We were sitting in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, during this trip when we got the first information on what the South African media was saying about our trip, which was a great symbolic value [referring to a delegation of the United Democratic Front that traveled out of South Africa to meet with representatives of the banned African National Congress (ANC) in 1987].
I mean, something like that had never happened before, I mean, mostly Afrikaners meeting the ANC, the enemy, the big communist, terrorist threat. And I knew in my heart that this was a very positive thing. It was a very important thing symbolically. We had no mandate to talk to—I mean, I didn’t represent anybody, but just as a symbolic gesture and to break the ice and to tell people on all sides, “You actually can talk with—you know, negotiations, politics is the future.”
[The United Democratic Front was a multiracial anti-apartheid coalition. The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party that served as the most prominent resistance movement against South Africa’s apartheid system, at times resorting to violence through its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. It was officially banned by the South African government from 1960 to 1990. As apartheid collapsed, the ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela, was elected President of South Africa in 1994 and established a democratic government.]
And I sat there and looked at what the newspapers were saying, and it was an absolute shock. Even the sort of critical English-language newspapers were, like, absolutely condemning what we were doing.
And I was sitting there and I remember clearly, next to the swimming pool with Beyers Naude, who was like an old anti-apartheid figure here, and Breyten Breytenbach, who was a poet and an anti-apartheid figure of quite some importance, symbolic figure, and van Zyl Slabbert. And I said, you know, “What the hell is this? I mean, what do we do? How do we fix this? How do—if this is what people back home are being fed, how will we ever get any kind of movement towards a settlement of our problem?”
[Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naude (1915 – 2004) was a South African minister, theologian and Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist. Breyten Breytenbach (1939 – ) is one of South Africa’s most prominent Afrikaner poets and artists. He was anti-apartheid activist. Frederik van Zyl Slabbert (1940 – 2010) was a South African politician who led the Progressive Reform Party and opposed apartheid.]
And then Beyers Naude challenged me. He said, “Well, you’re a journalist. If this is the way you feel, if you’re not a EXPLETIVE, then you will go back home and start a newspaper that will reflect the new reality. And you will do it in Afrikaans, because if it’s in English it doesn’t have an effect. People—white Afrikaans people would reject a message that doesn’t come in their own language,” and that’s—I don’t know if it’s unique to Afrikaners, but if you—at least at that point you had to speak to them in their own language. Otherwise, you know, we can just write you off—‘cause that’s what we expect.
I suppose it’s a bit of a hangover of the Anglo-Boer War and what happened after.
[The Boer Wars of 1880-1881 and 1899-1902 were fought between the British Empire and the Dutch settlers (Afrikaners) of the Transvaal and Orange Free State located in Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. The British were ultimately victorious and established the autonomous Union of South Africa in 1910, including the Afrikaner territories.]
And that’s what I did. I came back and had a few colleagues, four of them brave enough to do this thing. And we launched a newspaper in 1987 called Vrye Weekblad, which means Free and Independent Weekly, which was the first anti-apartheid Afrikaans publication in this country, and took quite a radical position. And we would—you know, there were a lot of sort of liberal Afrikaners who still now said we were mad to do it, because what you really needed to do was to sugarcoat the pill, gently start telling people apartheid is not such a nice idea, and I said, “Well, it’s either you tell them exactly what is going on— ‘cause it’s too late for that kind of soft treatment; it’s too late for sugarcoating the pills.
Our first headline, our first front page lead was on Nelson Mandela, saying, “Here’s this man,” and we had an illegal drawing of him, a painting of him as our front cover, saying, “We should pin our hopes on the release of this man because he has the capacity, the charisma, the experience, and the credibility all around to help break this logjam. So we should start campaigning for him to be released because he is our best chance of a peaceful transition.”
[Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as the first post-apartheid President of South Africa from 1994-1999.]
And we were met with a great amount of shock by the Afrikaans community. The government would’ve loved to have closed us down, but the mere fact that I was an Afrikaner made it much easier—made it much more difficult to them, because they did close some of the other alternative newspapers at the time down. I mean, New Nation was closed down for a month and so was the Weekly Mail, which is now the Mail and Guardian.
So they did another tactic and they just—they knew that we didn’t have money. I mean, literally the first few months of this newspaper were financed by my pension money and I sold my art collection, all my policies, and we scraped together here and there, and we didn’t get salaries and stuff. The paper was owned by the staff. And they started bombarding us with court cases. I had—I forget the exact amount—about 11 defamation cases against me, all from politicians and generals, and I won all of them but one. But it exhausted our—I spent more time in court than in my newsroom, and it exhausted our money.
I have—as I sit here I have a very long criminal record of breaking the communist—the Suppression of Communism Act, the Internal Security Act, the Internal Safety Act, the you know, and it goes on and on and on, for quoting banned people, reporting from a township where there’s a state of emergency, exposing an agent of—a secret agent of the state, all those kind of things.
But again, you know, this—now you’re in the open and you’re associated with the ANC and the UDF, and then that emboldens you and that’s what you become.
