Canada cuts official trade connections with S.A.

Press, 21 December 1977, Page 8

Canada cuts official trade connections with S.A.

NZPA-Reuter Ottawa Canada has cut all official commercial ties with South Africa and has withdrawn its trade commissioners there, but stopped short of severing diplomatic ties with the white-ruled nation.

The Canadian External Affairs Minister (Mr Don Jamieson) told the House of Commons in Ottawa yesterday that Canada was taking a series of harsh traderelated measures against the Pretoria Government as part of a new policy protesting against South African racial policies. Mr Jamieson said that though South Africa was not the only country that violated human rights, it also had a government structure making “decisions affecting humans on the basis of race and colour.” He said Canada, which had more than SNZ3OOM worth of trade with South Africa last year, was withdrawing commerical consuls from Johannesburg and Cape

Town, dropping government loans to finance trade deals, and considering a number of other diplomatic steps. Mr Derek Birney, a spokesman for the External Affairs Ministry, said afterwards that Canada was withdrawing all its trade commissioners and cutting off Government support for such commerical activities such as export credits, insurance, and loan supports. He said Canadian representatives would be left in Pretoria. But this group did not include trade officials, who had been confined to Johannesburg and Cape Town.

However, he said: “We are not preventing an individual from conducting business with South Africa on his own.”

Mr Jamieson, who spoke during a foreign-affairs debate in the Ottawa Parliament, condemned South Africa for its policies of separation of the races and said Canada was considering further steps. He also said the Government of the Prime Minister (Mr Pierre Trudeau) was preparing a code of ethics governing future investment of Canadian companies in South Africa.

Mr Birney said these would take the form of recommendations on employment practices. In Johannesburg, the South African police have again arrested two former leaders of the Union of Black Journalists, which was banned in October during a crackdown on anti-apartheid organisations and leaders,

according to informed sources.

The two U.B.J. leaders, Jufv Mayet and Phillip Frederick Mtimkulu, work for the black ecumenical weekly, the “Voice,” which is published by the South African Council of Churches.

They are to appear before a magistrate today, but it was not known yesterday what the charges against them would be. Leaders in the black township of Soweto have called for a period of mourning throughout the Christmas holidays for blacks killed or detained bv the police. The Soweto Action Committee and student leaders have urged the township’s more than one million residents to shun seasonal festivities.