8 - Sunday, February 23, 1986 - North Shore News Doug Collins © get this straight e IF YOU want to know what’s going on in a country, read its newspapers. They will tell you a lot even when they don’t want to. Even inthe USSR you can read between the lines. So what else is new? Well, so- meone should tell our media peo- ple in South Africa that you can get news from newspapers. Because what we get from the in- f trepid bunch over there is nothing but the ‘‘South Africa is a villain”’ stuff. It’s pack journalism at its worst. You know the. routine stuff: “South African Police Seize Win- | nie Mandela’; “Blast Sparks Threat From Botha’; ‘‘Grief And Fear In The Townships’’. In sum, i we see a tottering, authoritarian, -semi-fascist state. People are “‘banned”; news is ‘‘banned’’. And so on. That mirror distorts..I know that is so because I have taken the trouble to get some South African -mMewspapers. It is true that an editor has been prosecuted for printing an interview with the head of the communist- dominated African National! Con- gress, but the affair has been fully reported and is a matter of con- | troversy and public discussion. ‘Also, tobe charged is one thing, to. be convicted is another. _. | .In case you're feeling smug, remeniber that freedom of speech | ain’t so hot here, either, especially if you’re a Keegstra or a Zundel. Yet unlike the South Africans, we don't have a crisis on our hands. Civil unrest is covered in great City a NORTH VANCOUVER js. getting two more police officers. a City council approved a request Monday ‘from the local RCMP . detachment for an additional two uniformed officers to be added to the present force already con- tracted to the city. : . RCMP Supt. Roy Byrne told the - News the request for the additional officers, stemmed from a need to : increase the manpower in two sec- ae tions of the 135-member ‘detach- ment. : _ He said one of the two new of- -ficers will be placed in the morality section, which-deals with sexual assault offences: The, other officer. will be added to the burglary section, where | Byrne said “the work never ends.””. J ’ City administrator Ed Raymond . said it was difficult to give a dollar figure for the two new officers, as the pair’s starting date was not-yet > Set. But he estimated the cost would be “approximately $55,000 for the two,” detail, as are opposition parties and other critics of the govern- ment. (The opposition in Nicaragua would like such freedom, but the liberal trendies who bash South Africa ignore that.) The sayings of Bishop Tutu are news, and the dafter they are the more space they get, like when he told Washington that Botha would use nuclear weapons if the government showed signs of crumbling. Demands for the dropping of the apartheid laws are also widely reposted. A leading South African clergyman stated he couldn’t con- demn blacks for resorting to violence, and that got prominent coverage in the Johannesburg Star. It’s a funny kind of police state, too. For what do we see here but a demand by the South African Na- tional Council of: Women that the police chief who ordered the ar- rest’ OF juveniles in Soweto be given the old heave-ho. Clearly, Big Bad Botha can’t be too good at muzzling. people. He should take some lessons Jrom_ the authors of our ‘“‘hate laws’? and the ‘‘false news’’ section of our Criminal Code. Horrible and inhuman though Botha and Co. may be (ask any Canadian professor), the message doesn’t seem to have reached blacks in neighboring countries. ‘Raymond said the new police Officers could be on the job as ear- B DAILY STORAGE FOR DO-IT- YOURSELFERS # WINTER STORAGE 1921-700 OPEN 5 DAYS A W Coe Daily, the fools vote for South Africa with their feet. A Sunday Times of Cape Town news team dealt with that in a front-page spread headed: ‘‘The Frontier of Death’’. The story | showed that as of last August, South Africa was playing reluc- tant host to 160,000 black Mozambique refugees. Such refugees were still arriving even | though they had to pick their way through anti-personnel mines and barbed wire kindly placed along the border by their rulers. The reporters counted five skeletons in a one-kilometer stretch, the bodies having been left where they were by the Mozambique security forces as a warning to others. Meanwhile, we hand out foreign aid alms to the democratic Mr. Samora Machel, and judging by its pro- nouncements, Ottawa prays that South Africa will be reduced to | where it, too, can be a recipient of foreign aid. The eminent South African author and opponent of apar- theid, Alan Paton, has come out against ‘‘disinvestment’’, a weapon much favored by our liberal fooneys. But that news | doesn’t seem to have seeped through the news net either. Also missing is that Amnesty Interna- tional has refused 1o recognize the saintly Nelson Mandela as ‘“‘a prisoner of conscience’’, Why? Because he is dedicated to terrorism. As I say, it would be good if our media types in South Africa read that country’s newspapers. pproves new cops ly as June, depending on when the RCMP can have the men ready. “a a " READY TO FINISH WOOD FURNITURE 6 Drawer Mr. & Mrs. Chest $44 4 Drawer Student Desk . $59.55 WE MANUFACTURE OUR FURNITURE. 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