Campaign going to U.S.

Press, 18 June 1986, Page 10

Campaign going to U.S.

NZPA-AAP Melbourne The former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, will take his campaign for sanctions against South Africa to Washington.

Mr Fraser — co-chair-man of the Commonwealth eminent persons group on South Africa — will spend a week in the United States in July trying to muster American support for tougher action against the apartheid regime. He said today there was

strong public debate and a conscience in the United States about the South African problem not seen in any other country. There was a responsive chord in the United States to what was happening in South Africa. He did not believe Australians would put up with South Africa’a repressive regime.

“If any Australians were living in the situation in which blacks are living in South Africa they would have taken up arms

long before now,” Mr Fraser said. The outlawed African National Congress had shown great patience in holding off from violence for so long. “In many ways the patience of the blacks over decades has been remarkable — for 52 years the A.N.C. forswore violence and it got absolutely nowhere.

“In those 52 years, whatever rights they (the blacks) had were taken away.”