Activist pans soccer cup decision

By LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK

South Africa is more than capable of holding the soccer World Cup and the country is devastated by the loss of the tournament, says civil rights activist Donald Woods.

A South African resident wrote to the Herald this week claiming that the infrastructure in his country was incapable of handling the 2006 cup and it was better that Germany staged the event.

But Mr Woods, a former newspaper editor exiled from South Africa in 1977 for his anti-apartheid views, staunchly defended his homeland at a fundraising lunch in Auckland yesterday.

"The suggestion that South Africa doesn't have the infrastructure is absolute baloney," he said.

"South Africa coped extremely well with the rugby World Cup."

At a meeting of the world soccer body Fifa in Zurich last week, Oceania chief Charlie Dempsey abstained from a vote on where the 2006 tournament should be held, effectively giving it to Germany instead of South Africa.

Mr Woods, who is in New Zealand to help raise money for eye care work by The Fred Hollows Foundation, said he was not satisfied by Mr Dempsey's explanations.

"He hasn't convinced me that there's not more to it."

Meanwhile, Mr Woods also criticised the international community's soft treatment of Fiji.

He said the country should be subject to full economic, sporting and cultural sanctions, in protest against the coup.

"The international community has got to show people like that [coup leader George Speight] they just can't tear up the democratic system.

"More should be done. It should be total sanctions.

"It would bring home to Fijians that no one lives totally on one island."

Mr Woods became a celebrity in 1977 after escaping from South Africa's notorious security police disguised as a Catholic priest, following editorials he had written blaming the Government for the killing of black leader Steve Biko.

The saga was depicted in the movie Cry Freedom.

Mr Woods now works as an international representative for the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg, and also helps to raise the profile of organisations such as the Hollows foundation, set up in 1992 to restore the sight of cataract-blind people.

The foundation has already restored the sight of more than 600,000 people.