Irony in S Africa

Salient has received, through the courtesy of the National Union of Australian University Students, copies of letters from a correspondent in South Africa.

He reports that the government in South Africa has recently taken discriminatory measures against returned soldiers:

"War Disability pensions," he writes, "were given in a 4;2:1 ratio to the Whites. Coloureds and Africans respectively. This appalling discrimination was not enough —the figures have since been changed to approximately 10:5:1.

"The Africans now receive an amount insufficient even to supply them with food."

He quotes the following incident:

"On March 22, 1965, the British Ambassador had to stand outside a dining-room (under the apartheid Group Areas Act) to convey the best wishes of Her Majesty the Queen to a group of blinded South African Coloured ex-servicemen who were holding their reunion dinner Inside the room."