Edmonton police carry off a demonstrator protesting the visit of a : os = ogc eee r Re} Pas, TE, ree % eas Ess Ae : South African cricket team to the Alberta capital on Sept. 18. 61 people arrested at Edmonton protest By K. CARIOU EEDMONTON-—Sixty-one people were arrested here Sept. 18 for displaying their determined op- position to apartheid. They were © protesting a cricket game being played at Victoria Park, involving the Robins Eleven, a team financed by the millionaire Derek Robins, who lives in South Africa. The protest was organized by the Free Southern Africa Committee (FSAC), which pointed out that several of the Robins Eleven had played in South Africa, and that Robins has often sponsored teams to play in South Africa, thus sup- porting that country’s apartheid sports policy. Members of FSAC, and other groups and individuals, picketed at the match for three hours,. demanding an end to the game and calling for an end to the repression and racism in South Africa. When it became obvious that the match would continue, the demonstrators moved onto the field in the hope of stopping any further invitations to racist cricket teams to come to Edmonton. (In June public pressure forced the cancellation of the Oppenheimer Eleven’s game here.) The President of the Edmonton Cricket League, Geoff Williams, then asked police to remove the protesters. Using brutal methods on some people, as seen on national TV, 50 policemen quickly put the protesters into paddy wagons and sent them to jail. Most of the police stayed behind for a friendly cup of tea with Williams. The arrested people were granted bail by 10:30 p.m., but the police deliberately delayed their release, taking until 7:45 the next morning to complete the process. In a news release, FSAC called for the charges against the ‘‘Ed- monton 61’? to be dropped, and placed responsibility for the in- cident on Edmonton City Council for permitting city facilities to be used by racist sports teams. _ The statement condemned this type of collaboration with South African sports teams as “‘ensuring the racist system of sports repression in South Africa, and promoting racism in Edmonton”’. It noted that while Canada has an official policy of opposing com- petition with South Africa, some individual continue to invite South African teams. The release also pointed out the extensive economic ties Canada has with South Africa, through corporations like Carling- O'Keefe, Alcan, Noranda, and many others, and _ through governments. — The statement censured the police for their racist actions. Among the 39 men arrested, non- whites were last- to be released, with one exception, and many racist remarks were made. The 22 women arrested were not fed, and faced continual sexist harassment typical of the Edmonton police force. S. Africa owns most B.C. wine companies British Columbians have been led to believe that there is a native wine industry which is owned by British Columbians. A recent book on the wine industry in B.C. by Roland Morgan (B.C. Wine and Spirits Guide) says it just ain’t so. In fact, he points out, most of B.C.’s wine companies are owned by foreign capital, most of them by South African capital. According to Morgan, Andres is Canadian, but based in Montreal. Casabello is scheduled to be taken over by Labatt’s Brewery in a couple of years. Calona is owned by Standard Brands of the U.S. But most shocking of all is the disclosure in his book that in recent years a South African company, Rothman’s, has. taken over ‘ownership of Ste. Michelle, Jordan, Beau. Sejour, Villa and Slingers. This probably also explains why the Socred government recently lifted the restriction on the sale of South African wines and brandies in B.C. liquor stores. Without knowing it, British Columbians have been con- tributing to strengthening the South African racist regime by buying B.C. wines owned by a major South African monopoly. sports federations- Kissinger’s Africa aim to save Vorster regime By WILLIAM POMEROY LONDON—The simple fact protruding through the Ford- Kissinger hogwash about bringing ‘neace and justice’ to southern Africa is that the only beneficiary of Henry Kissinger’s so-called shuttle diplomacy is the apartheid regime of John Vorster in South Africa. This is proven by the behavior of the Vorster govern- ment since the first meeting bet- ween fhe racist premier and Kissinger in Bavaria. Before that meeting the apar- theid regime, defeated in Angola, facing a UN deadline over in- dependence for Namibia, in- creasingly anxious over a liberation war in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), and especially alar- med by Black revolt in Soweto and other segregated townships, was becoming shaky and uncertain. Its emissaries were dashing about Western Europe and the US., trying to dispel foreign investment fears about the future of apartheid. In Vorster’s Nationalist Party, worried voices were heard proposing all kinds of reforms in the apartheid system. After meeting