Bid to halt rebel cricket tour

Press, 6 December 1989, Page 41

Bid to halt rebel cricket tour

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The main group spearheading attempts to stop the English rebel cricket tour of South Africa said yesterday it would make a last-minute bid to pull the financial plug. The National Sports Congress (N.S.C.) said in a statement that anti-apartheid groups would seek to meet the country’s leading cricket sponsors who might be persuaded to withdraw financial support in other areas if the tour went ahead. “An urgent meeting will be sought with the major sponsors of the South African Cricket Union (S.A.C.U.) to appeal to them to revise and reconsider their support for the internal programmes of the 5.A.C.U.,” the statement said. The congress, an offshoot of the country’s main antiapartheid coalition, the Mass Democratic Movement, says it has already persuaded some major companies not to sponsor this tour or another planned for 1991. The N.S.C. recently sent a delegation to England to speak to the rebels, including a former England skipper, Mike Gatting, in a vain attempt to persuade them to stay at home. Protests are almost certain when Gatting and his squad start their tour on January 24. A Cape Town based anti-apartheid group which organised a week-end demonstration against the tour said it would continue to protest at local matches.