Cricket, lovely cricket
Sir: In his reply to my previous letter, L. Clarke (13 June) refers to 'those who know enough about South Africa to be entitled to form opinions.' Does he seriously think that the majority of anti-apartheid demonstrators are familiar with the figures he quotes? By Mr Clarke's logic, anyone who is unfamiliar with the death rate among black South Africans is not entitled to oppose apartheid.
Although I, personally, was ignorant of the figures quoted by Mr Clarke—equally ignorant, I suspect, were many opponents of the South African cricket tour—neither the anti-apartheid campaigners nor myself were ignorant of the fact, repeatedly stated on television, that Biafran children were dying at the rate of one thousand a day. It is a fact that General Gowon's government threatened to shoot down relief planes, it is a fact that doctors who wished to help were not allowed into the country, it is a fact that priests and nuns were imprisoned, it is a fact that women were rounded up and raped, and it is a fact that journalists who attempted to report these things were arrested.
Now, in my previous letter I was not ex- pressing an opinion about South Africa at all. My point was, that there is a constant, organised campaign of hate-propaganda against South Africa, and that this campaign claims to be morally motivated. At the same time, those people who expend a great deal of energy trying to get support for the anti- apartheid campaign raised no objection whatever to the mass-starvation and mass- rape in Nigeria. It may be argued that there were occasional expressions of 'regret', or 'concern', but not one single anti-apartheid campaigner raised the slightest moral criticism of the Federal Nigerian govern. ment.
It is this claim to superior morality. plus a rigid double standard, which proves that the anti-apartheid campaign in particular. and 'liberalism' in general, are based entirely on hypocritical, self-righteous conceit, and. moreover, hold humanity in contempt.
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