UNITED NATIONS -- Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Cher, the Beach Boys and the Vienna Boys Choir appear on a United Nations blacklist of 200 entertainers who perform in South Africa in defiance of a U.N. cultural boycott.
The U.N. General Assembly has adopted resolutions calling on all countries to ban all academic, sports, entertainment and cultural contacts with South Africa in an attempt to force Pretoria to abandon its racist policies.
What were called registers of sports contacts with South Africa have been issued by the U.N. Center Against Apartheid for several years, but this is the first dealing exclusively with entertainers.
By doing so the center said it hoped to bring pressure on those named to stop traveling to South Africa.
'It was decided to publish this register of entertainers, actors and others who have performed in South Africa in order to facilitate appropriate action by all governments, organizations and individuals committed to freedom in South Africa,' said an introduction to the blacklist.
It said many entertainers rejected lucrative offers, but 'some entertainers were enticed by the propaganda and the tempting financial offers of apartheid to defy the boycott and perform in South Africa.'
The center charged that Pretoria established the entertainment complex called Sun City in the independent African homeland of Bophuthatswana within South Africa to deflect criticism.
It quoted Eddy Amoo, a member of the British rock group The Real Thing that visited South Africa last year, as saying, 'Sun City is an Afrikaner's paradise in a black man's nightmare.'
The list, composed of entertainers from 22 mostly Western countries, included only those who have performed in South Africa since Jan. 1, 1981.
Apart from Sinatra, Cher, Ray Charles and the Beach Boys, the 81 other Americans included actress Goldie Hawn; comedian Shelley Berman; television stars Howard (Dr. John Fever) Hessman and Tim (Venus Flytrap) Reid, who both appeared in 'WKRP in Cincinnati'; country singers Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell and Kenny Rogers; singers Liza Minelli, Johnny Mathis and Paul Anka; jazz pianist Chick Corea and rock star Linda Ronstadt.
Others included the rock group Sha Na Na and television star Telly Savalas, but the center singled out Sinatra for particular scorn in explaining the reasons some entertainers -- which it called collaborators - performed in South Africa.
'Some of the collaborators had perhaps visited South Africa because of ignorance of the situation, or lure of exorbitant fees; others have shown deliberate insensitivity or hostility to the legitimate aspirations of the oppressed people of South Africa,' it said.
Sinatra appeared in Sun City in July-August 1981 for a reported fee of $1.79 million before returning to South Africa in 1983 despite appeals by anti-apartheid groups, the center said.
'Thus he was not only merely profiting from apartheid, but was demonstrating utter contempt for the African people,' it said.
for release at 10:00 a.m.
