Items

• Violence Hits Central Johannesburg after Execution of Moloise

  International outrage and violent demonstrations in the centre of Johannesburg followed the execution yesterday in Pretoria of Benjamin Moloise, a black South African poet. The execution - carried out in spite of pleas from around the world for clemency - prompted an angry response from Commonwealth heads of government, meeting in Nassau. Efforts are under way there to draw up a joint policy aimed to end apartheid in South Africa. [Article continues to describe Margaret Thatcher's involvement, and the meeting of the Commonwealth leaders/how they plan to work to end apartheid.]
• US Negroes asked to boycott Games

  [Excerpt]: "The possibility of a boycott of the United States Olympic team next year by American Negro athletes has become more likely with statements by the sprinters, Tommie Smith and Lee Evans, that Negro leaders have asked them not to participate in the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City. In San Jose, California, Smith, who holds seven world records, said: "It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro." ... Denis Brutus, the president of the South African Non-Racial Open Committee, told me last night: "It seems likely that the Negro political leaders in the United States are seriously considerin the boycott, and I do know that one document on the question of racial intolerance in sport--which was drawn up by the American baseball player Jackie Robinson--was also signed by Stokely Carmichael." ..."
• These tarnished Olympics

  [Excerpt]: "If anyone does not believe the repercussions of apartheid stretch far and wide, they should be present at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where it has tarnished the Games as they have never been before. One only had to see last week a departing team from Afria waiting with their baggage for transport to the airport...Everywhere was a feeling of sadness and futility... This was a seminar organised by the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid and held in Havana, attended by 200 delegates including the crucial nucleus of leading African sports officials and SAN-ROC. It was at this stage that Dennis Brutus, the president of SAN-ROC, a professor of English in the African Studies Department at the Northwest University of Illinois, threw his own acknowledged ability and experience and that of SAN-ROC unequivocally behind the African protest. Brutus, an exiled coloured South African, who was imprisoned in South Africa as a result of his views on apartheid, was portrayed in oarts of the British and foreign Press last week as a somewhat sinister figure. Yet, it is he who turned to de Broglio in Havana to say: 'If they (the African countries) are prepared to go through all this--which is much more than we would ever ask--who are we to quarrel? We're with them.'"
• The language for poets

  Louis Heren interviews Adam Small on life in South Africa under apartheid. Adam Small, a black South African, discusses the way in which people who speak Afrikaans are "the true South Africans," and that "the whites...were obsessed with colour." He describes the limitations his children will face: "You cannot send your children to the best schools you can afford; only the second-or third-rate. They were bogged down in life despite their talents, from the word go."
• Stranger's Voice

  Hugo Young interviews Oswald Mtshali on his poetry collection, "Sounds of a Cowhide Drum," which sold over 16,000 copies. Young writes that Mtshali is "the poet of oppression--humorous, often bitter-sweet, rarely vengeful but still a unique chronicler of apartheid from the black underside of it."
• Sportsman and Poet

  A statement issued yesterday by Maindy Msimang, administrative officer of the African National Congress in London, said: "News of the attempted murder of Dennis Brutus by the trigger-happy South African police, who are reported to have fired two shots at him at close range, will shock millions of people in South Africa and abroad, who have known him as a former weightlifting champion but also, and more particularly, as a dauntless opponent of racial discrimination in South African sport. A gifted young poet, who recently won the Nigerian award in a competition of African poets, Dennis Brutus has been hounded and persecuted by the South African Government."
• South African poet faces the death penalty

  Breyten Breytenbach, the anti-apartheid poet, was sent for trial in the Supreme Court today on charges carrying the death penalty. Mr Breytenbach, aged 36, is accused under the Terrorism and Anti-Communism Acts of helping to set up an illegal organization to promote armed struggle in South Africa intended to overthrow the white government... Mr Breytenbach is said to have been involved not only during his latest visit, but during a well-publicized visit in 1973, when he brought his wife. They are not allowed to live together under South African's racial laws.
• S. A. Professor Resigns

  Mr. Adam Small, one of South Africa's leading Coloured intellectuals, has resigned his teaching post at the troubled University of the Western Cape, citing the enforced closure of the Coloured institution as one of his reasons. The University has been closed since June 11 following student demonstrations against alleged restrictive rules and White domination in running the institution.
• S Africa expelled from Olympics

