LOOKING BACK

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 50 YEARS AGO

The Nationalist Party leadership and the Broederbond have embarked on a campaign to clip the wings of Nationalist newspaper editors suspected of trying to push the Government in a more verligte direction. Two important events this week have focused attention on a serious crisis between the Nationalist Party and their newspapers. Dr. Andries Treurnicht, MP and chairman of the Afrikaner Broederbond, and Mr. P.W. Botha, the Minister of Defence, have made it clear in speeches to Nationalist audiences that increasing criticism by certain newspapers will not be tolerated. These speeches have thrown new light on the moves by the Prime Minister, Mr. Vorster, to introduce legislation to enable him to “deal more effectively” with the Press. November 4 1973

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 25 YEARS AGO

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has sounded a clarion call to South Africans to stop sucking up to the ANC government. “Sycophants are the worst possible thing to have around you when you are in power. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” he told the Sunday Times. In a week in which his Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported on how the apartheid government, drunk with power, had conducted a reign of terror against its citizens, the country’s moral leader sounded his strongest warning yet against the formerly oppressed imitating those they had toppled. He said: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and there is no way in which you can assume that yesterday’s oppressed will not become tomorrow’s oppressors.” November 1 1998