Robert Kennedy Hits At Apartheid

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31080, 8 June 1966, Page 17

Robert Kennedy Hits At Apartheid

(N Z.P.A. Reuter —Copyright?

CAPE TOWN, June 7.

The visiting United States Senator, Mr Robert Kennedy, branded apartheid as one of the evils of the world in a hardhitting attack on South Africa’s racial policies in Cape Town last night The Senator was speaking at the National Union of South African Students at Cape Town University. His 40-minute address, punctuated by wild applause, was relayed to an estimated 18,000 people on the university campus. Observers saw it as the most direct attack by a visitor on the South African Government’s policies since the former British Premier, Mr Harold Macmillan, spoke of "winds of change” in 1960.

In his anti-apartheid comments, Senator Kennedy said: “We must recognise the full human equality of all our people—before God, before the law, and in the councils of government.”

He mentioned apartheid in listing what he termed current world evils. They in-

eluded discrimination in New York, serfdom in Peru, starvation in India, mass slaughter in Indonesia, and the gaoling of intellectuals in Russia.

Senator Kennedy’s visit has been officially ignored by the South African Government, which has termed it strictly private.