S.A. Govt offers bribes

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 34

S.A. Govt offers bribes

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The black church leader, Bishop Desmond Tutu, has said that employees of the multi-racial South African Council of Churches (S.A.C.C.) have been offered bribes to act as Government informants as part of a harassment campaign against the group. A Government commission criticised the S.A.C.C. in February, saying it was devoted to revolutionary change in white-minority-ruled South Africa. Bishop Tutu, the council’s general secretary, said that since then a number of people “had been approached by people claiming to be working for the police, asking

them to come on their payroll as informants.” Bishop Tutu said there was no need for informants on his staff since he would gladly tell the police what he was up to. A police spokesman declined comment. The Bishop also said that mail addressed to the S.A.C.C. and to him personally had been tampered with and even seized. He knew this, he said, because during a recent trip to Europe he learnt of several letters addressed to him which never arrived. He said that during hearings of the Eloff Commission, which investigated the S.A.C.C.’s finances, police

officials testified about telegrams and letters to the S.A.C.C. which the council had never given to the police. The Eloff Commission said on February 15 that the S.A.C.C., which groups Eng-lish-language white Protestant and some black churches, had a history of financial mismanagement and its finances should be put under statutory control. Bishop Tutu responded that the commission was a thinly veiled attempt by the South African Government to discredit the S.A.C.C., which is dedicated to the non-violent elimination of apartheid.