This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

To search the O'Malley archive please click here.

Chronology Of Some Pointers To The History Of The Media In South Africa

FXI submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

May 1997

Karen Martin

Please note that this chronology does not claim to document every significant event in the history of the South African media. The information in it has been gleaned from the research done for the other FXI papers. Our aim has been to point to possible patterns in the relationship between the media and the government. We also wanted to allow events to speak for themselves here, so there are no comments of our own, though we have included some from other people involved in the media at the time or currently.

Please note, also, that I have not been able to verify the spellings of all the names mentioned (of people, places and publications). They are written here as they were found in the wide range of sources we used, and I am aware that there are mistakes, and also mistakes of my own.

1915

Dr Daniel Francois Malan is made editor of De Burger, the new party paper of the newly launched "Purified National Party". He left the newspaper for full-time politics between the two world wars.1

September 1927

Native Administration Act 38 of 1927: prohibited "fomenting hostility" between "Natives" and Europeans". This restricted what the media could report.2

1 July 1930

Riotous Assemblies Amendment Act 19 of 1930: tightened prohibitions on inciting racial hostility and prevented the press from attending or reporting on banned gatherings.3

1932

Douglas Walton, secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa, serves a three-month prison sentence in terms of the Riotous Assemblies Act for articles in Umsebenzi alleging that Africans were experiencing brutal jail conditions in Natal.4

25 June 1940

A Conference of Editors in Pretoria agrees to the terms for a voluntary censorship agreement with the government regarding military and naval matters.5

13 July 1943

Verwoerd, editor of the National Party's militant mouthpiece the Transvaler, takes the Star to court for stating that the Transvaler falsified news "in its support of nazi propaganda". The judge found for the Star saying that Verwoerd "...did support nazi propaganda, he did make his paper a tool of the nazis in South Africa, and he knew it..."6

19 May 1944

Magistrates Court Act 32 of 1944: limits publicity and access to the courts.7

14 September 1945

Letter from the government to newspaper editors: "The Information Bureau has informed you that all military and navy censorship restrictions have, in view of the cessation of hostilities, been suspended. I assume that the editors who signed the voluntary press censorship agreement will now agree that there is no further reason to continue with the agreement. On behalf of the Prime Minister and the government, I should like to express to you personally and to your colleagues the sincere thanks of the government for your co-operation in the implementation of this agreement. The government expresses its sincere appreciation for the manner in which that voluntary censorship has been applied, thus denying the enemy vital information during the war."8

1947

The Transvaler totally ignores the Royal Visit to South Africa.9

1 April 1947

Commissions Act 8 of 1947: restricted reporting on commissions of inquiry.10

1948

"After the National Party government came to power in 1948, the established press of South Africa fought off full-scale press control. The press achieved this by disciplining itself. It was done masochistically and in public."11

24 February 1948

"The major theme of the debate [in Parliament about the press in South Africa] was criticism of the Argus group's dominance of the newspaper industry."12

13 January 1949

Zulus attack Indians in Durban. At least 137 people are killed and a thousand or more injured. The government complains about newspaper coverage, especially foreign reporting. 13

November 1949

Minister of Defence, FC Erasmus, claims that there has been a "slanderous campaign" against the government, and that no previous government had been attacked by the opposition press with "such fury". He said attempts were being made to incite English-speaking South African against Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, and non-whites against whites. He said news reports sent abroad had "grossly slandered" South Africa.14

1950

"In 1950 the Sunday Express is charged and found guilty under the 'hostility clause' for a cartoon which showed blacks being assaulted while the South African Prime Minister bowed to Africans from the neighbouring British Protectorates and said, 'Won't you come in?'"15

The former chief editor of the Volksblad, the National Party paper in Bloemfontein, climbs the political ladder to become a member of Cabinet.

