LOOKING BACK

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 50 YEARS AGO

About 300 Maori rugby enthusiasts expected to tour South Africa with the All Blacks in 1970 pose a question for the Government. The crux is whether the “camp followers” will be given the same “warm, traditional welcome” promised to any Maori players by the Prime Minister, Mr. Vorster. Politicians in New Zealand are asking how Maori spectators would be treated in South Africa. Would they be classed as non-Whites and subjected to apartheid? If so, the controversy might endanger the tour. Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria and Bloemfontein’s Free State Stadium are barred to non-Whites. — October 6 1968

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 25 YEARS AGO

Details of one of the most bitter clashes in the life of veteran politician Helen Suzman — the row with her successor, DP MP Tony Leon — have been excised from her memoirs published this week. Friends advised she rewrite her account of the incident in 1989 when a DP young guard deposed her closest supporters in the Houghton constituency. “I said much harder things about the Houghton nomination affair in the manuscript,” Mrs Suzman said this week, “but I was advised to take it out”. She said after she had drafted the section, friends told her it was a “bit rough”. She had read it again and changed certain parts. “There is no point in carrying on vendettas,” she said. — October 10 1993