ThePressandApartheid

Repressionand PropagandaInSouth Africa

WilliamA.HachtenandC. AnthonyGiffard

With the editorial assistance

of Harva Hachten

MMACMILLAN

ThePressandApartheidRepressionand PropagandaInSouth Africa

Copyright © 1984The Board of Regents of theUniversity of Wisconsin SystemAll rights reserved. No part of thisbook may be reproduced in any form orby any means, without written permissionfrom the publisherSoftcovcr reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1984

First published in the United States of Americain 19114 byThe University of Wisconsin Press

First published in the UnitedKingdom in 1984 byTIlE MACMILLAN PRESS LIDLondsm and BasingstokeCompanies and representativesthroughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataHachten, William A.

The press and apartheid.I. Press-South Mrica-History­zoth centuryI. Title II. Giffard, C. Anthony079' .68 PN5474

ISBN 978-1-349-07687-1 ISBN 978-1-349-07685-7 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-07685-7

Contents

Introduction Vll

1 "Total Onslaught" against the Press 3

2 The Roots of the Conflict 2 I

3 The Press Council: Self-Censorshipthrough Intimidation 50

4 The Steyn Commission andThree Concepts of the Press 76

5 Legal Restraints on Newspapers 102

6 Suppression of the Black Press 130

7 Censorship under the PublicationsActs 155

8 The Afrikaans Press:Freedom within Commitment 178

9 Broadcasting: Propaganda Armof the National Party 200

10 Muldergate: Covert Effortsto Influence Opinion 229

II Changing Media in aChanging South Africa 262

Acknowledgments 291

Notes 293

Glossary 309

Bibliography 3I I

Index 327

Introduction

South Africa! That country has virtually become a synonym foranachronism in the twentieth-century community of nations thrust­ing toward liberation, self-determination, and majority rule. Thename alone evokes imagesof racial strife and discrimination, of a bandof determined white men defying both a disquieted nonwhite major­ity and the opinion of most of the world.

After deadly riots and demonstrations , South Africa in the I980shas been marked by a rising level of urban terrorism and violence.Bombs have exploded in the busy centers of Pretoria and Bloemfon­tein, and South African Defense Forces have carried out punitiveraids in neighboring Mozambique and Lesotho against suspectedbases of the African National Congress, the exiled arm of blackopposition . This low-level civil war of majority blacks against en­trenched whites has been watched with increasing dismay by theoutside world. As one South African newspaper editor put it, "We 'rethe polecat of the world."

In this nation under stress--and South Africa is surely that-thepress and mass communication in general are caught up in events and,at times, become actors in the Greek tragedy so inexorably playingitself out at the southern end of Africa.

This is a study both of measures taken by the South Africangovernment to control its mass media and of the efforts of its journal­ists and others to express their views and resist those restraints .Essentially, the media have been-and are being-subjected to two

vii

viii Introduction

kinds of government controls : coercive and manipulative . Coercionincludes legislation that determines who may publish and what maybe published as well as less direct measures, such as intimidating thepress into self-censorship.

The manipulative controls comprise the extensive state machineryused both to suppress unfavorable information and to promote apositive image of official policies at home and abroad . Some of theseactivities, like those of the government information services, areovert . Others, like government controls over the broadcasting sys­tem, are more subtle. But in the face of hostile world opinion, theSouth African government has also resorted to illegal and clandestineoperations to promote its point of view.

The abrasive relationship between the media and the governmentmust be seen in the context of contemporary social, economic, andpolitical forces rooted deeply in the history of South Africa. For thatreason, our analysis of the contemporary conflicts between authorityand the different media and the constituencies they serve will bepresented in terms of their historical development.

This, in essence, is a case study of official exercises of power overpublic communication in a modem nation. White South Africa sharesmany characteristics with other Western societies--parliamentarydemocracy, an independent judiciary, a tradition of press freedom,and an educated and affluent populace. Yet black South Africa sharesmany attributes of much of the third world-impoverished, illiterate,malnourished, and politically powerless. And in this context, free­dom of the press, as well as civil liberties generally, has been de­teriorating. What has happened and continues to happen could occurin other modem societies as well.