From there, in 1950, AJR van Rhyn calls for a commission to investigate the press.16 From January to March 1950 van Rhyn asks for an inquiry into monopolistic tendencies in the press, noting that the Argus group owned nine of the seventeen daily papers, and into internal and external reporting - and the advisability of "control over such reporting". In the debate, Van Rhyn claimed, amongst other things, that the recent take over of a Port Elizabeth newspaper company by a British proprietor would allow the moulding of black opinion by outside interests. Minister of External Affairs, Eric Louw, called for the deportation of foreign journalists who abused South Africa's hospitality. Minister of Post and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, alleged that SAPA had a monopoly in the supply of news, which was first passed through London where it was "filtered" and sometimes "twisted". Prime Minister Dr DF Malan called the South African press the "most undisciplined in the world".17 The resulting van Zijl commission of inquiry took 13 years to produce a report which was tabled in May 1964. 18

17 March 1950

Suppression Of Communism Act 44 of 1950: One of the most infamous of all security laws during the apartheid era, it severely limited what the media could report through banning threats and the silencing of individuals and organisations.19

1951

In 1951 DH Ollemans, chairman of the Argus Company, responds to the Van Zijl Press Commission by proposing that a voluntary press council be established. He received little immediate support, but pressed for the idea in the years to come.20

The Suppression of Communism Amendment Act broadened the powers of the principal Act.21

1953

By early 1953, 587 "name" persons had been approached by the state's representatives, and the Guardian, published in the Cape since 1937, was banned on 23 May of that year. "Listed" persons were forced to resign from organisations, prohibited from most gatherings, and in some cases restricted to certain provinces or deported. It was not until 1962 that the quoting of "listed" persons was banned.22

4 March 1953

The Criminal Law Amendment Act 8 of 1953 effectively prevents an editor from publishing a report of an incident deemed to have incited people to break the law.23

"The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1953 had an intimidatory effect on the press, for instance with regard to reporting of speeches calling for illegal strikes or dealing with pass protests. There were fears that this would inhibit newspaper reporting, although the government denied that this was its intention.24

The Public Safety Act 3 of 1953 gave the government sweeping powers to introduce emergency regulations which allowed, for example, detentions and the seizure of publications for printing "subversive" statements. While it appeared that security regulations under this law might not have affected the media directly, journalists and editors ran the same risk of arrest and detention as ordinary individuals, and printing premises were subject to search and seizure.25

1954

Advance, the successor to Guardian (banned in 1952), is banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. The Act allowed interference with the mail, confiscation powers over required evidence, the banning for possession of publications deemed to be promoting communism, and the banningof publication of certain statements.26

March 1954

Torch is charged under the "hostility clause" for an editorial attacking government educational policy, but the case was dismissed.

15 April 1954

The Riotous Assemblies and Suppression of Communism Amendment Act 15 of

1954 covers some of the successful challenges to the Suppression of

Communism Amendment Act of 1951. It contained banning powers over publications deemed to incite hostility between groups, and thus had the potential to affect any publication concerned with social change.27

August 1954

Minister JG Strydom tells a Nationalist rally that the English-language newspapers are writing things "the effect of which must be that the Natives are incited against the laws of the land."28

1955

DH Ollemans, chairman of the Argus Company, arranges two informal meetings in 1955 which were attended by representatives of virtually every daily and Sunday paper and some editors, but no decision was made about his idea of a voluntary press council. It was felt that any action should await the outcome of the Van Zijl Press Commission. Ollemans nevertheless drafted a code of conduct for a proposed press council and outlined its procedures, and discussed these with his colleagues in the NPU.29

The newsroom of the Cape Times is staffed by white reporters only, except for George Manuel. There were coloured clerks and messengers and there was seldom more than one woman on the general news staff.30

1 July 1955

Section 83 of the Criminal Procedure Act 56 of 1955 was used to force journalists to reveal their sources, with heavy penalties if they refused.

In 1977 the Act was amended and section 83 became the equally infamous section 205, which was much the same as section 83.

August 1955

The National Party manoeuvres coloured people off the common voter's role by enlarging the Senate to give the government the two-thirds majority which it needed to make this change. In response to an angry editorial in the Star, Senators threatened to sue the paper. Ten days after the defamatory piece, the Star, publishes similar remarks made by MPs in Parliament, and adds its own critical comment. The Senate as a body could not act, but 68 senators sued on the basis of the first article. Advocate Bram Fischer defended the newspaper in the Supreme Court on the grounds of fair comment, but the judge found for the plaintiffs. Each is awarded £100, and the Argus Publishing and Printing Company's costs were about £10 000.31

The Cape Times reports a speech by MP J. Hamilton Russell, United Party member, in which Hamilton Russell described the Senate as "a house of ill repute peopled by gentlemen of easy virtue". His comment violated contempt rules, and a select committee was appointed to investigate, which recommended that the editor of the Cape Times, Victor Norton, be reprimanded at the bar of the Senate and Russell thrown out of Parliament for a couple of weeks.32

8 March 1956

The Official Secrets Act 16 of 1956 places severe restrictions on what the media may report. Almost nothing could be said freely about defence and arms supply.

