Dr Craven attacks Games code

Press, 9 October 1982, Page 2

Dr Craven attacks Games code

NZPA Johannesburg The South African rugby head, Dr Danie Craven, yesterday described the new Commonwealth Games Federation code aimed at barring all sports contacts with the republic as cowardly and hypocritical. Commonwealth countries will now be liable to suspension for breaching the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement, which discourages sports links with South Africa because of its apartheid policies. “I think it is an act of cowardice and hypocrisy,”

Dr Craven, the president of the South African Rugby Board, told Reuters by telephone from Stellenbosch. “It is sport, not South Africa, that is at stake,” he said. Dr Craven said the decision had nothing to do with rugby as the federation could not dictate policy to the sport's national controlling bodies. The All Blacks are due to tour South Africa in 1985, a year before the next Commonwealth Games which will be held at Edinburgh. In Johannesburg, the vice-

president of the South African Olympic and National Games Association, Mr Denis Mclldowie, said the decision "was the worst thing to have happened to South African sports since our expulsion from the Olympic movement.” South Africa was suspended from the Olympics in 1960 and was expelled from the movement in 1976. “There is no justification for this latest move," Mr Mclldowie said. “It is a political decision and a blow to sport as a whole”