  [Excerpt]: "South Africa were expelled from the Olympic movement on the best day of the International Olympic Committee congress here today. The voting was 35 for withdrawing recognition to 28 against, with three absentions... South Africa are thought to be the first country to suffer expulsio, though records here are not complete. The debate today lasted four hours. The case against South Africa was put by Abram Ordia (Nigeria) and Jean-Claude Ganga (Congo), representing the 39 countries of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa. The case for South Africa was put by Mr. Frank Braun, president of the South African National Olympic Committee... The president of Sanroc, Mr. Denis Brutus, making a flying visit to Amsterdam in the middle of his struggle against the cricket tour of England, welcome the decision and thought the Cricket Council would be bound to be affected..."
• Power of the Pen in Exile: The Times Profile, Breyten Breytenbach

  This profile of Breyten Breytenbach describes his arrest in South Africa, his subsequent release, and his feelings about the South African regime and Afrikaans as a language more generally. "It was at the age of 36, the height of his literary acclaim, that South Africa's leading Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach was imprisoned for seven years for clandestine activities against the apartheid system."
• Poet fights apartheid with his pen

  Mr Breyten Breytenbach, the Afrikaans poet, who arrived here on Sunday after being unexpectedly freed from prison in South Africa, said yesterday that he would not continue his political fight against apartheid. "I realize that I am not a politician," he said in an television interview. "But my whole life is against this type of situation, this type of ideology, in my private and professional life, as a poet and painter." Asking if he would continue his struggle through his poems and paintings, Mr Breytenbach said: "Yes, that will be my way." Mr Breytenbach, aged 44, was released on Thursday after serving seven years of a nine-year sentence on charges of plotting to overthrow the South African Government. At his trial he had admitted actively supporting the banned African National Congress. Looking fit and well, Mr Breytenbach said that he had seven years of poetry written in prison which he hoped to prepare for publication.
• Non-whites harbour deep suspicion

  [Excerpt]: "What I found most disheartening was the deep if understandable suspicion harboured by the non-white cricket authorities towards their white counterparts. It was as a result of this that they turned dow the South African Cricket Association's offer of about 25.000 to help them with their cricket.... A non-white team had just toured Kenya with considerable success and by doing well against Worrell's side they could have silenced, forever those who say that their cricketers are no good and that D'Oliveira is a flash in the pan. But the opportunity was missed. Since then the S.A.B.O.C. have suspended contact with SANROC. "I know and like Denis Brutus," said one of them, "but he sees in everything a political implication." ..."
• Mr Hain aims for Springboks' Achilles heel

  [Excerpt]: "SUPPORT has snowballed beyond our wildest dreams,' says Peter hain, 19-year-old chairman of the Stop the Seventy Tour Committee formed recently to co-ordinate opposition, to next year's visit to Britain of the South African cricket team but now in the thick of the furore over the current Springbok rugger tour... It was through Denis Brutus, black South African president of SANROC (the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) that Hain met 22-year old Hugh Geach, a Reading University student in Soil Science who is now honorary secretary of STST. Brutus is one of the few activists now hounding the Springboks with first-hand knowledge of het grim realities of Apartheid..."
• Monteal and Denver Chosen: North America scoops Olympics pool

  [Excerpt]: "North America scooped the pool when the voting took place here tonight for the 1976 Olympic Games. The summer sports are to be held in Montreal and the winter variety at Denver, Colorado. The choice of Montreal was greeted with volleys of applause, that for Denver with squeals of surprise... The case for South Africa's expulsion from the movement is to be put to the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) this week, probably on Friday, by Jean-Claude Ganga (Congo) and Abram Ordia (Nigeria), respectively secretary-general and president of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, a body embracing 19 countries. The South African National Olympic Committee, headed by Mr. Frank Braun, will have the right of reply, whereupon Mr. Ganga and Mr. Ordia will have a further 10 minutes to answer the case for the defense... The South African non-racial Open Committee for Olympic Sport (Sanroc) is here in force, but unavoidably without their guiding spirit, Mr. Denis Brutus, more immediately required in England with the cricket tour on the boil..."
• Kidnap plot warning to cricket club

