RHODESIA: DR. SITHOLE OF AFRICAN NATIONAL COUNCIL TELLS HOW HE BELIEVES HE WAS POISONED BY RHODESIAN AUTHORITIES.

Record ID: 472665

  • Title: RHODESIA: DR. SITHOLE OF AFRICAN NATIONAL COUNCIL TELLS HOW HE BELIEVES HE WAS POISONED BY RHODESIAN AUTHORITIES.
  • Date: 10th July 1975
  • Summary: 1. MV Sithole seated with reporter. 0.10 2. SV & CU Reporter asking Sithole questions and Sithole 2.45 TRANSCRIPTS MILLS: "Dr. Sithole, can you tell us how you think you were poisoned?" SITHOLE: "Well it was quite clear. A cup was given me, a cup of coffee. I drank it and thereafter I began feeling what finally was discovered to be t
  • Embargoed: 25th July 1975 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SALISBURY, RHODESIA
  • City:
  • Country: Zimbabwe
  • Topics:
  • Reuters ID: LVA48UTYPLIQMWDH0SSWTJP9APNB
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: The Rhodesian Government has still not released the results of its investigation into charges that it poisoned two members of the African National Council (AFC) who were on their way to a meeting in Lusaka in Zambia.

    Dr. Edson Sithole, the publicity secretary of the AFC was taken to hospital in Lusaka on 2 July after he said he drank a cup of poisoned coffee given him by Rhodesian police officers at New Sarum Airport in Salisbury as he was leaving for Lusaka.

    Since then it has been claimed that a second AFC member, Enos Nkala, took sick at the Lusaka meeting after drinking a cup of coffee at the same airport before leaving Rhodesia. He recovered after vomiting, but Dr. Sithole had to be treated with a stomach pump.

    President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia has charged the Rhodesian Government of Prime Minister Ian Smith with plotting the poisonings in an effort to implicate Zambia. Dr. Sithole has been a frequent critic of President Kaunda's regime.

    Rhodesian Foreign Minister - Pieter Can Der Byl-said a full investigation would be carried out but added that it would be impossible to implicate the Rhodesian Government or any Government employee in the alleged poisonings.

    Mr. Van Der Byl said the coffee has been drunk from a communal urn at the airport and that other delegates, some Rhodesian Air Force officers and two Zambian Air Force officers has shared it but had no complaints afterward.

    The White-dominated government of Ian Smith has been engaged in long and bitter negotiations with African nationalist groups over how the former British colony should be governed.

    (This film is serviced with an interview with Dr. Edson sithole by reporter Ian Mills. A transcript follows:-
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