South Africa and Games

Press, 9 March 1982, Page 20

South Africa and Games

Sir,—Your otherwise lucid, editorial on the threatened African boycott fails to mention a major contributing factor — the personal animosity between Mr Muldoon and Dr Abraham Ordia, president of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa. This clearly began with the unexplained refusal by Mr Muldoon to see Dr Ordia when he visited New Zealand in the early seventies. Both men are alike in that they do not forget and forgive, and the African boycott at the Montreal Commonwealth Games was at least partly because of this insult. More recently Mr Muldoon has even called Dr Ordia a “clown,” but whereas Dr Ordia. has remained dignified (if bitter), Mr Muldoon by acting like a clown in Melbourne last year succeeded in adding further to the humiliation of New Zealand’s reputation which the Gleneagles Agreement already signified. I believe that Mr Muldoon has acted in a manner far more detrimental to the interests of this country than any HART agitator and so deserves to have his passport withdrawn — Yours, etc., T. ROGERS March 4, 1982.

Sir,—Your correspondent, Jack Hunter, exhorts us to play sport with our white South African “cousins” because it would be more “Christian” to “forgive them that trespass . . .” Fine, but a precondition for forgiveness is repentance. — Yours, etc., DAVID W. COLLINS. March 7, 1982.