In many ways, however, South Africa is a special case-"a verystrange society" with its white affluence and black poverty-andhence fascinating to study . The Republic of South Africa is a deeplydivided, multiracial society of great complexity, controlled politicallyand economically by a minority white population. The white minorityin tum is broadly split between English speakers, mainly of Britishheritage, and the Afrikaners of Dutch, French Huguenot, and Ger­man descent. The Afrikaners' National party has held political powerfor over thirty-six years. A tangle of laws, administered by a mam-

ix Introduction

moth bureaucracy of civil servants, police, and security forces, hassince 1948 maintained harsh and enforced separation of the races,known as apartheid, that has assured continued white privilege andprerogatives in an increasingly affluent economy in which compara­tively few nonwhites share.

Because race or skin color permeates all aspects of South Africanlife, the population totals of ethnic groups involved are important.There are about 5 million "whites" of whom about 2.5 million areAfrikaans-speaking Afrikaners, and about 1.5 million are ESSAs(English-speaking South Africans). In addition there are about 1million other "Europeans," mainly recently arrived Portuguese, Ital­ians, and Greeks, who are largely inactive politically. Among non­whites or "blacks" are about 21 million Africans (Zulus, Xhosas,Sothos, Tswanas, Swazis, Vendas, Ndebeles, Shangaans, etc.), 2.7million racially mixed "Coloureds, " and 840,000 "Asians," mostlyIndians .

To help retain political domination of both the privileged whiteminority and the unfranchised majority of nonwhites, successiveNational party governments have implemented wide-ranging restric­tive controls over all forms of public communication (see Chap. 5).Most have been directed at the print media, the principal means ofexpressing political opposition and dissent. (Radio and televisionbroadcasting have long been firmly in the hands of governmentsupporters, and hence require few controls.)

Historically, the massmedia in South Africahavemainly served thewhites, and the earliest newspapers, started in the nineteenth cen­tury, were in English. In fragmented, cellular South Africa, the mediahave long reflected linguistic and ethnic divisions as well as whitedomination. The first radio service in 1927 was directed at whiteEnglish speakers, and the first television service introduced in 1976was for whites only. Through much of its media history, the "non­Europeans" have been eavesdroppers. That has changed. Today, amajority of newspaper readers and radio listeners are Africans, Col­oureds, and Asians. Special publications and separate radio and tele­vision channels are directed at different racial groups .

Diverse South Africa is served by twenty-one general daily news­papers, eight Sunday or weekly papers and a hundred weekly or

x Introduction

biweekly country papers . About five hundred periodicals, from spe­cialized journals to family entertainment magazines, are published inSouth Africa. In addition, hundreds of publications are importedfrom Britain, the United States, and Western Europe .

Newspaper publishing is dominated by four groups-two eachpublishing mainly in English or Afrikaans. Largest and most power­ful is the Argus Printing and Publishing Company which controlsseven dailies-the Johannesburg Star, Durban Daily News, CapeTown Argus, Pretoria News, Bloemfontein Friend, Kimberley Dia­mondFieldsAdvertiser, and the Souietan which is edited for Africans inthe Johannesburg area. Argus also puts out two weekend papers, theCapeHerald, oriented toward Coloured people in the western Cape,and the Sunday Tribune of Durban.

The other English medium group, SAAN (for South AfricanAssociated Newspapers), includes four dailies, the Rand DailyMailof Johannesburg, the Eastern Province Herald and EveningPost, bothof Port Elizabeth, and the Cape Times, plus two weekend papers, theSunday Times and SundayExpress, and the Financial Mail, a weekly.The daily Natal Mercury of Durban is mostly owned by SAAN. Thereare two independent dailies, the DailyDispatch of East London andthe Natal Witness of Pietermaritzburg.

Argus and SAAN are financially linked, with Argus holding 40 percent of SAAN stock and SAAN holding a somewhat smaller part ofArgus . Both publishing groups are financially tied to mining andindustrial interests, and their interlocking ownership makes themvulnerable to government charges of monopoly and concentration ofownership.