16 March 1956

The Riotous Assemblies Act 17 of 1956 consolidated powers in previous Acts.

26 January 1957

Sir de Villiers Graaff, leader of the opposition in the Star: "...the Government turned on the English-language press and placed the responsibility for the actions of individual newspapers on the shoulders of the United Party. The Government knows that the United Party has no control over the English-language press, which often expresses opinions with which the United Party does not agree, and frequently attacks the United Party itself."33

February 1957

Prime Minister JG Strydom says in Parliament that the English-language press is South Africa's greatest enemy. SASJ president, MA Johnson, at the organisation's annual conference, warns that a press council might be instituted and some form of control imposed over those journalists who sent reports to newspapers abroad.34

26 March 1957

Cas Greyling, Nationalist MP for Ventersdorp, on the English-language press: "Their sole purpose was to smear the Fatherland...They were busy swaying public opinion with lies... Their reports about the bus boycott... were meant to give the impression that Mr Schoeman and the Nationalist Party were responsible (for the trouble). The truth was that these papers had a circulation of thousands among the Natives. That is why they sympathised with them." Greyling also claimed that the smear attempt was backed by large capital.35

May 1957

An appeal is made in the Senate for the Minister of Justice, CR Swart, to consider legislation to prevent the English-language press from abusing its freedom. Senator PE Rossouw: "We know there will be a tremendous outcry but do not let us worry about the shouting because we know what is best for them."36

20 June 1957

The Defence Act 44 of 1957 effectively places a blanket ban on the reporting of defence matters, unless the information emanates from official sources.37

27 June 1957

The Star reports that Dr Hertzog (National Party, Ermelo) said in the Assembly that the outside world depended on the numerous correspondents employed by the English press for its news of South African affairs, and that morning, noon and night the opposition was misrepresenting the noble policy of apartheid and falsely representing it as a policy of oppression, whereas it gave to all sections the right to self-expression. The English-language press, he said, trumpeted all these charges, not only all over South Africa but to the world outside."38

September 1957

The Commission of Enquiry in Regard to Undesirable Publications (the Cronje Commission) reports. "It was particularly sensitive to inter-group relations and the propagation of communism, but failed to define publications which promoted it; in the words of one sober commentator, it used 'hyperbolic if not at time[s]... hysterical phrases'... Its recommendations included a Publications Board to register all publishers and booksellers, and the suggestion that magazines should be sold only from official kiosks."39

1958

Dr HF. Verwoerd is elected Prime Minister.40

14 February 1958

The Police Act 7 of 1958 did curb the press, but the infamous section 27B was not introduced until 1977.41

1959

"In the view of Verwoerd's friend and ally, pro-nazi Piet Meyer, who was appointed chair of the South African Broadcasting Corporation in 1959, Afrikanerdom's sacred mission was beleaguered by 'Russian and Chinese communism, Indian imperialism, Eastern, Middle Eastern and North African Mohammedanism, West European liberalism, American capitalistic sentimentalism, and fervent anti-white Bantu animism in Africa.'"42

The Star reporting on the Nationalist campaign against the "Engelse pers gevaar": "In an attack on English newspapers Mr PO Sauer, Minister of Land and Water Affairs, said 'United Party newspapers have elevated every 'oujong' [meaning a coloured labourer] to the status of 'Mr' - people who regard the Nationalists as oppressive. Every time the Nationalists extend the hand of friendship to the English-speaking people, the English newspapers reject the offer as insincere. This is a political move which will eventually make South Africa a black man's country. To stir up the English-speaking people against the Afrikaners, the newspapers call South Africa under Nationalist rule a nazi state and a police state... the Scotts and the Huddlestones are given free publicity to run down South Africa..."43

Ronald Segal (who in 1959 published ANC points of view), editor of Africa South, and Lionel Forman, editor of New Age, are both banned from meetings for five years under the Suppression of Communism Act.44

May 1959

Prime Minister HF Verwoerd, speaking at a political rally in May 1959, blames the economic depression in South Africa on the irresponsible and unpatriotic behaviour of the English press.45

