Cricket, lovely cricket
Sir: Dr Donald M. Bowers' emphatic claim (30 May) that more Africans have been killed in Nigeria in the last few months as a result of the Biafran war than have been killed as a result of apartheid in the entire history of South Africa, is an unfortunately typical example of the manner in which, on racial issues, the not-so-well-informed in this country misinform the uninformed, and in which opinion seems to take precedence over facts.
The South African government has always been either devious or silent when asked the question 'How many Africans die from starvation and disease because of apar- theid?'; but the infant mortality rates for Coloureds (whose per capita income is three times higher than the Africans') is published in such official reference works as the State of South Africa Year Book, is six times higher than the white rate, and has been steadily increasing during the white South African economic boom. (The white rate has been dropping over the same period.) But specific African figures do come to light: such as 269 infant deaths per 1,000 live African births in 1967 in Port Elizabeth, where British motor companies have their plants, and 200 per 1,000 in Bloemfontein in 1969—the year when vast sums were spent on South Africa's white-only 'national' Games, in this very same city. Further, Dr Raymond Hoffenberg, one of Dr Barnard's original heart transplant team, remarked in the Times six months ago that in some rural areas more than 50 per cent of black South Africans die before reaching the age of five.
Those who know sufficient about South Africa to be entitled to fortil opinions will know that when such figures are added to those of total black South African popula- tion and birthrate, then most probably some half million innocent African babies have been killed as a result of apartheid since Sharpeville alone—and possibly one million, or even more.
These figures are not total deaths, by the way- They represent needless black South African child .deaths, compared to the rates in less wealthy but black-ruled states such as Ghana.
L. Clarke Clients Mail Dept., Bank of NSW, 9 Sackville Street, London wl
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