The two Afrikaans press groups, Perskor and Nasionale Pers, notonly are financially unallied but are highy competitive and representdifferent factions within the National party . Nasionale Pers owns thedailies Die Burger of Cape Town, Die Volksblad of Bloemfontein,Beeld of Johannesburg, and Oosterlig of Port Elizabeth. Perskor hadlong owned the Johannesburg dailies Die Transvaler and Die Vader­land,as well as two small dailies in Pretoria, Hoofstad and Oggendblad.As a result of the intense competition between Beeldand Die Trans­valer, Die Transvaler was moved to Pretoria in early 1983 to merge

xi Introduction

with and replace Hoofstad and Oggendblad. Both groups jointly ownthe successful weekend newspaper Rapport.

A significant characteristic of the South African press is the clearpredominance of the English-language newspapers. Although Afri­kaans-speaking whites outnumber English-speaking whites by a ratioof six to four, the English papers account for three-quarters of totaldaily circulation and two-thirds of Sunday circulation . A great manyAfrikaners , as well as nonwhites , read the English press, but fewEnglish speakers or nonwhites read Afrikaans papers.

The only English paper supporting the Nationalists was TheCitizen, which was started in 1975 with secret government funds .After the government involvement was revealed during the Mulder­gate scandal (see Chap. 10), it was taken over, at least ostensibly, byPerskor.

The black press has been severely eclipsed in recent years (seeChap . 6). Yet weeklies aimed by white publishers at specific racialgroups have been a fast-growing aspect of South African journalism .The Cape Herald intended for coloureds in the Cape Town area had a1982 circulation of 50,000. The PostlNatal in Durban was edited forAsians and had a circulation of 34,000. Ilanga, published in the Zululanguage, sold 107,000 copies a week in 1982, and Imvo Zabantsundu,a Xhosa-language paper in the Eastern Cape, had 50,000 circulationthe same year.

Historically, various groups in South Africa-mainly some En­glish-speaking whites, the defeated Afrikaners after the Boer War,the urban Africans, and, to a lesser extent, the Coloureds andAsians--have utilized newspapers and the printed word to expresstheir political aspirations and to contest at times either English orAfrikaner domination. This political discord is further reflected inthree distinct concepts or theories of the press--Afrikaner, English,and African--coexisting uncomfortably within South Africa. TheAfrikaner press has historically been an instrument of National partypolitical aspirations; it served to bring the National party to powerand generally supports goals of the Nationalists . The English pressconcept, anchored in private ownership and reflecting Anglo­American traditions of press freedom, calls for an informational and

xii Introduction

critical role. The English press regards itself as the unofficial "opposi­tion"-a check on the abuses of authority. However, radical critics,including some blacks, argue that the English press is itself a part ofthe white power structure and by its token opposition actually legiti­mizes the apartheid regime. This is one reason black journalists havebecome alienated from the English papers which both employ themand oppose apartheid. Finally, the African press, harassed and sup­pressed by the apartheid regime, has in recent years increasinglyidentified with "the struggle" and sees the printed word as one tool forbringing about basic political change and ending white hegemony.The conflicts and clashes between these three irreconcilableapproaches to journalism are themes running through this study . (SeeChap. 4 for a more extended analysis of the three concepts .)

For South Africa, it may be argued, has never become a true nation,in large part because the xenophobic, closely knit Afrikaner "tribe"has never really accepted the hated British or the despised blacks. (Inthis study, the term "blacks" usually will be used for all thosediscriminated against under apartheid: Africans, Asians, and Col­oureds. The frequently used terms "nonwhites" or "non-Europeans"carry a negative connotation but will be used occasionallyfor clarity.)For that matter, Afrikaners have not welcomed any other "Uitland­ers" encroaching on their exclusive "volk" concept of nationhood .The National party government, in fact, emphasizes differencesamong ethnic groups, especially between the African tribes, as part ofa strategy of divide and rule. The mass media further this policy; forexample, vernaculars are used in radio broadcasting , and there areseparate television channels for white and black viewers.

