Springbok tour ‘in no doubt’

Press, 31 March 1980, Page 6

Springbok tour ‘in no doubt’

PA Wellington Private and public responses from individual membersof the New Zealand Rugby Union council left no doubt that the Springboks will be invited to tour New Zealand next year, the Halt All Racist Tours movement chairman, Mr Trevor Richards, has told a United Nations committee. In a submission to the United Nations hearings on apartheid in sport, presented in New York’on Friday, he said that H.'A.R.T. believed that the union hoped to stifle international -and domestic opposition to such a tour by delaying until late this year or early next year an announcement that it would go ahead. • > “The New Zealand Government’s position has changed in no fundamental way over the last year,” Mr Richards said. “Individual members of’ the Government continue to maintain a public position contrary- to the letter and spirit of the Comm o n w e a 1 t h Gleneagles Agreement.” He told the hearing that the New Zealand Government had said that sports bodies were free to do as they . pleased, but it would prefer New Zealand not to compete at the Moscow Olympics. , ■' “If this remains the Gov-1:

ernment’s position — >and there is - every indication that' it will — I have no doubt that it will confront calls' for the Springboks to be refused visas with .the response that given it’ 1 didn’t stop the New Zealand Olympic team going to Moscow, it is in no position to stop the Springboks coming to New Zealand," Mr Richards said. He said that South Africa had made minor inj significant changes to apartheid which had produced a constant stream of “things-are-changing stories." “A significant part of South African regime’s effort to fool the world has been to push the big lie that discrimination in sport has ended.” Tire United Nations had a vital role to play in the campaign against apartheid in. sport, Mr Richards saidj He asked it to emphasise the total unacceptability of any sports contacts with South Africa', other than, those endorsed by the special United Nations committee and the Organisation for African Unity, until such time as the constitutional framework of apartheid had been , completely ■ dismantled. H.A.R.Ti would also like to see a third-party principle include ed in the United Nations declaration against apartheid lin sport.