Kissinger in Bavaria, again in Zurich, and then on his ground in Pretoria, Vorster _no longer displays signs of being worried. His ruthless anti-Black line has hardened, and his government shows every evidence of continuing its rigid racist policies with new vigor and con- fidence. No statement on what Kissinger and Vorster converse about in their tete-a-tetes has been issued, but Kissinger’s aides claim that Rhodesia and Namibia are discussed..and that South, Africa itself is left out. Kissinger himself says that South Africa is not a colony, that the whites belong there, and that their rights must be upheld. The principal issue in ‘southern Africa, that of bloody apartheid, is left out of the ‘peace and justice’’ diplomacy. Since Vorster first met Kissinger, over 1,000 Blacks have been slaughtered in South African townships (according to Black sources within the country). This is several times more than those killed on both sides in Rhodesia and Namibia put together. Far from moderating or ‘‘reforming”’ this massacre of unarmed protesting Blacks, the Vorster regime has stepped up the killings, andits police chief, James Kruger, declares that worse measures will be used if the protests against apartheid do not stop. By every indication, Vorster has been made to feel that with his new relationship with the U.S. he can confidently go ahead with his murder of the opponents of apartheid. Each speech he has made since seeing Kissinger has been ‘‘tougher”’ than the last. On Sept. 12 he told a meeting of 6,000 Nationalists in Pretoria that he would not bring any pressure to bear on Ian Smith to reach a majority rule settlement in Rhodesia. (Kissinger has said that one of the keystones of his diplomacy is to persuade Vorster to do just that.) On Sept. 13, as > Kissinger was on his way to Pretoria, Vorster made the most hardline speech yet, rejecting the making of any serious changes in the apartheid system. According to the British Guar- dian correspondent in South Africa, his speech ‘“‘has been received with disbelief by whites and Blacks alike.’’ Another public claim by Kissinger is that he is persuading Vorster to sit down with the South West Africa People’s Organization Kissinger and Vorster (SWAPO), the liberation movement in Namibia. After meeting Kissinger for the second time, Vorster declared that he would not meet with SWAPO. Ina speechin Pretoria before the Transvaal congress of the ruling Nationalist Party, - Vorster’s minister of information and of the interior, Connie Mulder, an- nounced on Sept. 14 the only change that would be made: the term “‘apartheid”’ and two cosmetic terms used in its place—‘‘separate development” and ‘‘separate freedoms’’—would no longer be used, but would be replaced by ‘“‘plural democracy”’. Thus, the only change in South Africa announced by the Vorster regime after the meetings with Kissinger is a ludicrous change in terminology. Henceforth the massacre of Blacks will be done in the name of ‘“‘plural democracy’’, not of apartheid. The real aim and consequence of Kissinger’s diplomacy with Vor- ster was graphically related by the London Times’ correspondent in South Africa in a report on Sept. 16, the eve of the Kissinger visit to Pretoria. It said that ‘South Africans, after years of diplomatic isolation can scarcely conceal their exhilaration at the prospect of playing host to such a distinguished visitor as Dr. Kissinger. ‘Whatever the outcome of the Kissinger mission it has already paid substantial dividends to Mr. Vorster. After his two rounds of talks with Dr. Kissinger in West Germany and Switzerland, Mr. Vorster has been the leader who holds the key to the solution of southern African’s problems. “The fact that Dr. Kissinger is personally coming to Pretoria ‘is seen as a big success for South African diplomacy. America and the West, it is claimed, have at last heeded the warnings which South Africa has been giving about communist intentions in southern Africa. South African — officials believe that their country will soon resume its rightful place within the Western alliance.” So that is the purpose of the Kissinger exercise: to break the apartheid regime’s isolation by all decent humanity, and to bring it into the imperialist allience in’ some extension of NATO. What matter if the bodies of murdered Blacks pile up in the streets of Soweto and Cape Town, so long as South Africa is in an_anti- communist alliance. There is good reason to believe that the Kissinger visits to in- dependent Black African states while on the way to Pretoria were only a screen for this real aim of his ‘‘diplomacy’’. African heads of state and of liberation movements have not been deceived. In their words, the armed liberation struggles will be stepped up. It is the Black majority that will bring about peace and justice in southern Africa. Tanzanian students protesting Kissinger’s visit.” aay PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 1, 1976—Page 3 are yr, PE ee re ee eae oe en