[Banning was a legal process during apartheid enabled primarily by the Suppression of Communism Act, where individuals were prohibited from communicating with more than one person at a time and from traveling domestically or internationally without permission. Organizations were also banned by the government. The media was restricted in covering banned individuals. Under apartheid, townships were residential areas designated for non-white groups. Non-whites were prohibited from living in areas reserved for whites.]
Max du Preez is a South African journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. He was an anti-apartheid journalist who worked to expose government repression.
Born in 1951, Max du Preez grew up in Kroonstad, South Africa. Unlike many Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch colonial settlers who largely supported the apartheid government, his parents were open-minded toward integration of whites and non-whites.
After attending Stellenbosch University, an Afrikaner institution, du Preez began a career in journalism writing for Afrikaans and English language newspapers supportive of the apartheid government. Du Preez quickly became disenchanted by the South African media’s blatant political bias and abandoned his work in the mainstream media.
Du Preez became involved with anti-apartheid movements like the United Democratic Front. In 1988, he founded Vrye Weekblad, the first Afrikaans-language, anti-apartheid newspaper that offered alternative policy perspectives from mainstream media and was critical of the government. The government attempted to stifle the paper financially and legally by levying exorbitant registration fees and charging it with various infractions. In 1990, a member of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a pro-apartheid group, bombed Vrye Weekblad’s headquarters. Vrye Weekblad survived, however, until 1994 when the government’s financial pressure finally forced its closure. Ironically, apartheid collapsed and South Africa transitioned to democracy later that same year.
During the transition, du Preez covered the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission on television, publicizing the body’s efforts to ease tension and promote a unified, post-apartheid South Africa.
Today, Du Preez remains a prominent South African columnist and media personality. He has received several awards including the Nat Nakasa Award for Courageous Journalism and been named the Yale Globalist International Journalist.
South Africa is a nation of almost 53 million on the southern tip of Africa. The nation has a unique multicultural character and is approximately 80 percent African and 10 percent European, with the remaining 10 percent being of mixed race or Asian heritage. These broad racial categories include a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups.
Although it has the largest economy on the continent, much of the nation remains in poverty and there is great economic disparity. Historically, the mining industry has played a key role in South Africa’s economy and it continues to remain an important industry today, alongside manufacturing, tourism, and financial services.
South Africa was first settled by non-natives in 1652, when the Dutch established an outpost in what would later become Cape Town. Soon after, British, French, and German settlers came to the area. The descendants of the original Dutch settlers became known as Afrikaners. Conflicts over land and power arose between the settling groups as well as between the settlers and the native people of the region. In 1910, Britain formally created the Union of South Africa as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire.
Throughout South Africa’s history, non-whites were subjected to widespread discrimination. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government passed a series of laws institutionalizing discrimination and segregation. In the 1948 elections, the National Party, which served as a platform for Afrikaner nationalism, gained power. The National Party program was centered on the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. Supporters of apartheid argued that South Africa was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, “Coloured” or mixed-race, and Indian.
The white minority oppressed the African majority and other non-white groups. Black Africans were particularly disadvantaged in terms of education, housing, income, and health. Blacks were denied citizenship and not permitted to use the services and facilities accessible by the white minority. Many blacks were forced to relocate when their neighborhoods were declared “white.” A series of laws enacted in the 1950s further codified and expanded racial segregation. In part, the National Party justified its policies by branding its opponents as communists.
The African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 to advocate for the rights of black South Africans. As apartheid expanded, the ANC and other groups used both nonviolent and violent actions to combat the government. The ANC and other groups were oppressed by the government, and many of their senior leaders were banned or imprisoned. Nelson Mandela, a prominent ANC leader, was imprisoned from 1962 to 1990.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement gained strength. Foreign governments and the international community isolated South Africa. International sanctions damaged the economy and helped erode domestic support for apartheid. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War weakened the government’s claim that yielding power would lead to a communist takeover.
In 1990, the government of South Africa took its first steps toward ending apartheid when it ended a ban on certain political organizations including the ANC. Nelson Mandela and other opposition leaders were released from prison and apartheid legislation was repealed. F.W. de Klerk, President from 1989-1994, helped to broker this transition of South Africa from the apartheid-era to a multi-racial democracy. In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work.
In 1994, South Africa held its first election that allowed all adults to vote, regardless of race. The ANC gained power and Nelson Mandela was elected president. South Africa enacted a liberal, democratic constitution, backed by a strong and independent judiciary. While the ANC has remained the strongest party, elections are vigorously contested and democratic safeguards are respected. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated abuses and crimes committed during the apartheid era.
Freedom House’s 2013 Freedom in the World report categorized South Africa as “free” with an overall freedom rating of two, with one being the most free and seven being the least. The country also received ratings of two in political rights and civil liberties. However, in the 2013 Freedom of the Press report, the nation was categorized as “party free” due to government restrictions on the press and the prevalence of civil cases brought against journalists for libel.
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