Helping the hungry

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 20

Helping the hungry

Sir,—Mr Minto should be the last person to talk of Mr Walker’s credibility (April 7). To suggest that South African blacks have called for a full boycott of the country, thus losing their jobs, is about as credible as Sir Robert Muldoon asking to be the Deputy Prime Minister. No doubt Bishop Tutu would like to see a full boycott, as the South African Council of Churches from 1975 to 1981 received rand 17,958,048 from overseas and only 1.2 per cent, or R 209.853, from local South African sources. — Yours, etc., DAVID DUMERGUE. April 9, 1984.

Sir, — The silver paper wrapping from cigarette boxes, collected by J. P. Stuart 50 years ago (“The Press,” April 5), may have been of some help to the starving millions, but so has been the establishment of milk treatment stations, hospitals, university faculties, libraries, research stations and food supplied out of the pocket of the New Zealand taxpayer. Remember also the doctors and nurses, who forgo good incomes here and work in underdeveloped countries, the school teachers who place the nobility of their profession above all else, young New Zealanders, V.S.A. and others, whose love of life makes them want to do something constructive. All this is in contrast to the destruction and human misery caused by the communist and Marxist terrorists, who are financed and trained in the countries hailed by J. P. Stuart. Let us get our priorities right. — Yours, etc., BERT WALKER. April 5, 1984.

Sir, — Bert Walker’s 1.6 million black children who started school in South Africa in 1983 (April 6), are the lucky ones. Nearly half the children in a typical African reserve die before the age of five. The black South African infant mortality rate, one of the highest in the world, is 69 in 1000 in urban areas, 282 in 1000 in rural areas. For whites, it is 12 in 100 — one of the lowest in the world. Once in school, this “luck” runs out. Surveys among African schoolchildren in South Africa show that “most are recognisably malnourished.” The pupil to teacher ratio is 20 to one for whites, 47 to one for blacks. Mr Walker claimed that 52 teacher training colleges for black teachers has to serve a population of 28 the white training colleges "rf- . .....

remain closed to blacks. These figures do not come from the “Marxist communist-held areas further north,” but from the United Nations, and the South African Government itself. — Yours, etc., J. R. DAVIES, Christchurch area officer, Hart: The N.Z. Anti-Apartheid Movement. April 10, 1984.

Sir, — I note with pleasure Bert Walker’s comment that “one cannot teach a five-year-old child in a language or dialect foreign to his (sic) own.” Since Mr Walker constantly reflects the line of the South African Government, can we assume that the Soweto riots, in which hundreds of schoolchildren were shot, will not recur? The children were protesting about having to be taught in Afrikaans — the language of their white oppressors. Whatever the language of the schools, however, it is still a fact that the South African Government (according to the Minister of Education, speaking in Parliament), spends 10 times more on the education of each white child than it does on the education of each black child. And that is just one of the racial discrepancies which are basic to life in South Africa. — Yours, etc., K. BERNSTEIN. April 10, 1984.