22 May 1959

Chief Albert Luthuli, president general of the ANC, is banned.46

12 June 1959

Oliver Tambo is banned.47

15 June 1959

MP for Ventersdorp, Mr JC (Cas) Greyling, is reported as saying that not only was it right to silence ANC leaders such as Albert Luthuli and Oliver Tambo but that most of the newspapermen sending reports overseas should also be banned. He said they were guilty of sabotaging the government's policy of apartheid.48

3 July 1959

The Inquests Act 58 of 1959, similarly to the Commissions Act, limits publicity and access to the courts.49

September 1959

The South African Information Department releases an "analysis of British newspapers" which purported to show that three-quarters of the items published in the British press about South Africa concerned "negative subjects" which created an unfavourable impression on the British reader.50

1 September 1959

The Prisons Act 8 of 1959 was passed seemingly as the direct result of the exposure by [Drum] of the abuse of black prisoners as labourers on farms.51

The 1960s

"The decade saw fresh restrictions on political discussion among blacks with the silencing of the radical press and decreasing political content in black journalism. It was the 'jackboot era' of John Vorster, who until late 1966 was both Minister of Police and of Justice. The effect on the black press was that its publications were banned or closed down because of financial difficulties and content became "intellectually lightweight" and subject to commercial considerations."52

The Sunday Times supported the United Party throughout the sixties. "The Sunday Times was not an 'official organ' [of the UP] but it conducted itself as if it was."53

In the 1960s, the Rand Daily Mail began employing black journalists for their "townships pages". These journalists were not allowed to work in the same room as white journalists on the paper because of the Group Areas Act.54

Harvey Tyson describes the 1960s as a period of "evolutionary change... from Argus management-dominated to editorially independent newspapers".

Leyton Slater, executive chairman of Argus in the 1960s, had as his mission to "...make editors independent not only of management but also of the newspaper board to which they theoretically reported. In practice they reported only to him, the executive chairman, and the board was prevented from discussing any of the newspapers' editorial policies. His system for protecting editorial independence - requiring as much constant vigilance as freedom itself - was carried through the apartheid years by Hal Miller...".

Editors were asked to endorse a mission statement, which was at first "known only to a few", but widely publicised in the 1980s. Though some changes were made to it over the years, "the essence" remained the same.55

The editor of an Opposition paper was raided by detectives of the Special Branch for no particular reason, three quarters of an hour after the post arrived. The mail had unexpectedly contained a communist weekly of which possession of was illegal. The editor ordered it destroyed immediately and when the Special Forces arrived, there was no trace of the publication. The implication is that it was 'planted'. 56

1960: Publications and Entertainments Bill

PW Botha, Deputy Minister of the Interior, introduces a Publications and Entertainments Bill which provides for pre-publication censorship. It is dropped, in favour of a Press Code, and reintroduced with amendments which exclude the press.57

"The Bill was watered down and the major print media were largely exempted after the South African Newspaper Press Union agreed to draw up its own Guidelines, which were published in 1962."58

"...mainline, commercial newspapers... evaded the provisions of the Publications and Entertainments Act, as they were frequently to do in the next quarter of a century, by agreeing to a code of conduct... the commercial press thus agreed to police itself in exchange for partial immunity. This was done in the interests of a government which found it impossible to draw a distinction between comment and documentation on one hand, and political support on the other."

24 January 1960

Daily News photographer Laurie Bloomfield takes a picture of rioting in Cato Manor which is immediately published round the world. However, Rene de Villiers, acting editor of the Daily News decides not to print it, because it was "too emotionally explosive in the heat of the riot".59

March 1960

Norman Phillips of the Toronto Star is detained for three and a half days for trying to cable a story about a police attack on Nyanga, Cape Town. The report had been intercepted by the Durban postal authorities.60

21 March 1960: Sharpeville Massacre

Police shoot and kill protesters at Sharpeville and at Langa, Cape Town.61

The Sharpeville and Langa incidents bring journalists to South Africa in large numbers and international audiences see shocking footage of the massacre on television. Pictures played an important part in local publishing of the events. Laurence Gandar, editor of the Rand Daily Mail decides not to publish one of these, which shows bodies strewn as far as the camera could see, because it might inflame further violence.62

Cape Times driver, Richard Lombard, is killed in Langa. The photographer and reporter, Cloete Breytenbach and Terry Mc Comb Herbst, whom Lombard had driven into the township, escaped with the assistance of the police.

