South African policy

Press, 21 August 1982, Page 14

South African policy

Sir, — I refer to the report of Mrs Elizabeth Sutherland's visit to South Africa (“The Press," August 16) and.suggest that Mrs Sutherland must have seen only what the South African Olympic and National Games Association wished her to see, to prompt her to make the remark that “petty apartheid had disappeared." The general secretary of the Y.W.C.A. of Australia recently visited South Africa on her way home from a Y.W.C.A. workshop in Kenya. While in Kenya she shared accommodation with a black South African woman. They had eaten together, travelled together, seen the sights together, but once they entered South Africa they were officially different species. She was not allowed to stay at the black woman’s home, or use the same bus stop, let alone travel on the same bus. She could not swim at the same beach nor travel in the same carriage of a train. To enable her to see her black friend’s home she had to obtain a special pass permitting them to be together in a designated black area. — Yours, etc., ANNE EVANS, Executive Director, Y.W.C.A. Christchurch. August 19, 1982.