Sport seen as part of politics

Press, 4 August 1981, Page 2

Sport seen as part of politics

NZPA-Reuter Nairobi Sport could not be divorced from international politics, Kenya’s President Daniel Arap Moi said in a week-end speech at Nakuru. the Kenya News Agency reported yesterday.

President Moi, the chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, was making his first comment on the subject since the Springboks began their controversial tour of New- Zealand.

In a speech at a school sports meeting at Nakuru, 160 km from Nairobi, President Moi said that he was surprised that some countries were willing to cooperate with the racist Pretoria regime in the field of sports. “I am pleased that some countries have seen the evil implications of these links and have closed their doors to the South African rugby team," he said. President Moi said that he

hoped South Africa’s racist policies would be discussed at next month’s meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in Melbourne.

He said that Kenya’s attitude on sport and politics was not restricted to opposition to South African racism. Kenya had withdrawn from the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Referring to the boycott of the Moscow Olympics, he said: “We could not co-oper-ate with a nation which had defied the basic tenets of human dignity and had occupied • another sovereign state.”

In Sydney, the "Daily Telegraph” newspaper called yesterday for an end to the Springbok tour of New Zealand, saying that “the farce" had gone on long enough. "Each side by now has made its point ... now it is time to drop the curtain on this most unentertaining fiasco," the newspaper said.