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Back in ancient days, when the Rand Daily Mail was a newspaper rather than a news website, it once ran the ultimate story on its front page. “The Final Deadline”, read the headline, and that’s what it was. The big news was that the paper, long a brave voice in the fight against apartheid, had run out of money and was shutting down.
That left a whole pack of journalists “unemployed, and probably unemployable”, to use the words of Anton Harber, then the paper’s political reporter. And that was when Anton and a few of his colleagues did something really ill-advised and counter to all good business practise and common sense. They started a newspaper of their own.
Few gave the Weekly Mail much chance of surviving beyond a few months, but more than three decades after, as the Mail & Guardian, it remains one of the leading independent newspapers in the world, as much a thorn in the side of the current government as it was to the last. But the news keeps changing, and those who thrive on its dynamic, shifting energies must keep changing too.
So Anton, co-founder of the Weekly Mail, moved on to editing a daily newspaper, managing a radio network, writing a book about life in Diepsloot, and running the journalism departments at Wits.
Now he is about to go right back to where it all started: the heart and soul of his passion and his profession, the newsroom, this time as editor-in-chief of the TV channel, eNCA. As he gets set to reinvent and revitalise television news in South Africa, driven by the notion that news is “the stuff people don’t want you to talk about”, Anton sat down with Ruda for a chat about change moments, taking risks, and life on the frontline and behind the scene of your daily news.
Hello and welcome once again to the Change Exchange, where our guest today is Anton Harber – still halfway head of journalism at Wits, the other three quarters heading up news at eNCA, is that right?
That’s right.
You’re so welcome.
Thank you very much.
Anton, you started … Well, you studied at Wits in the 1980s – there was a very strong anti-apartheid movement. How did that shape, or influence you?
Very much, indeed.
The 1980s was a rough time.
It was a rough time and I arrived at Wits in 1976, so it was a momentous year. I came from a liberal background, a liberal family, and I think I was introduced to a more radical politics. I got involved in NUSAS and student politics at the time and learnt, I suppose, a new language of the radical politics of the time, and that was a major influence on my work and my journalism thereafter.
Did you get to know a kind, or a part, a side of South Africa that you hadn’t been aware of?
Oh yes. Because the politics, even though I grew up in a liberal family, the politics was within quite a narrow, I suppose, white framework.
Apartheid worked?
Not quite, but …
Well it kept us apart.
Yes, in that sense it absolutely did. But I suppose one was interested … Introduced to a wider range of politics and a range of people one didn’t meet in a closeted apartheid society.
And then you started working with the Rand Daily Mail. Tell us a little bit about that? That was a famous newspaper which faded into history.
Well, it took me a while to get there. I started oddly enough at something called The Springs Advertiser.
So you wrote about the fire at the bakery last night.
That’s right. And it was good, solid training and I went to the Sunday Post, which was closed … A lot of papers that I’ve worked for have been closed, but I’m not sure I’m always to blame. And then I was involved in the launch of The Sowetan, which replaced it, and then I went to the Rand Daily Mail, where I became political reporter.
And? Tell me about the Rand Daily Mail? The Rand Daily Mail in the 1980s … It had a very specific kind of place and role?
It did. It was the leading liberal voice and for someone like myself, it was the place to be as a journalist, as a political writer. It was the place that I think gave the most space and freedom to its political writers. But it was at a troubled time, because the paper was in the last years of its life and it was under pressure and in decline, and so it was a difficult time as well.
How did you experience parliament? Being in parliament, sitting there? Did you?
No. No, I wasn’t a parliamentary correspondent, I was the political reporter and in fact my main work was around extra-parliamentary politics.
Like?
Well, then it was the launch of the UDF … I suppose the rebellion that was coming out in the early 1980s in the townships and around the Tricameral parliament, so a lot of what I experienced at that time was a tug of war between the demands for coverage of white politics, because many of one’s readers were white within that world, and the fact that politics was bursting out into the street in an extra-parliamentary way.
And that was a … It was a big Change Moment for South Africa, heh?
It was a huge … It was the beginning of the whole process. Well, I don’t know what the beginning is, but the sort of critical transition was … We didn’t realise so much at the time, but the transition was starting.
And after the Rand Daily Mail, you put your own money into starting a new paper.
Yes, mainly because we had no choice if we wanted to be journalists. The paper we worked for closed. We were unemployed. We were probably unemployable, so we had this crazy idea of taking the pay-outs we got when we were retrenched to put into a new publication. I think we had no idea that it would still exist 30 years later and it would grow to what it has grown … When I look back at the proposals we wrote at the time, they were quite modest and not as ambitious.
