Items

• 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." ..."
• 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..."
• 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..."
• 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."
• Behind the lines

  This article covers the two-day "crammed and curious" conference called The Politics of Exile, organized by the Third World Foundation and South magazine at the Institute for Contemporary Arts. "The real politicians had stayed away, offering a wide variety of excuses: they didn't feel like entering this kind of forum, it was too potentially compromising, they'd have to have the authority of a central committee... Instead, it was the writers and intellectuals who jostled for space in the programme to talk about the Latin American, African, Middle-Eastern, and South Asian experiences. So the politics were filtered through very self-conscious lenses." Of African poets, Sage writes, "As someone else pointed out, exiles must always be distiguished from refugees, they don't have the collective innocence of victims... Educated and articulate exiles, said the banished South African poet Dennis Brutus (famed as the inspirer of the sporting boycott), form a new wandering tribe -- the Bintu. They've been to conferences on the nature of exile just about everywhere, even Oklahoma."
• 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."
• South Africa:'We quit Olympics if. . .'

  "South Africa will probably withdraw from the Olympic games in Mexico rather than see the international event collapse in the face of anti-South African moves."