Still much to think about on this day of bannings

JOURNALISTS who arrived at work at dawn on October 19, 1977 got the news first that two newspapers had been banned. This was when those titles were owned by white capital based in Joburg, with their black newsrooms perched outside its limits.

At that time, these were in Industria and that white capital was the Argus Company, which had its offices where Independent Media, publishers of The Star, still operates on what is now Pixley Seme Street.

That was a time when Joburg was still obviously polarised, of course; a time when the city had a grey divide now lost on this generation, and even to many of us too young then to know its political geography. The media fell within that grey divide, and apartheid of course offered our parents no immediate way of knowing that the city’s press was under siege that day, on what became known as Black Wednesday. At least not until the late afternoon edition of The Star.

The intellectual savagery of censor- ship that came with the race hate of the time wasn’t covered on the year-old SABC TV service either. The might of social media lay some 25 years away. Yet importantly, we still mark this day 39 years ago, and media-studies classes still encounter names like Joe Latakgomo – then The World’s news editor and, later, a founding editor of its successor, Sowetan – who’ve related to academia and in their own accounts how they arrived for work at 6am to hear the death knell.

The name held highest remains that of The World’s editor, Percy Qoboza, who was detained without trial, his paper and its weekend edition’s banning orders published in the Government Gazette, the diktat of the dictators. (He managed to persuade the Argus Company to carry on paying his and some others’ salaries while they were incarcerated.)

But perhaps what some have forgotten as we mark October 19, 1977 – this year with concerns that South Africa has dropped in international press freedom rankings due to increasing access to infor-

It wasn’t only newspapers which were shut down

mation problems – is that it wasn’t only those two newspapers and Reverend Beyers Naudé’s ecumenical monthly journal Pro Veritate which were banned.

Just a month and a few days after Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko was murdered by the state, a number of Joburg-based Black Consciousness organisations – including the Union of Black Journalists, the South African Students Organisation, the Black People’s Convention, the Black Parents Association, the Black Women’s Federation, Soweto activist Duma Ndlovu’s Medupe Writers Association, the Soweto Student Representative Council, the Soweto Teachers Action Committee and the Christian Institute, publisher of Pro Veritate – were also banned on this day.

Importantly, orders were served on the Christian Institute and its founder, Naudé, for denouncing apartheid as a false gospel. He was not allowed to leave his house in Greenside or to speak to more than one person at a time – although, as has been widely celebrated, Naudé simply carried on talking to other heroes who supported the struggle, such as Desmond Tutu, just on a one-to-one basis.

He also became something of a secret mechanic, donating old cars he’d refurbished in his yard to cadres of the movement. After all, Naudé had a bit of time. He was banned from this day in 1977 until 1984. But such was the love shown towards him once we were liberated that Joburg gave him the freedom of the city, and obliterated the insult that was DF Malan Drive by renaming it for him.

It’s interesting to note how political proclamations are made on this day, but only really around the media, not the other bannings.

Last year, for instance, the ANC released a statement expressing its “reaffirmation for the Battle of Ideas, with media at the centre”, then reminding us that it had directed Parliament to inquire into the feasibility of a media appeals tribunal.

We surely still have plenty to think about, 39 years later.