RW Johnson reflects on the complex legacies of South Africa’s post-1994 era, spotlighting unsung heroes like Raymond Louw. While many journalists succumbed to ANC influence, Louw championed press freedom with unwavering courage, warning against complacency in a rapidly changing political landscape. As he battled government intimidation, his commitment to independent journalism served as a crucial reminder of the dangers faced by the media, even in a democratic society.
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By RW Johnson
___STEADY_PAYWALL___All the fuss over Pravin Gordhan’s death – by no means all of it merited – made me think about some of the real if unsung heroes of our post-1994 era. Of course, major changes in the political climate have a way of catching some people out. Some of those who had gained reputations as bold liberal critics of apartheid folded all too easily into the embrace of the ANC. Allister Sparks was one such. Effectively, he could see nothing but good about the ANC. Just how badly this had affected his judgement became increasingly clear after Mugabe launched his campaign of terror in Zimbabwe in 2001. There was no argument that this included a great deal of torture, murder, intimidation, racism and gross denial of democracy. It was also clear enough that Thabo Mbeki was determined to keep Mugabe in power in Zimbabwe and that he was wholly unconcerned by this appalling repression of human rights. All of this was disguised as “quiet diplomacy”, though I never met anyone in Zimbabwe fooled by this disguise.
It was a shock to return to South Africa and find that Sparks was angrily denying that Mbeki supported Mugabe. What this really meant was that Sparks had swallowed whole Mbeki’s paper-thin excuses and was shocked to find that the international gallery of liberal opinion – which he had always played to – now classed Mbeki together with Mugabe. I can only imagine how painful Sparks must later have found Mbeki’s Aids policies.
Not that Sparks was alone. Tony Heard, once the crusading editor of the Cape Times, became an adviser to Kader Asmal in 1994 and later worked in Thabo Mbeki’s presidential office. Amazingly, he then worked for Zuma in the same capacity until 2010. During much of that period I got used to receiving angry letters from him, presumably reflecting the opinions of his employers in that period. The press in that period was very subservient to the ANC but that did not include the publications of the Helen Suzman Foundation, of which I was the director. Heard seemed to find this extremely provoking, as if all liberals should have followed his lead. I never replied to any of his letters. It was only many years later – shortly before he died – that we actually met. He looked across the table at me and said “You were right about everything” – and then turned away. I was taken aback.
But by far my favourite old journalist was Raymond Louw. Although entering his 70s not long after 1994 Ray was full of energy well into his 90s. He and his wife produced Southern African Report, as a result of which he was a member of the editors’ forum, Sanef. And what Ray realised was that the new era in South African politics was an extremely dangerous one for press freedom. On the one hand the press was thoroughly intimidated by the ANC and went to extravagant lengths to avoid criticising it. The ANC exiles, then very much the dominant group, had had no experience of a free press. The ANC press was a party line affair. Many of the party’s leaders had spent a good deal of time in Eastern Europe and assumed that the duty of the press was to reflect the local Communist or liberation movement policies. The whole idea of an independent press talking back at the government was anathema to them.
The situation was worsened by the ongoing Africanisation and juniorisation of the press. Large numbers of young and inexperienced African journalists were suddenly very much to the fore. Many of them were ANC true believers and certainly very few of them had any idea of doing anything that might upset the new men of power. Quite how dangerous this was first became evident to me when a visiting Zimbabwean journalist gave a talk in Rosebank in, I think, 1996. He described how when Mugabe had come to power journalists like himself had decided they must be supportive and non-critical, trying to help the new government to settle in. Only many years later had they uttered their first words of criticism. They had hoped that their lengthy period of indulgence towards the new government would have earned them a respectful hearing. But there was nothing of the sort: the government was now so used to their fair words and flattery that they treated it as their right and were furiously angry at the slightest critical note. And fairly soon they followed up with gross acts of bullying and intimidation.
Our Zimbabwean speaker then spoke directly to the young black journalists. I know, he said, just what feelings you have towards your new government. And you are wrong. You are all intent on making exactly the same mistakes that we did. Because, you see, we should have started off right away being just as critical as we wanted to be. Holding off was doing us no good and was merely getting the government used to flattery. By the time you are ready to say anything the ministers you think of as heroes will all be as rich and corrupt as can be. You will have gained nothing. The only way of having press freedom is to practise it. And that’s what you should do. Mixing with the journalists after the talk I realised that many of them were shocked – and none of them were planning to do as the speaker had suggested.
