Springbok tour

Press, 30 March 1981, Page 16

Springbok tour

Sir,—When Australia has healed the open sore of its internal race relations, when it no longer treats black Australians as second-class citizens, to be placated with regular handouts, and places them on an equal footing with white Australians, when it stops exploiting Aboriginal ancestral landsfor the benefit of white-owned companies, then it may have the right to speak on racist matters. Until then, it is an impertinence for any Australian to try to tell New Zealanders what they should think or what they should do with regard to sporting contacts or contacts of any other kind with South Africa.—Yours, etc.. ANNE THOMSON. March 27, 1981.

Sir, — It seems to me the anti-tour movement is orchestrated by the same discordant political fiddlers who called the tune in the left-whinge Citizens/ for Rowling Campaign. a misdirected band-wag-gon which ran off the ’7B electoral trail with a broken Exel. The pattern is similar. Nonentities become knowledgeable notorieties in a blaze of publicity. Benign bishops ap•pear to suggest all men have souls except white South Africans: a moral issue. Trade union leaders demonstrate against a lone white South African cattle breeder as though he has no claim to any rights until he has nothing left: a Morel issue. One consolation is that eventually the Ban the Boks band-waggon will run off the road with a broken HART. — Yours, etc., G. M. EDMONDS: March 28, 1981.

Sir, — That the Labour Party is against the South African ‘ rugby . tour of New Zealand is understandable for over the. last 30 years it has opposed any scheme to help the country out of its difficult ties — hence its absence from power most of the time. That the Labour-dominated City Council and Transport Board should oppose the tour is also understandable for their only claim to fame is a-consistent ability to place a heavier burden on the ratepayer. But what I cannot understand is how Bishop Ashby can sympathise with the nearby African countries that have gone Communist. By opposing the tour he is doing this. Up to a 1000 ships call at South African ports each month while approximately 50 oil tankers round the Cape daily. Should ■ control ;of South Africa . ever fall into hostile hands .it would be a disaster second only to the loss of access to the Middle East oilfields themselves. — Yours, etc.,. •

. .■ , NEWTON: TREMBATH. March-27, 1981.-

. /Sir.' - i Although I• am personally opposed to the Springbok tour, I don’t think anyone should take , much no-, tied of what the hypocrites in Canberra are saying. The Australians should remember to put their owh : house in 'order and treat their own original inhabitants like human beings before they start shooting their mouths off about what this country should do. — Yours, etc., KEITH BROWN. March 27, 1981.

Sir, — In reply to A. D. F. Neill. (March 27) on South African apartheid and India’s caste laws. In India caste is a delineation of the four basic classes of the human mind and is linear in structure not pyramidical. Cows walking Delhi’s streets, yes, but “while outside untouchables lie dying of starvation in the gutters . . .” Poppycock. The so-called untouchable castes are increasingly assuming positions of responsibility in the nation’s poli- : tical life, judiciary, educational

and civil services — and they certainly go where, when and how they please. Perhaps Mr Neill should have spent a day or two on, Delhi’s pavements. He may have emerged somewhat enlightened and, yes, even more civilised — unless civilisation is equated with sanitation and a comfortable bed. Whither South Africa? —

Yours, etc., NAVEEN K. CHOPRA March 26, 1981.

Sir. — I am amazed that the Government continues to insist on leaving a vital decision in foreign relations in the hands of an organisation qualified only to administer sport, regardless of international complications. Has the Rugby Union more freedom and more rights than the rest of us? We want no truck with apartheid; we want to deserve the respect of African and other nations; we want to be good neighbours with Australia; we want to pursue other international sports without hindrance. The Government says that this is its policy too, yet in the name of democracy it refuses to enforce it. Governments are supposed to govern, not let a sporting organisation push them around. — Yours, etc.,

ELSIE LOCKE. March 27, 1981.

Sir, — A dogmatic assertion of the dire consequences from the destruction of South Africa’s social structure, and the unflattering claim that the Western world’s strategic security rests on the continued denial of basic human rights to South Africa’s black majority are the unconvincing arguments with which K. A. Phillips (March 24) solicits support for the Springbok tour. His patronising explanation of “why African experiments with Western democracy have been unsuccessful” assume a wry irony when white South Africa’s presumably successful experiments with Western democracy exclude its majority black population from all participation in the democratic process. “Separate development” in its ugliest manifestation is epitomised in the daily morning - exodus of black workers from their ghetto reservations (Soweto, for instance) where there is no work for them, and their daily evening exodus from the whitecities after their day’s work, back to' their ghetto-reserva-tions — that is what apartheid means. — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. March 25, 1981.