But that’s a huge thing. It’s both starting a business and launching a new journalistic enterprise. How does one build that bridge? I always think of Indiana Jones stepping into the void, and it’s only when you shift your weight that the bridge appears.
That’s right.
What are the mechanics of that?
Well let me tell you, the first requirement of doing something as foolish as trying to start a newspaper is not knowing what you’re doing. Because if you know what you’re doing, you would never do it. And I remember, in fact, we met with Dennis Becket, who had started a magazine, and he said: “Look, the only good advice I can give you is you’re crazy. Don’t do it.” And we laughed him off, but he was right. We were crazy, because we knew nothing about distribution or printing or running a business …
Ja, the business side …
The publishing side … We knew a little bit of journalism – we were very young. But nothing about that side. And we had to learn it very, very quickly. And we had to teach ourselves very, very quickly.
What were the biggest stones that you fell over?
Sjoe. We fell over many, because politics at the time meant that we couldn’t find a printer. People were not eager to print …
What was seen as subversive?
Yes. What was seen as alternative at best, and subversive at worst. And the Rand Daily Mail has just closed … And we were looking at a small publication and small printers were nervous and scared. But in fact I went back to my alma mater – the Springs Advertiser – and they became our printers, and for many early years until we grew too big – I must say – they were stalwarts in that they stood by us and withstood the pressure and printed us through the difficult years.
Tell us something about that kind of feeling of – because I know a number of the people who worked with you then – that kind of feeling of … Not a band of brothers … A band of brothers and sisters at the Weekly Mail.
The camaraderie was extraordinary, because we were under pressure … We sometimes had no money, but nobody ever hesitated to come to work, because their pay was late or didn’t come. We had to do everything, so we had to … We had to fill the newspaper as journalists, we had to produce the newspaper. We then would go and get a few hours’ sleep, come back and wrap it for subscriptions and then get a few more hours’ sleep and then go out on deliveries. So we literally had to do absolutely everything. So we worked seven days a week, 20 hours a day, and that binds you into a very tight-knit group of people who can and have to depend on each other.
What did you learn in the process?
Sjoe …
Apart from the practical stuff?
I obviously learned an enormous amount of publishing very quickly. But I think I learned … Look, it was … Looking back on it, it was very difficult at the time. But it was fantastic times, because we were our own owners and editors. Editors are always fighting with their owners – with their shareholders. The greatest luxury is to be an owner-editor. Nobody could tell us what to do. If we decided to take crazy risks, we could do it. And because we didn’t have lots of money and resources and investment, we could take risks. And so there was that thrill of being able to push the boundaries and do things that others wouldn’t do.
And what was the purpose, the driving, unifying ideal?
The driving ideal was that we were passionate about our journalism, we were passionate about a particular kind of journalism … It was an activist journalism …
What do you mean?
Well, we had strong points of view. We certainly weren’t neutral. We nailed our flag to particular masts, saying this is what we believe, this is what we will say as best we can under the legal restrictions at the time, and we saw our journalism as … We were committed journalists. So we were very proud of our independence, but we had no trouble saying we believe and stand for certain things and we want to see the downfall of apartheid. And we developed a journalism that tried to deal with those contradictions.
You started training young journalists at that time. Why did you feel the need? Universities … Weren’t there enough people coming through? Or were they not what you wanted?
At the time we felt that many of those coming from the university really were not what we wanted. And not many were coming, because the university was a very academic institution and we found that people came from it, and they gave us a very good critique of the media, but couldn’t write an intro. And we had no time for that, because we were under-resourced and too few people and you had to get down and produce. But it was a couple of things. The one was that we were a bunch of white lefties and we were conscious that if this publication was to have a life and grow, it couldn’t remain a white voice. So there was a long term view that we were to be more diverse. But also, frankly, it was a way of getting support for the newspaper. There were many funders who said: “We would like to support your newspaper, but we can’t give money to a commercial venture. And so we will give you money for training.” That served our purposes and we could go out and recruit young black reporters, train them and get paid to do that.
Bliss.
Yes.
What is the one thing that a young journalist needs to learn? Maybe two or three things?
Sjoe.
I’ll give you a little bit more leeway …
Look, most … I mean, you have to start with the fundamentals of learning to …
To describe the fire at the bakery.