  [Full Text]: "A warning of an alleged plot by anti-apartheid demonstrators to kidnap Mr. Jack Baddiley, chairman of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, was telephoned to Mr. Ron Poulton, the club secretary, yesterday. He treated it as a joke but his caller, a man with an educated voice, told him: "It's no laughing matter." The police, however, took the threat seriously, and set out to find Mr. Baddiley, who was working on his 1,000-acre farm at Worksop. A police spokesman said later that special precautions were being taken. Wilson in race complaint. The Prime Minister and six other men were named in a complaint laid at Bow Street police station yesterday under the 1965 Race Relations Act. Mr. Peter Tombs, of Evans Road, Eynsham. Oxfordshire, a writer, said statements inciting unlawful race discrimination had been made on the B.B.C.'s Panorama programme by Mr. Wilson, Mr. John Arlott, Mr. Peter Hain, Mr. Jeffrey Crawford, the Bishop of Woolwich, the Right Rev. David Sheppard, Mr. Denis Brutus and Mr John Darragh."
• Inside track

  [Full text]: "A REPORT from South Africa yesterday that a new non-white sports committee has been formed to work together with the existing white South African Olympic and National Games Association (SAONGA) towards the country's fight for re-entry to the Olympics, was received with surprise and disappointment by anti-apartheid leaders in Britain. Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-racial Open Comittee for Olympic Sports (SANROC) characterised the move as a blow to black South Africans who want multi-racial sport. There are two black sports groups in South Africa--those who agree with SAONGA president Frank Braun's proposals for organised separate black and white sports activities; and those who will not negotiate on any basis other than multi-racial sport. 'I am afraid,' says Brutus, 'that this means that the first group have agreed to co-operate with Mr Braun on what amounts to an apartheid platform.' Indeed, two members of the black group seeking multi-racial sport have been interrogated by special branch officers, adds Brutus. SANROC are retaliating by lifting their own restrictions on protests against individual athletes and officials as opposed to white South African teams."
• Countries wait to see if they can compete

  [Excerpt]: "From the Jamaican headquarters this morning came a voice of apparent calm which epitomized all the doubts still surrounding those few countries who do not yet know if their participation in these Olympic Games is going to be stopped in full stride...That visit does not seem to disturb the boycott organizers at all compared with the way they reacted here aginst New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa. Indeed, Abraham Ordia of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, has already left Montreal and today Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, was returning to Chicago where he is a university lecturer. Obviously, both felt there was no point in trying to protest about the enormous presence here of Uncle Sam..."
• Competitors' dreams destroyed by their governments

  [Excerpt]: "As the Olympic Games began today with the modern pentathlon participants climbing into their saddles at 8 am, more than one tenth of the competitors felt close to tears. They were the members of African countries whose governments, rather than sports federations, have forced them to withdraw, after having arrived here, in protest over New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa. They were the young men and women, many of whom had never travelled abroad before, who were left, wandering disconsolately, in the Olympic village yesterday while the Queen formally opened the games in the glittering bowl of a stadium which they will now never enter... "Why couldn't they have put off the New Zealand rugby tour until after the Games were over?" [Michael Boit] asked. He must have known, in his heart, that such a dramatic move was never contemplated either by the New Zealand or South African rugby authorities. He must have known, too, that the ment who engineered this African boycott, Jean-Claude Ganga, Abraham Ordia, and Denis Brutus, were never seekign a compromise. They wanted, at whatever price, to use the Olympics as a publicity stage against the apartheid policies of South Africa..."
• Coloured academics refuse to take part in 'witch-hunt'

  Three coloured academics have resigned from an otherwise all-white committee investigating readmissions to the Universty of the Western Cape, which was closed last week after student disturbances. The three, Mr. Adam Small, head of the university's philosophy department, Mr. G. J. Gerwel, lecturer in Afrikaans, and Mr. C. T. Johnson, lecturer in botany, had been named by Dr. Shalk van der Merwe, the Minister of Coloured Affairs, to serve on the committee with 10 white academics. A spokesman for their staff association said last night that they had resigned because the minister had already said that some students would not be readmitted and they did not want to take part in a witch-hunt.
• Boycott threat to Games

  [Full Text]: "A mass boycott of the British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh next July has been threatened by the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa and the South African Non-Racial Committee for Olympic Sport if the South African cricket tour of England is not called off. The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa which includes 36 countries in its membership has cabled the British Government stating that African countries will withdraw from the Edinburgh games in protest at what they regard as racism in cricket. Mr. Denis Brutus, the chairman of Sanroc, said in London last night: "At a recent meeting of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa which was held in Cairo our representatives had never seen such militancy expressed on the question of the visit of the South African cricketers. We in Sanroc are now proposing to cable all member countries of the Commonwealth Games Federation asking them to boycott the games. The latest development in the controversy over the cricket tour indicates to us that many very prominent people in Britain are giving their support to the M.C.C. We feel so strongly about this blatant racism that we regretfully have to fight back," he said. The chairman of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa is Mr. Abraham Ordia, a member of the Nigerian National Olympic Committee and the secretary is Mr. Jean-Claude Ganga from Brazzaville. It was, at first, the Kenyan Minister for Sport who suggested that no sportsman from his country would run in Edinburgh against anyone who had competed in the all-white South African games last year. He has been given the full support of black Africa and it is felt that Asian and West Indian members of the Commonwealth will soon follow suit. Mr. Brutus said: "I hope that even at this late date it is not too late for a change of mind in Britain. But the most recent developments suggest the South Africans will still play here with far-reaching effects upon international sport."
• Apartheid's arch-enemy wins right of asylum

