Growing pressure to block karate tour

Press, 18 June 1979, Page 10

Growing pressure to block karate tour

The karate team planning to tour South Africa faces both pressure to drop its tour from other martial art groups and a Maori ban. The Government-estab-lished Martial Arts Council, which represents most of New Zealand’s multitude of martial arts organisations, is expected to call on members to follow the spirit of the Gleneagles Agreement, reports the Press Association. The professor of Maori at Victoria University of Wellington (Dr S. Mead) and his supporters have launched a campaign to have a tapu imposed on South African money. The group planning to go to South Africa is the Goju karate team of the South Pacific Rembuden Institute, whose director is Mr J. Jarvis. It is not a member of the Martial Arts Council, but would be under strong pressure to drop the trip if the council condemned it. . The council’s’ chairman (Mr B. Stokell), said he would recommend to the council’s executive meeting later this months that the Gleneagles Agreement be followed.

Under the agreement, New Zealand has undertaken to discourage sports contacts with South Africa. Mr Stokell said the council at the moment had no policy on sports ties with South Africa.

The team planning to go would not be representing New Zealand karate, but only one of many styles practised in the country.

“The council is concerned that the public might have gained the im-

pression that the five fighters were going as a national ka r ate team,” he said.

Dr Mead will approach the four Maori members of Parliament to enlist their help in asking the Maori people to place a tapu on South African money, which, he said, was being used to encourage New Zealanders to beak the Gleneagles Agreement. Dr Mead was the instigator of a campaign to pull all Maoris out of rugby by asking them voluntarily to impose a rahui (a ban on themselves) in opposition to the visit to South Africa earlier this year by six AU Blacks. In Christchurch an instructor at the School of Goju Ryu Karate, Mr P. F. McGregor, whishes to dissociate his club from the proposed trip to South Africa.

Mr McGregor said he was angry when he read the report of a New Zealand representative karate team’s going to South Africa with expenses paid, to take part in an international karate competition. Mr McGregor, who said he had the full support of his Christchurch club, questioned Mr Jarvis's assertion that the tern going to South Africa would represent New Zealand.

“If he does run the Goju form of karate in New Zealand as he claims, he must run us — but we have nothing, and want nothing, to do with him,” Mr McGregor said. “I would like it known that, the members of the Christchurch Goju Ryu

club are in no way associated with the South Pacific Rembuden Institute directed by Mr John Jarvis,” said Mr McGregor, an instructor of the original Okinawa Goju Ryu Karate-style. Mr Jarvis was also reported as saying that even if his institute rejected the South African invitation, it could be directed to attend the competition by the parent body in Japan, the international Okinawa Goju Association. Mr McGregor said, as far as he knew, the Japanese had no power to force an organisation in another country “into doing something politically embarrassing.

“It looks as if this group is just going to prop up the apartheid system in South Africa,” he said.

When questioned in Wellington. Mr Jarvis said he had been practising karate for 15 years. A year ago he had brought to New Zealand the head of the Okinawa Goju Ryu, Mr Higa Onna, who graded him in New Zealand.

“I have letters from Japan saying I am in charge of Goju Ryu in the South Pacific,” said Mr Jarvis. His organisation, with headquarters in Wellington, had a membership of more than 3000 in 30 clubs throughout Australia and New Zealand. In the South Island, his organisation had Invercargill, Dunedin and Oamaru, but none in Christchurch because “we had no senior instructor available there,” Mr Jarvis said.