Connie Mulder announces banning off WCC officials from SA

The Minister of the Interior, Connie Mulder, announces that senior officials of the World Council of Churches (WCC) have been banned from South Africa. Entry will be refused to any member of the Council's Executive or Central Committee. During the 1960s the WCC created a programme to fight racism. They invited member churches to contribute to a fund to provide financial support for guerrilla organizations throughout the world. It did not make direct grants to guerrilla organisations in Southern Africa out of its normal financial income. After 1963, exiled African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leaders, together with other political exiles and refugees, began to exert pressure on the WCC, directing their arguments to achieve moral isolation of South Africa in order to facilitate the overthrow of White rule. Despite terrorism being termed 'the scourge of modern times', and roundly condemned in the rest of the world, there was a tendency in the WCC to excuse guerrillas in Southern Africa and to give them moral support. It accordingly contributed to guerrilla organisations in Southern Africa 'for non-military purposes', and the climate of suspicion between Church and State thickened.