Exactly. And get it right and how to construct a story and how to verify a story, so you have to start with that. But a lot of what we had to develop and learn, were ways of finding and telling stories that people didn’t want to tell. The emergency restrictions were there to stop us from telling. So it was always about how can we tell the story, knowing it was in the grey areas of the law and it was risky and you had to constantly find ways to tell the story and disguise the story and get people to read between the lines and to use the language in a way that people would know what’s going on, but often you couldn’t be explicit because of the censorship of the time.
That’s a different skill from what is needed in more ordinary times, maybe?
Completely different, which is why when that period ended and everything fell away overnight, all the restrictions fell away overnight in 1990 … We were caught like deer in the headlights. We said: “Oh my gosh, now we have to relearn our journalism.” And we were very aware of it, but that transition from being activist journalists to being journalists in a democracy was maybe the most difficult time, because we had to relearn everything we did, and of course it was a time of enormous financial difficulty and pressure as well.
If you say relearn … Just embroider a little bit?
As I say, a lot of the skill was about finding ways around the law. In a democracy one has to learn a new respect for the law, which we had grown up in a journalism that had no respect for the law. So all our discussion was how can I get around the law. How can I get something into print that others don’t want you to print? So fantastic skills, but you need a different set of skills in a democracy. And that, for the media that change came overnight. Because we woke up one day and there were no restrictions on what we can do. Not even the normal restrictions in a democracy, because they all fell away and it took a while for new rules to develop. So we had a period of a couple of years of unbelievable freedom, where you could get away with anything.
Can you remember a moment where you felt we are stretching this, we are using this … This is amazing …
Look, that period where we first were free, was a very difficult period. Because we knew we had to remake the newspaper. We thought we were ahead of the game. We thought we were not closer to the Zeitgeist and the rest of the media are out in the edges. We’re now at the centre of the politics. We’re no longer the alternative at the fringe. They’re now at the fringe. And we in fact started a daily newspaper. We said we can use that to go … Move into this market with a daily newspaper. But we were wrong. It was a terrible mistake. Because what we realised is that everyone quickly moved. All the big newspapers then quickly moved into what we considered our space.
So suddenly you weren’t special.
Suddenly we weren’t special. Suddenly it was a whole different thing to be different, to add to it and then suddenly we were head to head with much bigger, more powerful newspapers that controlled all the printing and all the distribution, so it was a very difficult time. And the funding that had got us through the first five years of censorship disappeared, which is why many of our sister newspapers disappeared in that time and fortunately …
Like Vrye Weekblad? The Afrikaans one, ja.
Fortunately we were the sole survivors.
And then you moved into academia. When was it? 2001?
Well, I saw through that transition period. We survived, partly, by selling the newspaper to the Guardian of London. In a sense they saved us, but we lost that position as owner/editors. So I knew that we had to see through the transition, but there would be a time to move on. Time moved on, but I moved into the management of radio in Kagiso Media.
How is that different? How does radio differ from almost everything else? Radio is … What is the Latin? Sui generis?
Actually, radio is the most simple, easy medium. First, I love that. It didn’t have the complexities of print. It’s really an easy medium and it’s not complicated. It’s cheap to do and frankly, you do a half decent job and you can make lots of money, which was not the case in print. Not by then. And actually, quite frankly, I got bored. So there I was sitting – I had a few radio stations under me which were running well, and really, it was a bit of a bore. I suppose that’s because I wasn’t made for a sort of pure management job. And then, the then-vice-chancellor at Wits called and he said: “We want to start a journalism department. Would you consider applying?” And at first I said no, because I hadn’t ever thought of doing that, and after a while I said: “Well, actually, it would be quite a nice thing to do.”
What was attractive?
I suppose the … So I had got out of journalism and I was a manager. And I found that boring. So it would take me from a very privileged position back into the world of journalism, and that’s really where I wanted to be.
And having talked about the problems with young journalists coming out of universities, how have you tried to make Wits different?
Very good question. So my vision from the start was that we would do only graduate training, we would take people who already had a degree …
Why?
Because I think you should have something to say before you learn how to say it. So it was partly recognition that the demands of modern journalism means that you should have a solid basis in the kind of training you get from a good humanities degree, or the equivalent. I mean, we had all sorts of people … Science degrees, commerce degrees and that’s great. But that’s what you want. You want people who have the analytical thinking, curiosity, skills.
And who know something about the world.