Lombard was taken out of the car by the rioting crowd, shot, doused with gasoline and burnt. A limb was severed from his body. Herbst had a bottle smashed over his head.63 The editor of the Cape Times, Victor Norton, banned staff from entering the townships "until things quietened down".64

25 March 1960

The Cape Argus, publishes an interview with popular leader Philip Kgosana, conducted and written by Gerald Shaw, the newspaper's African affairs reporter. "That his editors still used the resented word 'Native' in his copy instead of the preferred 'African' (already in use at the pioneering Rand Daily Mail) Shaw had to bear with fortitude." Kgosana had previously been mildly critical of the Cape Argus and other papers, and had been quoted in the weekly newspaper Contact as saying: "Let us close our ears to what the newspapers say and continue with our dynamic programme". Shaw also had to accept a severely cut version of his original article and the fact that the background article he had written was not published at all for fear of breaking the strict emergency provisions. That day, Kgosana leads a peaceful march of about thirty thousand to Caledon Square, triggered by a particularly harsh police raid on Langa the night before.65

The Burger runs a headline in the morning proclaiming: "Virtual calm over whole country".66

30 March 1960: state of emergency

"The government declares the country's first state of emergency. A country wide roundup of political activists takes place and many are detained."67

The emergency empowered the authorities to ban publication of subversive statements or calls for boycotts or protest action against any law, to proscribe periodicals and their continuations, and to search for and seize prohibited material.

"... in many cases readers abroad were better informed about what was happening in South Africa than South Africans themselves. The emergency regulations included restrictions on reporting so far-reaching that if interpreted literally would mean a complete ban on publishing anything relating to the crisis... The result was that South African editors, unsure about what they could print, had to exercise a large measure of self-censorship." The London Times says: "The Press in the Union has not been bludgeoned by censorship into silence, but is having to work daily under the shadow of the axe."68

The Star instructs its London bureau to send all South African news that appeared in the British press in an attempt to circumvent emergency restrictions on information.69

The Star carries a long extract from an editorial in the Times of London dealing with he situation. Alongside this was a panel headed "CANNOT BE PUBLISHED," that read: "Many other London newspapers today gave great prominence to the situation in South Africa, but their news reports and editorial comment are of such a nature that it is impossible to publish them in South Africa under the emergency regulations."70

5 April 1960

Torch and New Age banned. The editor of Africa South, Ronald South, flees overseas and starts Africa South in Exile. New Age, Contact and Evening Post are prosecuted under the emergency.71

Contact continues to be published by its people in hiding. It breaks the emergency regulations continually, and responds to raids and seizures by reprinting and distribution through other channels. Detainees' names and details of police action in townships are published.72 Patrick Duncan, editor of Contact, is detained for three weeks for refusing to disclose his sources.

8 April 1960

"The government passes the Unlawful Organisations Act which effectively outlaws the PAC and the ANC."73

At this time, the Eastern Cape ANC and PAC trials "took place at obscure venues with such limited press coverage that they were effectively held in secret". In other such trials (there were 220 cases at 19 different centres between 1963 and 1966), venues were switched around so that the press found it difficult to keep track of them. When Govan Mbeki appeared for the defence he was brought from Robben Island and the press were excluded. Trials held on Robben Island itself received no publicity at all as it was inaccessible to journalists and the public.74

In five months, 11 503 people were detained. It was an offence to name them without permission. There was official misinformation around detentions. For example, it was denied that women detainees at Pretoria were on hunger strike. Released detainees were prohibited contact with the press.75

11 April 1960

Myrna Blumberg, correspondent for the New York Post and the London Daily Herald, is detained and restricted.

20 April 1960

Blaar Coetzee, Nationalist MP for Vereeniging, says in Parliament: "The news the outside world gets from us it gets through the English press... If they paint these false pictures, what chance has the Minister of Information?"76

May 1960

John Sutherland, editor of the Evening Post, is prosecuted for publishing the impressions of two Canadian tourists who found South Africa "a country afraid to talk". Charges were dropped.77

Fred Carneson, director of the banned New Age, is charged with publishing subversive literature in contravention of emergency restrictions.78

September 1960

Patrick Duncan, editor of Contact, is fined R900 for publishing two subversive statements and charged with contravening emergency regulations. 13 000 copies of the paper are compounded.79

