33004, 25 August 1972, Page 11

Rhodesian expulsion hailed, attacked

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) MUNICH, August 24. African sports and political leaders in Munich have hailed the decision to exclude Rhodesia from the Munich Olympics as an “historic and glorious victory.”

Mr Jean Claude Ganga, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, told a press conference: “We are satisfied. This is a victory for sport and for Africa.”

And Mr Gerard Kamanda, deputy secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (0.A.U.), said: “This is a glorious page in the history of Africa.”

The two men were largely instrumental in persuading the International Olympic Committee (1.0. C. to reverse its original decision to invite the Rhodesians.

While jubilant Africans were praising the 1.0.C.’s de-

cision to exclude Rhodesia from the Games, beginning on Saturday, in Paris they were winning another victory against Mr lan Smith’s regime.

On African delegates* insistence, the International Football Federation (F.1.F.A.) congress meeting there decided to continue Rhodesia’s two-year-old suspension from the organisation. In Munich, Mr Willi Daume, president of the West German organising committee, told reporters: “Our task now is to see that the Olympic movement gets back on the right track.” Looking weary and red eyed after days and nights of argument over the issue, Mr Daume said at the same press conference addressed by Mr Ganga and Mr Kamanda that he had sympathy with both sides. He hoped that tempers would now cool. Mr Kamanda, reading from a long, prepared statement, declared: “Once again, African unity has triumphed.” It was part of history, he said, “to pull the giants from their thrones and tumble the Olympic gods.”

' Rhodesia’s team manager, Mr Ossie Plaskitt, told N.Z.-P.A.-Reuter earlier on behalf of his team that he was bitterly disappointed. “These poor athletes have trained hard and I am sure they were all up to Olympic standards," he said. He hoped that all his team would be

able to stay in Munich to watch the Games.

The 1.0. C. decision brought a thinly-veiled criticism from the Vatican Radio which said it wondered how the committee would have reacted if the criterion had been that laid down in the Gospel of St John: “He .that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone . . The committee’s 36-31 vote which put Rhodesia out of the Games was seen with apprehension by some nonAfrican quarters. The West German press generally criticised it, the Frankfurter “Allgemaine Zeitung” saying:, “The 1.0. C. has created a precedent that provokes imitation. Already in Munich politics may be carried from the negotiating table of the 1.0. C. into the stadium.” And in Paris the influential French newspaper, “Le Monde,” said that it marked the death of the 1.0. C. as a “supernational power.” Referring to the black Africans’ threats to boycott the Olympics, “Le Monde” said in a front-page editorial: “All the African Governments have notified their decisions reducing to nothing the independent character of their Olympic committees so that the Munich incidents have stressed, if this was still needed, the futility of the international committee’s pretensions to supernationality.