A Mountain of Reports

The first ten or so items in the agenda were a variety of reports. They came from the three National Officers, from NZUSA's observer to the Council of the Australian Union of Students (AUS) attended in Januaury by President Chris Gosling, the delegates to the Conference of the Asian Students Association attended in December of 1978 by Grant Liddell and 1978 VUWSA President Lindy Cassidy (reports on both these conferences will be appearing in Salient over the next few weeks), reports from the constituents of activities on their campuses and even then there were a few more. In all over fifteen reports were presented, and of these only two or three generated any discussions, however it took about five hours to get through them all.

One of the more important points to arise out of the reports was the matter of the South African Scholar. Students may remember the furore late last year when government imposed a ban on the South African Scholar speaking on political topics while in New Zealand. As the group which has organised the scholarship NZUSA fought vigoursly against the restriction. It arose however out of Jim Brown's report that communications between here and South Africa were not as good as we had hoped, and the person selected for the scholarship did not have the equivalent of UE and thus was ineligible for the scholarship. Therefore the campaign to restore speaking rights to the scholar lost some of its frenzied nature and is now proceeding a more sober, but no less determined, level.

It is hard to place any blame on anyone for this error, for NZUSA's contacts among the liberation groups in Africa suffers from a 9,000 mile seperation, so it is very difficult to sometimes get all the information necessary.

The Southern Africa Scholarship Trust Board has however selected the Scholar for 1980 and work is now starting to ensure that there are no problems for him. It is to be hoped that, not only will the scholar arrive, but by the time he does, the speaking ban will have been lifted. In New Zealand we have very little contact with events in Africa, particularly the liberation movements in Southern Africa and the scholar if allowed to speak publically about the developments there, will do something to bridge that gap.