Although this study focuses on government pressures and stric­tures on the press and mass communication since the Nationaliststook power in 1948, newspapers have been embroiled in South Af­rica's divisive and complex politics since they were first established acentury and a half after the Cape settlement was founded in 1652. Theorigins of the dispute between press and government go back to theearly days of the white settlement at the Cape and the historicalhostility between the Dutch and English settlers . In the earlynineteenth century, for example, some English journals at the Capecampaigned against slavery-the abolition of which was one reason

xiii Introduction

for the Boer trek to the interior in 1836. Later, when the discovery ofgold brought a flood of immigrants to the republic the Boers hadestablished in the Transvaal, the English-language newspapers therebecame a mouthpiece for immigrant grievances. In the events leadingup to the Boer War , the leading English paper, The Star, was impli­cated in a conspiracy to invade the Transvaal Republic and overthrowAfrikaner control. After the Jameson Raid failed in 1896, the Krugergovernment passed a law giving the president the right to ban thedistribution of newspapers that were "contrary to good morals ordangerous to peace and order in the republic." Through the years,newspaper owners and editors-British, Afrikaners, and blacks­were far more than passive chroniclers of events; they were politicallyengaged and used their presses to pursue their own economic andpolitical goals.

For their part , the various rulers, whether British colonial gov­ernors, presidents of Boer republics, or Afrikaner prime ministers,provided ample precedents for the official suppression of expres­sion. Chapter 2 shows that when the National party took control of thegovernment in 1948, the rules of the game already were well estab­lished. The censorious and repressive measures that followed werenot something new, but a continuation of a historical process.

Through more than a hundred laws, Nationalist-controlled parlia­ments have closed off from press and public scrutiny large areas ofimportant information, especially concerning police, prisons, mili­tary, and security matters. Political critics have been harassed,banned, detained, or imprisoned under a policy that equates normal(by Western democratic standards) criticism, dissent, or even re­peated expressions of black political aspirations with disloyalty, sub­version, or treason. Black journalists and black newspapers have beensingled out for particularly harsh treatment.

One tragic consequence of this continuous repression of expressionhas been the near demise of any kind of meaningful public dialoguebetween the white minority and the nonwhite majority. Anotherresult is the virtual obliteration of any black political expressionthrough either print or electronic media that is of, by, and for the 24million-plus Africans, Coloureds, and Asians. Furthermore, theopposition English-language newspapers have been subjected to

xiv Introduction

mounting pressures and restrictions from newly passed or threatenedlegal controls or from governmental intimidation and harassment .

The long saga of the Press Council, discussed in Chapter 3, illus­trates the presures and intimidations directed against the press bysuccessive National party governments and the newspapers' re­sponses to those pressures. From 1952 to 1982, the same politicaldrama has been played out again and again: first come harsh officialcriticisms directed at newspapers, followed by threats of new statu­tory controls if the press does not "discipline" itself. The newspaperpublishers have responded by first establishing a press council andthen modifying it over time to fit government requirements. Someregard this as abject self-censorship by the newspapers to appeasetheir Afrikaner masters and so protect their financial interests . By"feeding cookies to the tiger," the press has placated the governmenton each occasion, but at the same time has given awaymore and moreof its freedom and independence.

As for other important forms of expression-books, motion pic­tures, ephemera, and university publications-they have long beensubjected to censorship , based primarily in the past on the religiousand moral precepts of the Afrikaners as taught by the CalvinisticDutch Reformed church and several fundamentalist offshoots. Morerecently, censorship of erotic and literary expression has eased some­what while suppression of politically relevant expression has in­creased. (see Chap. 7, Censorship under the Publications Acts.)