Exactly. And then you can teach them how to tell it to the world. But we developed a program which was focused on the practical. The philosophy I came with was students would from day one produce media. They would not sit in the classroom. There was obviously classroom time, and there was work to be done in the classroom, but they would produce media under adult supervision, and that was how they would learn the craft. So I think we certainly tried to find a different balance between the practice and the theory, and it was part of a world-wide shift to what is called a hospital school approach.
Where you work on the job.
Where you work on the job and you learn on the job. So I saw that trend happen around the world and I thought we could be part of that.
I’m a bit out of chronological order, but you also did television with Ordinary People.
That’s correct.
And how did you experience that? Because television is a cumbersome beast.
Well, so I did some television while I was still at the Mail & Guardian. We started what was Weekly Mail Television, and we produced some current affairs – a program called Ordinary People and another couple of programs and those were amongst the very first external programs to be picked up by the SABC, by the public broadcaster, in current affairs. But then I suppose in the period where I was a bit bored and missing writing, a group of us conceived of the idea of trying to write a drama set in a newsroom. And I think it was part of me dealing with my history and my experience. So we wrote … We conceived of … Other writers then took it over. But we developed and conceived of a drama set in a newsroom.
And did it work?
Yes it worked, it did reasonably well.
Did you enjoy watching it?
No, I find it very difficult and in fact, I realised … I realised I was not a drama writer. That’s what it taught me, and which is why other writers took over. I realised that I was a journalist, and that was the writing I could best do. I struggle to write fiction. The problem with fiction is that it has to be believable, and that’s much harder than writing truth, whether it’s believable or not. So I learned that television is a very difficult medium, and certainly drama was not for me.
But you have written books. More than one. Diepsloot, and before that?
Yes, so at the university, one of the things it gave me was space to start writing again. I wrote columns, I wrote a number of things. I wrote books and contributed to a number of books. And that meant getting back to what I think my roots were.
That’s a journalist’s dream, actually, to actually be able to do the longer version.
Correct. To be able to take one topic, research it really thoroughly and spend time really thinking it through and writing it. And I love that, and I was about to go back to spend this year off on another project of that sort, and really looking forward to it when I got a phone call to say: “Why don’t you come to eNCA.” And again the first time I said: “Don’t be silly, why would I do that?”
And then, why did you?
Why did I? Because I couldn’t resist the temptation of being back in the newsroom. There’s nothing … Once you’ve been in news, you never lose it. That passion for the big story. And when you’re not there, you’re sitting, thinking: “A big story is breaking and I could do it so much better than these bums that are doing it now!” And eNCA is at a particular place … It was an opportunity to learn a lot, because my television experience has been limited. And so I’m always open to doing something that’s challenging and exciting, and so they won me over.
And what do you want to bring to that space? To that new environment? Without asking you to criticise what was there before.
Look, my passion is for good journalism. Good journalism that brings forth the ideas, the events, the people that are often ignored. My passion, I think, is for … You know, it’s easy to cover the big, noisy voices in our society.
Judas is always available.
You can go to press conferences and most of them have a machinery that feeds you information … That’s the … That’s the important stuff and it can be interesting, but it’s the easy stuff. Finding the stuff that people don’t want you to talk about, the voices that are on the fringe of our society are important. Finding a full range of South African voices is where my passion is, I think. Which is … My book really takes that on in a particular place.
Ja, the subtitle of your book, Diepsloot, is “What is left unsaid”. You spent a year researching it. How did that change you as a person? What did you learn that you didn’t know?
Well … The reason I did it was it took me into a world I didn’t know. I’ve never been to Diepsloot. Obviously have never lived in an informal settlement.
How much time did you spend there?
I went every day for about nine months. I went and I just hung out there, I went to meetings there. I interviewed people. I went drinking there. I was just there every day. I chose not to go and live there … There were times that I thought should I come and live here, then I thought no, my perspective can only be an outsider trying to understand the place and I shouldn’t try and pretend it can be any other perspective – it can’t be the perspective of somebody who lives there. So you can imagine it was quite difficult going into that situation every day and then going home to suburbia and a very different family life, day after day. It actually takes quite an emotional toll.
And do you understand something of South Africa that you didn’t before?
