Chch fatality in grim day on N.Z. roads

Press, 9 May 1981, Page 1

Chch fatality in grim day on N.Z. roads

A male pedestrian was killed when he was struck by a car outside the«lslington Tavern on the Main South Road last evening in a grim day on New Zealand roads.

The man’s name was not available last evening. The accident happened at 6.30 p.m. In Dunedin a man and a woman were killed yesterday afternoon after their car . and a Railways bus collided on State highway one at- Pukeuri, Bkm north of Oamaru. The two were seated in the front seat of the car. The car was then catapulted 25 metres back armourcoat rail on a right-hand bend twice before slamming backwards into the bus, which was travelling north.

The car was then caterpaulted 25 metres back into the direction from which it came before hitting a corrugated iron fence on the side of the road.

The police said tne car

was reported to have been stolen from Timaru early yesterday afternoon. They said the names of the dead would not be available until later today at the earliest. A Hamilton woman died late on Thursday night in one of a spate of accidents in wet conditions on Auckland roads. She was Felicity Bradbury, aged 24, a passenger in a car who was with two friends travelling north on the southern motorway.

A Putaruru woman died when the car in which she was a passenger hit a bridge 4km south of Lichfield on State highway 1 near Hamilton soon before 3 a.m. yesterday. She was Alexis; Ruru, aged 22, single.

The driver of the car, Thomas Martin. Hale, aged 25, of Tokoroa, was described as seriously ilk in Tokoroa Hospital with head and chest injuries.

Mr Molotsane, who is in New Zealand as a guest of the Federation of Labour, said that the outside world had heard little about a wave of strikes which had plagued South Africa, especially since 1979.

The strikes had gathered momentum, regardless of the fact that of the 10 million workers in South Africa only about one million, many of them whites, had trade-union rights.

The government pursued a policy of suppressing black workers by denying them union rights.. A fair system could not be achieved while apartheid existed. Even so, strikes supported by the black community had closed almost- every factory in ’ the highly industrialised areas of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage. The strike had started at the Ford Motor Company and had later involved such multi-national concerns as Volkswagen, S.K.F., and General Motors. Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage had been declared “operational areas” by the Gov-

ernment. They had been occupied by the Army and the news media had been kept out.

When 10,Q00 Johannesburg Municipality employees had gone on strike their leader, Joe Mavi, had been detained and put on trial for sabotage, the maximum penalty for which was death. He had been acquitted on a technicality but that had not helped the 10,000 workers. They had been replaced and

had been sent back to the homelands. Mr Molotsane is convinced that the Government can be

overthrown and apartheid destroyed within the next 10 years — “we have dubbed it the decade of liberation” — and possibly within five years. He said that black South Africans were prepared to become involved in what was likely to be a long and bloody struggle.