The Cape Times: always in thick of issues, events
Newspaper celebrates 140th birthday while retaining mantra of being a voice for all
FREDERICK York St Leger, the owner and editor of the newspaper that started selling copies in Cape Town for the first time in March 1876, had it all worked out: He wanted the Cape Times to be a newspaper of record. And he wanted it to have the look and feel of the Times of London.
This year, the Cape Times is celebrating its 140th anniversary, and the inevitable question that will be asked of it will centre on: “What is the secret of your longevity?”
It will respond quickly, of course, but with just a hint of irritation. The fact is, there are no secrets. The Cape Times is just a damn good newspaper – and it is getting better all the time.
As for wanting to look like The Times of London, well, the answer would be “No thanks!” The Times is a tabloid these days, isn’t it?
In any case, when St Leger conducted his newspaper love affair from a distance, every page of The Times consisted of blobs of drab grey columns – page after page after page.
Cape Times readers prefer a newspaper that looks like… the Cape Times, with a stunning photograph taken by one of its world-class photographers sweeping across its front page.
Then there are the stories: they will always be selected and written with care. The aim of the newspaper is to give substance to its mantra of being a voice for all.
Over the past 140 years, the Cape Times has been in the thick of many of the main issues and events of the day.
It has covered wars when British soldiers still wore red coats. And the person who always got these stories onto news pages was the ubiquitous “correspondent”. Some of the stories that these men produced (and the overwhelming majority of journalists in those days were men) were, to put it mildly, thought-provoking.
What, for instance, would make a group of South African soldiers jump out of the trenches during the hell of Delville Wood during WWI, shake hands with one another – and then, shouting the South African war cry, run headlong towards the sound of German machine guns?
The Cape Times has also covered the stories of black South Africans desperately trying to fight for South Africa during WWII, only to be given a thanks, but no thanks type of reply from the South African Defence Minister Jan Smuts. Smuts was convinced it was a “white man’s war”.
The old Boer general was, however, prepared to welcome blacks as stretcher bearers and medical aids.
The most bizarre part, though, came after the cessation of hostilities, during demobilisation, when black participants in the war effort were given two pounds in cash and a khaki suit, also worth two pounds. Those who had found employment were given a bicycle – to ensure they got to work on time.
White soldiers received considerably more than this.
Quite disturbing was the fact that the Cape Times did not call out the racism – and it was racism – of people like Smuts. Make no mistake, the Cape Times of those days was outspoken. But it was almost always outspoken in the context of white politics – or white social issues. If it was interested in a broad South Africanism, it certainly did not show it at that time.
It was also capable of displaying racial and class prejudice of its own. In the late 1890s, it had almost an obsession with what it saw as the lack of cleanliness of African and coloured people.
For a newspaper that wanted to look like The Times of London, it is perhaps not surprising that the Cape Times supported the stance of the Crown on most serious issues.
When white South Africans opted to become a republic on May 31, 1961, its political support gravitated first towards the United Party (UP) and then towards the Progressive Party, made up of a group of MPs who had broken away from the UP.
But again, the newspaper operated very much like liberal politicians tended to operate: They claimed to speak for their black compatriots, but in most cases had very little meaningful contact with them.
The attitude of the Cape Times during the apartheid years was tellingly highlighted by a former senior staff member Gerald Shaw in his book Writing about the fallout over the apartheid cricket scandal, that became known as the D’Oliveira Affair, he said the newspaper was not in favour of boycotts and isolation.
And yet, there were staff members who would have wanted it to take a strong stance against the excesses of the National Party government and their apparatuses.
In 1976, one of its top reporters, Anthony Holiday, was jailed for six years for “furthering the aims of the ANC and the South African Communist Party”. Writing about this in his book, Shaw said: “The episode caused the anti-Marxist and anti-revolutionary Cape Times considerable embarrassment.”
In 1980, Cape Times reporter Zubeida Jaffer was detained, tortured and poisoned by security policeman Spyker van Wyk after writing an article that exposed police brutality on the Cape Flats.
She quit the newspaper in 1981, citing political interference in her work.
And Aneez Salie, the current editor of the Cape Times, was a member of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
This, in many ways, has been the Cape Times over the years: an awkward mix of mainly conservative senior staff with a small corps of Young Turks. And then things changed…
In 2013, the Irish publishing group, Independent News & Media announced that it had agreed to sell its business to the Sekunjalo Independent Media Consortium, headed by Dr Iqbal Survé. It was a significant development for two key reasons: First, it ensured that South Africa’s biggest media group would be in South African hands.
And second, it quickly sent a strong message to all South Africans that the Independent Media titles regarded them as readers, and would provide them with stories that interested them.
When the Cape Times embarked on its “Voice for all” reconstruction of the newspaper, many people were horrified. Some even cancelled their subscriptions, and urged other people to cancel theirs too. But there was a perfect response to the naysayers: readership shot up by thousands.
Part 1, the first 16 pages of a 32-page supplement celebrating its 140th anniversary, will be published in the Cape Times tomorrow.