Rugby tour

Press, 13 March 1985, Page 16

Rugby tour

Sir,—Jack Bevan is correct. My previous letters have implied the existence of other tyrannies. But what I have tried to point out is that failure to oppose one injustice because others are seen as not being equally opposed does not help to improve any of them. Non-racial sportspeople in South Africa (where the apartheid battle must be fought) call on us to help them nonviolently by simply boycotting their nation until they can play nonapartheid sport at all levels. The New Zealand Rugby Union, Jack Bevan, and now Ted Mulcock, are either ignorant of this call, or choose to belittle it as being of no consequence. Yet those sportspeople are bearing the full brunt of apartheid. Why should we choose instead to support the likes of Dr Danie Craven, kept in privilege by that very doctrine? Just what do apartheid victims have to do to earn our support? — Yours, etc., A. J. CAMPBELL. March 11, 1985.

Sir,—Only callous disregard for the welfare of South African blacks can stop this year’s All Black tour. The nature of modern news gathering results Only in the ridiculous distortions or hallucinations of the ill-informed being published, together with the fostering of civil disorder, and lenient and soft attitudes towards these disorders. The tour must go ahead to ensure that thousands more New Zealanders go to South Africa and experience the truth, and learn the basis of John Minto’s much-published, over-ex-posed, spurious reasons for protests and violence, and the ridiculous nonsense that they are. Why should a small vociferous minority, with no apparent concern for the welfare of the blacks, or for New Zealand, dictate what the dispossessed majority should be allowed to do? Any Government that lacks the courage to ensure law and order and to provide the means thereof has no right to remain in office. — Yours, etc., BERT WALKER. March 8, 1985.