South Africa

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 20

South Africa

Sir, —I was interested to read an article (November 15) on a black American golfer, Jim Thorpe, competing in tournaments in South Africa. Whilst I was in South Africa recently, I stayed in Stellenbosch and visited the Stellenbosch Golf Club several times. My friend, who had not been to this club for a year, could not believe his ears when a friend told him Coloureds and blacks were allowed to play there. We visited the club on a Sunday and, sure enough, there was a Coloured tournament in progress and all round the bar and lounge were Coloureds with their families. The women folk sat on the balcony overlooking the beautiful tree-lined course with their well-dressed children, enjoying a cold drink. I took a photograph of my friend, a South African, sitting with a Coloured fellow who had a job in the army and who was on a 2 handicap. I wish critics would visit South Africa and see the number of Coloureds, blacks and whites playing together in the different sports, and world-beaters, too. As Jim Thorpe said: “I am a sportsman, not a politician. I am here to play golf.” — Yours, etc., JOHN C. SHEPPARD. November 18, 1988.

Sir, —Despite lan Dimbleby’s bland assurances of their current and future “socio-economic upliftment” (November 14), South African blacks continue to live under a system which sees an estimated 60 per cent of black households below the poverty datum line. Similarly, his description of the homelands as “developing areas” is rather removed from reality. The 80 geographically scattered portions of land which make up the 10 arbitrarily designated “homelands” include the least productive and least minerally endowed. The establishment of labour-intensive industry “within or just on their borders” has little to do with development and much to do with the availability of cheap and legally unprotected “Bantu labour” (South African National Productivity Institute). Even so, homeland unemployment averages between 40 per cent and 80 per cent, prompting the Commonwealth mission to South Africa to describe them as rural slums, reservoirs of labour for the white areas where more than four-fifths of economic activity is located.—Yours, etc., ALISTAIR PRINGLE. November 16, 1988.

Sir, —There was one thing I learned from my recent visit to the interior of Africa and that is that Black Africa today is now well on the road to returning to the times when it was known as the “dark continent.” Mr Marshall, with his call for total sanctions, would seem to want to see South Africa rejoin the “dark continent.”—Yours, etc., DAVID DUMERGUE, Spokesman, Truth About Southern Africa November 20, 1988.

Sir,—Answering S. Taylor (November 12), I remind her that after I corrected her errors (October 24) I was careful to make a general acknowledgment of the early black uprisings without defending the Government. I said “it was understandable black people’s patience ran out in the 1960 s with the resultant violence.” She ignores this. I also said “there has never been more hope for a negotiated settlement than today and less justification for violence” in the light of ongoing reform black socioeconomic upliftment. She

chooses not to answer this. Saying Inkatha accepts “permanent white domination” is untrue. Saying Inkatha is “collaborationist" is a slurring misrepresentation, an underhand way of saying opposed to violence, sanctions and a socialist A.N.C., Inkatha is officially non-racial. Leadership is not of Zulus only. Eighty per cent support Mandela; eighty per cent A.N.C.? Where is the revolution then? Pretoria would be finished. — Yours, etc., lAN DIMBLEBY. November 21, 1988.