  New York writer Trevor Fishlock reports: "Dennis Brutus, a leading opponent of apartheid who headed the campaign to have South Africa expelled from the Olympic Games, has won his fight against deportation from the United States. A judge in Chicago granted him political asylum..."
• Apartheid and Sport: The Logic of Denis Howell's Approach

  "If the Minister for Sport, Mr. Denis Howell, has his way we will be deprived next year of the opportunity of seeing the South African cricket team in action. Choosing his words with care, Mr. Howell said in a television interview at the week-end: 'I personally don't think the South African team should come. I Have no time for sport based on racial considerations. Their sport certainly is, and the selection of their team certainly is." ...By this I mean far more than the cancellation of the New Zealand rugby tour in 1964, or the fiasco over the MCC tour last year. I could take the story back as far as 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation excluded from membership the all-white official South African Table-Tennis Association in favour of an unofficial group whose rules allowed ping-pong across the colour line. But it is best to begin with 1962, when the "South African non-racial Open Committee for Olympic Sports"--Sanroc--was formed. This group worked originally inside the Republic but it has since exiled itself to London since its president, Denis Brutus, left his home country in 1966 after a 22-month term served mostly on Robben Island..."
• Afrikaans poet released

  Mr Breyten Breytenbach, South Africa's most famous living Afrikaans poet, has been released from prison after serving seven of the nine years to which he was sentenced in 1975 for promoting the aims of the banned African National Congress (ANC). By far the best known white political prisoner in South Africa, Mr Breytenbach is also the first prisoner of note to be freed under a new policy announced earlier this year by Mr Kobie Coetsee, the Minister of Justice, which makes it possible for those convicted of "offenses against the security of the state" to qualify for remission of sentence. [Article continues to describe how political prisoners are chosen for release.]
• African Honeymoon

  Frank Norman writes an article regarding his trip to South Africa and how his preconceived notions of the country line up with the actuality. He discusses he and his wife's flight in, how he has been warned by friends to "trust no-one," and South African apartheid. At a cocktail party with friends, he meets Oswald Joseph Mtshali, the poet, of whom he says: "His poems are lyrical and powerfully composed. They are a cry of anguish for the plight of the black man in South Africa and are often devastatingly critical of the Vorstere regime. But it cannot be said that they are a call to arms, which is doubtless why publication has been permitted -- in order that the world can see how liberal the South African Government really is." "In the evening Nadine gave a cocktail party for us, so that we could meet some of the local literati, journalists and the like. Notable among the guests was Oswald Joseph Mtshali, a black African poet whose book, Sounds of a Cowhide, is a run away bestseller among both black and white readers."
• 19 nations join in Olympics protest

  [Full Text]: "The number of countries which have withdrawn from the Olympic Games in protest at the New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa increased to 19 yesterday with the news that the team of Mali has been instructed to return home by their Minister of Sport. Thirteen countries have formally notified the International Committee of their withdrawal. They are Congo, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Cameroon, Guyana, Niger, Togo, Uganda and Swaziland. Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Upper Volta have verbally informed the IOC that they will not be taking part, and news was received yesterday from Cairo that Egypt is also pulling out. Before the news was received of Mali's marching orders, 303 competitors and 60 officials were listed as leaving the Olympics. This still left 6,934 competitors and 2,825 officials from 100 countries taking part with, in most cases, undiminished enthusiasm. Two of the chief boycott organizers have already left the battlefield. Abraham Ordia, of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa, has flown home to Nigeria, and Denis Brutus, president of the South African Non-racial Olympic Committee, has left the Queen Elizabeth hotel, where his bemused elderly victims in the IOC are also housed, to return to his university in Chicago. Both men have obviously decided to leave the possibility of further withdrawals in the hands of the remaining uncommitted Caribbean, French-speaking African and Arab governments."