Comments said to be ‘grave injustice’

Press, 28 March 1983, Page 2

Comments said to be ‘grave injustice’

Comments by a Government member of Parliament, Mr T. de V. Hunt (Pakuranga), on his recent return from South Africa have been described by a Christchurch Catholic priest as horribly distorted. The Rev. Jim Consedine, who visited South Africa last year, said Mr Hunt’s comments did a “grave injustice” to 20 million black people of that country. It was naive and simplistic of Mr Hunt to assume that black people would confide truthfully in a white visitor sponsored by the hated white Government, Father Consedine said. “Mr Hunt and his colleagues were warned before they went that they would be hoodwinked into becoming apologists for the South African regime.” Father Consedine, who spoke with trade union, Church and community leaders, and went on an extensive tour of black areas including Soweto, said poverty had worsened since his 1975 trip.

“For the members of Parliament to say that things have improved there is to adopt the stance of the South African Government, and flies in the face of reality,” he said. “Mr Hunt and his colleagues (Mr R. L. Bell, Gisborne; an Mr N. P. H. Jones, Invercargill) follow a long line of National Party members from New Zealand who have been given free tickets and accommodation by the South African

Government so that they can propagate on behalf of apartheid on their return home,” he said.

Father Consedine said conditions in South Africa had worsened, the country being in a “state of miniwar.” Men were eligible for military service and the news media were strictly censored.

The so-called “resettlement” of 20 million black people under the Group Areas Act and the Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Peoples Bill, now before Parliament, was “systematic genocide.” Father Consedine said it forced blacks into homelands where malnutrition, poverty, and disease were widespread. The threat of resettlement dominated every aspect of black life and was the cornerstone of the apartheid policy. It was rigidly enforced by the South African Government.