Ray Louw was perfect for this situation. While other former editors rested on their reputations, Ray realised that there was a grave and present threat to press freedom and that the key to the situation was to gain the confidence of the younger black journalists. The government, led by Mbeki and Essop Pahad, repeatedly demanded that the press must co-ordinate with the government to produce a single coherent line. In effect what this meant was that the ANC exiles were demanding that the press should toe the government line, just as the ANC press had done in exile and the Communist party newspapers had toed the line of their East European governments. Essop Pahad had edited the World Marxist Review in Prague in Communist Czechoslovakia and such thinking came naturally to him. Ray resisted this with every fibre of his being and preached the gospel of a free press to his younger black colleagues.
Moreover Mandela was equally guilty of bullying the press. When the Sarafina 2 scandal emerged Mandela attacked “the white-owned media” for criticising Dlamini-Zuma. This was as nothing, however, when the Allan Boesak scandal broke. Mandela, ignoring the perfectly straightforward evidence that Boesak was a thief, called him “one of the most gifted young men in the country” and said that the charges against him were ”baseless”. He then did his best to intimidate the Scandinavian churches which had brought the case against Boesak. In this and other cases Mandela was wont to attack white journalists, claiming they were merely resisting change, and claiming that black journalists were either acting out of ignorance by criticising the ANC or had actually been “co-opted” by reactionary white interests. This was outrageous: the black journalists concerned were merely doing their jobs.
Mandela’s speech to the ANC’s Mafikeng conference in 1997 – a paranoid epic penned by Mbeki – outlined a vast counter-revolutionary conspiracy which included the media which had already defined itself as “a force opposed to the ANC”. It did everything it could to undermine, weaken and discredit the ANC and “uses the democratic order to protect the legacy of racism”. The overall thrust of the speech was that the ANC must deploy its cadres throughout society so that it controlled all significant institutions and it was by no means clear that the press was also intended for this treatment – there were hints about the ownership and control of the press and how theses, like everything else, were in urgent need of transformation.
The 1990s saw the peak of Mandela’s popularity and it was hard indeed to find journalists willing and able to stand up against that. But Ray stuck to his guns. Wisely, he avoided calling out any of the personalities involved and stuck firmly to the facts. The point that Ray made over and over again was that the press was inherently pluralistic. Mbeki and Pahad (and no doubt Mandela too) wanted the press to be a single united thing which could then cohere to the government line in a disciplined fashion. Ray said that was simply impossible because what one newspaper did might be anathema to its competitor. And news was a competitive business, which was what made pluralism inevitable. Any wide awake editor would spot what his competitors were doing and then aim for a subtle or a gross variation.
Mbeki and Pahad continued to preach their monolithic message – and in those years most of the press was so slavishly pro-ANC that they must have felt that they were in sight of their goal. But as time went by more and more of the younger black journalists saw the wisdom of what Ray was preaching. It greatly amused them that Ray, who was forty or fifty years older than many of them, was the one with fire in his belly and they were won over by his courage as much as by his good nature.
Gavin Stewart, editor of the East London Daily Dispatch was a good friend of mine in that period and he happily supported Ray, though he claimed that despite being twenty years younger than Ray, he found it an exhausting struggle to keep up with him. Two things then settled the battle completely in Ray’s favour. One was Mbeki’s crazy policy on Aids which made it simply impossible for newspapers to support him, the more so since they knew that their international peers were shocked and amused by Mbeki’s lunatic ideas. Secondly, the sacking of Jacob Zuma as Deputy President in June 2005 meant that the ANC was divided in two and that any newspaper was now free to take its own position.
The ANC remained basically uncomfortable with a free press. When Zuma replaced Mbeki he expressed the same hostility to free media, though his concern was more with its revelations of corruption. In this period there was much discussion about setting up a media appeals tribunal, to be regulated by Parliament. In effect this would have meant that ANC politicians would have the power to grant or with-hold a license to practise for journalists. The whole idea was, of course, completely unconstitutional though this never bothered Zuma.
Ray died at the age of 92 on the day after his wife’s death. He had fought the battle for press freedom for many years after 1994, when many failed even to realise what danger the press was in. Far too easily many had concluded that now that South Africa had a fine liberal constitution, there was no need to worry about freedom of the press. But Ray saw the danger and fought it year in and year out. We are all in his debt. I can still hear his chuckle and I will never forget his amazing energy. He was a man who simply never gave up.
SOURCE: R.W. Johnson
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