S.A. churchmen in plea to call off tour

Press, 15 July 1985, Page 20

S.A. churchmen in plea to call off tour

By PEKKA PAAVONPERA NZPA-AAP Johannesburg The general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, Dr Beyers Naude, made a last-minute plea on Friday to the All Blacks to abandon their rugby tour while the Nobel peace prize winner, Bishop Desmond Tutu, dismissed the team as soulless.

“For the sake of South Africa we plead that the All Black tour does not take place,” said Dr Naude. “The tour will only increase the anger and bitterness which now exist between the black and white people of this country. We want to prevent any possibility of those feelings being increased.” Dr Naude said that those feelings which were “very deep belonged to the black

peoples of South Africa and the All Black tour will add to the tension that already exists.”

Bishop Tutu said the All Blacks were proclaiming they had the individual right to travel anywhere in the world and yet they cared nothing for the people in South Africa who had no rights at all. “Let them come. They are people who have sold their souls. It doesn’t matter what you say. They say they are exercising their rights but they don’t care about what is happening here nor. what they are doing to their own country. “They have split New Zealand down the middle and they think it is okay as long as they have the right to play their traditional foes, the Springboks.”