Fresh row breaks out

Press, 6 May 1981, Page 46

Fresh row breaks out

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg A fresh row over apartheid in sport broke out yesterday after a schoolboy rugby match was called off because two black pupils had been selected to play. One of the pupils was the son of Malawi’s ambassador to South Africa. The row over the week-end incident in Pretoria came just one week before the start of a highly controversial tour of South Africa by Ireland’s national rugby team. The two black pupils were included in the line-up of the Christian Brothers College for a match against the allwhite Waterkloof High School, but the college principal, Father Donald Kennedy, said he cancelled the game after a Waterkloof teacher had objected to the presence of blacks. Father Kennedy said that the black pupils were allowed to take part in all activities at his school and that Waterkloof had contravened local rugby policy. The president of the South African Rugby Board, Dr Danie Craven, who maintains that the sport is moving to full multi-racialism at all levels, promised an investigation of the incident. “Our policy is that the boys should have played,” said Dr Craven, architect of South Africa’s recent return to the international rugby scene after years in the wilderness. The Irish rugby team is

due in South Africa next week in spite of protests by the Irish Government and anti-apartheid groups to call off the tour. Against that background, the latest incident seemed bound to embarrass Dr Craven and other rugby administrators who have been trying to defuse another argument over whether Coloured (mixed race) boys should play whites in a school rugby tournament. The headmasters of 15 white schools in Transvaal Province said two months ago that they would not allow their pupils to participate in the annual “Craven Week” tournament. Last year a coloured team took part for the first time in Craven week, the high spot of the schools’ rugby calendar. Austin Machinjili. the 18-year-old son of the Malawian ambassador, Mclean Machinjili, said he was “terribly disappointed” by the cancellation of the Pretoria match. Ambassador Machinjili declined comment until he had received a full report from the South African Foreign Ministry. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Natal Province, Denis Hurley, meanwhile issued a statement stressing his church’s opposition to the Irish tour. Last week the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of South Africa came out against the tour and also the proposed visit by the Springboks to New Zealand this winter.