Without any doubt. And in ways that were completely unexpected for me. So one of the things I had to learn, to try and understand and then explain in Diepsloot, was how cities work. Because I realised that I needed to understand what the city was doing and not doing and what the blockages were to the city building more houses or building more schools or whatever it was that needed to be done. So I had to read and learn a lot about how cities work. And then I had to read an enormous amount about informal settlements around the world. And what’s immediately striking is you read about them in Zambia or Ethiopia or Latin America or India – in fact – they’re all very similar, and the problem they present to cities is very similar. And that was a real eye-opener. So oddly enough my first response was to learn sympathy for the city. Because I came to understand how enormously difficult it is to deal with informal settlements on the scale we have it. And the kind of dinner party conversation that the state was not …
Was useless …
Was useless, wasn’t delivering anything … Just wasn’t true. They weren’t delivering enough, but the realisation was that they could never deliver enough because the pace of demand was outstripping what they could possibly do. So my first response was one of sympathy for the task that the people running the city faced, and which they weren’t articulating.
Communication was always, for me… In so many cases that’s the problem.
And it really struck home to me that here I was, a politically aware, engaged journalist. And I had no sense of the challenges facing cities like Johannesburg and how impossible they are.
On a more personal note … You’ve been married to Harriet … What is it? Twenty five years?
Longer. More than 30.
What keeps it going? What made you fall in love? Tell me that first.
Well, we met at university and we were together for some years before we got married. What made us fall in love? We … I mean … It an unlikely connection, I think, because … I think less so now. But we were very different …
How is she different from you?
I … You know, I was a hard political activist, and she was a much softer, more rounded, different kind of person, and hopefully she’s taught me a bit of that. She’s taught me a tolerance for thinking differently that I don’t think I had when I was young. We got married because our lawyer told us we better get married.
Why? What did it have to do with him?
Well, it was because I had been subpoenaed as a journalist to answer questions that I knew … To identify somebody I knew I couldn’t. So the lawyer said: “If that’s your attitude, the likelihood is you’re going to jail. So it’s quite a good idea to be married.” And we’ve been together for some time …
Because she needed to qualify as a visitor.
As a visitor, and have the access that one needed. So on short notice we decided to get married. We also thought that giving a Jewish mother short notice would stimey her capacity to do the whole wedding. We were wrong. But in between us sending out invitations and getting married, the person I couldn’t name, left the country.
So the reason fell away?
The reason fell away and we went ahead and got married and we’re still married, some thirty years later, so it was maybe the best legal advice I ever had. It was maybe the only legal advice I ever followed.
What keeps it going?
The marriage?
Yes.
I think that we’ve …
The relationship.
I think that we’ve kept … We’re both in media – she’s a television producer. When we have worked together, we have found that’s not a good idea. So we’ve both led quite parallel but separate lives, both in media, and we’ve always, I suppose always had the understanding that when one is working very hard, the other one is more available. So managed it that way, because we’ve both had pretty busy, full lives.
But you keep the conversation going.
Yes.
And the kids? Two children?
Two children, ten years apart, which is a crazy thing to do. I would always advise against it.
Was it a decision? Or did it just happen like that?
We had one kid, and I kept wanting another kid until I kind of said … Well, one day I said: “I’m having another kid. You can choose who it’s with!” It took ten years to get to that and we had another kid, and of course, ten years apart is crazy. But in the end it’s great.
How did they change you?
And children are what keeps a marriage going, I think, under difficult times. I think they’re very often the glue.
A shared project.
Exactly. So I think that is a critical factor.
And how did they change you? Being a dad.
Having children is quite humbling, because you’re first a parent, you think: “Here’s this thing I can mould in my image. Who is going to listen to me and I can teach him …”
Hang on to every word.
Exactly. I can teach him to be a great chess player in the way I always wanted to be, you know. And of course you learn pretty quickly that they shape you, more than you shape them. And that’s the most striking lesson one learns, I think. That they’re changing your … They’re shaping your life, much more fundamentally than you. And you quickly learn that they’re their own individuals and you try and nudge them in a direction, but your influence doesn’t last.
And your home? What makes a home? You know, we can all go rent a place …
Ja, so I think when you lead quite active and volatile working lives as I think we have, then it’s really important to have a home that’s a kind of place of refuge for the family and for one’s friends. So those friendships are terribly important over the years. The long-term friendships that last through different jobs, different stages of one’s life. I think that, as … You learn over time how important that is.
So do you have a big table where people are welcome?
Yes.
What physically, what is your home?
We do a lot of people around our table. Our house is designed around the kitchen, really. And everyone will cook and fight and throw things at each other in the kitchen. But so I suppose the family for us, is to find around a big meal where we have friends, and everyone in the family will cook one element of it, including the kids. Now the kids have taken over and they do it.
Fantastic – you’ve brought them up well! Thank you so much, and good luck with your new job.
Thank you.
Until next time, goodbye.
- This post first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this interview don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.
