African sports boycott aired

Press, 28 February 1981, Page 11

African sports boycott aired

NZPA-Reuter Nairobi Africa will consider boycotting sports events at which Ireland and New Zealand are represented if the two countries play rugby with South Africa this year, according to the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa.

African patience was wearing out and if planned matches went ahead “Africa will reserve the right to reconsider its participation in all sports events in which supporters of, and collaborators with, racist South Africa are also taking part, said the council. The Irish Rugby Union has accepted an invitation to take a team to South Africa in May and the Springboks are due to tour New Zealand later in Ute year.

The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa organised the mass African withdrawal from the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal after it failed to get New Zealand, which it accused of encouraging sports links with South Africa, banned from the Games;

The council “noted with serious concern in the moves of certain administrators of rugby in some countries for renewed sports exchanges

with racist South Africa . . .” Racism “was still flagrant in the administration of sport in South Africa” and these moves represented “utter insensitivity to the feelings of the great majority of the people of Africa in general and of South Africa in particular and an encouragement to the racist oppressors,” it said.

The statement was signed by the council’s Nigerian president, Mr Abraham Ordia, and Senegalese secre-tary-general, Mr Amadou Lamine.