Clatter of turnstiles and rebates protest in S.A.

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 21

Clatter of turnstiles and rebates protest in S.A.

NZPA-AFP Pretoria As the turnstiles whizzed round at the final match of the Rebel Australian cricketers’ tour in Pretoria yesterday, the South African Government came under fire for generous tax rebates offered to tour sponsors.

The long visit by Kim Hughes and his team has turned from a financial flop into a cash bonanza for South African cricket.

But in Cape Town the opposition and liberal Progressive Federal

Party (P.F.P.) accused the Government of “blatant and opportunist misuse” of taxpayers’ money for the tour, which breached the international sports boycott.

Mr John Malcomess, an M.P., attacked the Government for allowing the tour sponsors to recover 90 per cent of taxes paid on the tour profits. He said that “pandering to the leisure” activities of South Africa’s minority white population, while blacks were starving in their segre-

gated townships, was a blatant and opportunist misuse of the taxpayers’ money. Mr Malcomess said that if the same companies had given the money to feed the starving, they could not have deducted one cent from their tax payments.

Cricket in South Africa is followed by few blacks. Because of the sports boycott, South Africa has been starved of international cricket

— hence the large amounts of money paid to attract boycott-break-ing tours. The South African Cricket Union announced record takings of 375,000 rands (about $NZ388,600) for a single day’s cricket at Saturday’s fifth oneday match between the tourists and the Spring-

boks, in Johannesburg.

The union is worried that South African cricket has become excessively reliant on the proceeds from one-day cricket, to the disadvantage of full-length matches.

The gate receipts of just three one-day games totalled 985,000 rands (about $NZ980,100).

Proceeds of the third and last full-length match netted only 295,000 rands (about 5NZ292.000). South Africa won the five-day game after the two previous four-day games had been drawn.

But the size of the crowds was an irrelevant issue to the P.F.P., which lashed the Government in Parliament on Tuesday for making generous tax concessions to spon-