In the area of official information and propaganda , National partygovernments have used public communication to persuade and in­fluence, both at home and abroad. Traditionally, the Afrikaans­language newspapers, as primarily political instruments of Afrikanernationalism, have been financially supported by Afrikaner interestsand regional party groups and, therefore, have operated without thecommercial constraints of the independent English-language news­paper enterprises . Major National party leaders, including DanielMalan, J. G. Strijdom, Hendrik Verwoerd, and P. W. Botha, havebeen closely identified with newspapers such as Die Burger, DieTransvaler, and Die Vaderland, longtime steadfast advocates ofNational party policies. Since becoming more successful as commer­cial enterprises, the Afrikaans papers are showing more editorial

xv Introduction

independence on specific issues, but are still essentially loyal to theNational party. Two small but notable exceptions are DiePatriot andDie Afrikaner, mouthpieces for ultra-right-wing Afrikaner partiesdefying the Nationalists. (See Chap . 8 for an analysis of the changingAfrikaans press .)

Similarly, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) haslong functioned as a propaganda tool of the National party. Thoughthe SABC is operated by a nongovernmental body patterned after theBritish Broadcasting Corporation, the dominant Afrikaner elites,operating through the secret Broederbond, gained control of it yearsago and have used the radio and, since 1976, the television broadcast­ing monopoly to further the goals and interests of the government andthe National party. SABC's pervas ive and technically efficient broad­casting system runs sixteen radio services and three television servicesbroadcasting a total of 2,269 hours a week in seventeen languages,making it a powerful force for molding public opinion in SouthAfrica. (See Chap. 9).

The National party has also drawn on the full resources of itsgovernment to influence opinion at home as well as abroad and tocounter what it considers hostile and distorted news and informationabout South Africa's system of apartheid. (The American and Britishpress and their correspondents based in Johannesburg are particu­larly blamed today for South Africa's negative image in the world.)The surprising dimensions of these covert and often illegal propa­ganda efforts were revealed by the opposition English-language pressin the Information Department scandals of 1978-79 , popularlyknown as "Muldergate." The Muldergate revelations showed theEnglish press at its investigative best , but the price of its journalisticenterprise has been increased hostility from National party leaders aswell as further restrictions on news gathering. (See Chap. 10) .

Today's mass media of communication, whether independent of orclosely identified with government, are business enterprises that seekever wider audiences, that sell advertising, and that try to makeprofits for their proprietors or stockholders. Changes in the sales,readership, and circulations of newspapers and other publications orin the audiences and use of radio and television have importantpolitical implications since these factors often determine what kinds

xvi Introduction

of media will prosper and survive to tell what version of events. Not allpressures on the media are political and direct; some are subtle,indirect influences of a financial and economic nature. Some news­papers are finding that their profits diminish when they stronglycriticize government policies or report what some white readers andadvertisers consider "too much" news about the black community orabout continuing racial tensions. (See Chap . II).

A central thesis of this study is that freedom of the press-the rightto talk serious politics and to report and criticize government withimpunity-now nonexistent for the black majority, has been steadilydeclining for the white population as well. Some South African jour­nalists believe that the indistinct line between meaningful press free­dom and unacceptable government control has already been crossed.

The general election of April 1981 revealed the strong hold that themost reactionary and intransigent elements of the Afrikaner elite holdover the National party. And the car bomb attack of May 20,1983, indowntown Pretoria, which killed 17 people and wounded 188, wasonly one of a series of events that have escalated the deadly confronta­tion and hardened the lines between two nationalisms-Afrikanerand African. For to the beleaguered Afrikaners, survival is first andforemost. Further, it must be survival on their terms-with no basicdismantling of the apartheid apparatus and no real sharing of politicalpower. But the black majority will settle for nothing less and issupported in its political goals by all of black Africa and much ofworld opinion.

White South Africa, in its unswerving maintenance of its "way oflife," has been evolving into a militaristic state , with totalitarianovertones. Prosperous and technologically sophisticated though itmay be for a minority of its citizens, the only freedom of expressionmay in time be the freedom to support and applaud an increasinglyrepressive and arbitrary government whose racial policies have madeit a unique pariah of the contemporary world .

How government and media relationships have evolved to thiscurrent state of affairs is what this book is about.