October 1960

Brian Parkes receives a sentence of eight days for refusing to name a gambler who had offered odds of 3-1 against a Republic. Patrick Duncan refuses to name his source of information on the revival of the Communist Party in South Africa.80

1961

Radio propaganda by the SABC repeatedly announces that all is "normal" in South Africa.81

14 April 1961

Prime Minister Verwoerd, blaming international hostility to his government's racial policies on lies and distortions in the press, calls in Parliament for the press to "apply self-control and discipline themselves... I... insist that the press... should exercise care and that they should keep an eye on each other."82

31 May 1961

"In a parliamentary speech in 1961 shortly after South Africa became a republic, Prime Minister Verwoerd declared that the position South Africa had landed in, [in] both the Commonwealth and at the United Nations, was to a large extent as a result of inaccurate reports and a wrong interpretation of the policy of the government. He said the press should apply self-control and discipline to ensure its patriotism."83

10 June 1961

Journalist John Worrall is attacked in the journal, the Rhodesian, where he is accused of lying as a journalist. Legal proceedings are instituted against the Rhodesian by Mr Worrall. There is some debate within the South African Morning Newspapers Group (SAMNG) as to who should bear the legal costs.84

13 June 1961

Benjamin Pogrund, senior reporter on the Rand Daily Mail, is jailed for eight days for refusing to divulge the source of his story in the Rand Daily Mail. Pogrund had alleged that an alleged plot was a joke which the government had taken seriously. He was released on appeal.85

July 1961

Patrick Duncan, editor of Contact, is banned from gatherings after publishing a report about conditions at Modder B Prison in Boksburg.86

Joyce Meissenheimer, editor of Torch and W. Kodesh, director of New Age are banned.

August 1961

The SAMNG decides to appeal the conviction of the editor of the Evening Post for printing a subversive statement.87

November 1961

The post office refuses to handle a cable from the South African representative of the Daily Express (London) which contained the text of an interview with Albert Luthuli after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.88

15-16 December 1961

"...the sabotage campaign of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) got under way with fire-bomb attacks on property , but their effects were censored by scanty press coverage. [The campaign] was a great deal more successful than the Afrikaner Nationalists wanted the rest of the world to know."89

1962

SAAN is charged under the Prisons Act .90

21 January 1962

The NPU denies "any suggestion of outside interference" or pressure to set up the Press Board of Reference (press council).91

February 1962

Fred Carneson of New Age is imprisoned for refusing to supply information about a contributor to an article, suspected of an offence, in terms of legislation on unlawful organisations.92

The first report of the van Zijl Press Commission is critical of the news in foreign media and recommends more say by the Afrikaans newspapers in the affairs of SAPA.93 The report makes no mention of a press council.94

March 1962: the Press Board of Reference (press council) The Newspaper Press Union holds a special meeting at which it adopts a constitution for a Press Board of Reference and a code of conduct for journalists. "Present were representatives of the national and provincial press, country newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, editors and representatives of the SA Society of Journalists. Support for the Board and code came from the Argus group and Afrikaans newspapers while most of the SAAN representatives were opposed to it." The main difference between the code of conduct and those in other countries was that journalists were not required to observe professional secrecy to protect sources of information. It also contained a political injunction that journalists should "take cognisance of the complex racial problems of South Africa and the general good and safety of the country and its peoples".95

"...the Newspaper Press Union, representing the publishers of almost all mainstream newspapers and magazines, created its own Press Reference Board.

The newspapers appointed a retired judge, Mr Justice H de Villiers, to chair it. Leyton Slater of the Argus group steered through the scheme, which he saw as not only a protection from harassment but as a bonus for better standards and better public relations. South African Associated Newspapers (owners of the Rand Daily Mail and other English morning newspapers) objected to the idea on the grounds that the Reference Board was being created under government threat. Which was true. But the morning group finally swallowed the principle and settled for the practical solution. It was a happy arrangement for the press."96

Merrett claims that the SASJ "significantly" was excluded from negotiations between the NPU and the government, and that while the press in other countries might indeed have a similar system for self-regulation, the South Africa system established at this time was not operating in a democratic context.97

In April the NPU formally accepts the March proposals for a Press Board of Reference and Code of Conduct.98

"The council [Press Board of Reference] had no formal government recognition, but a sword of Damocles hung over its head for years: at any moment the government could use existing legislation to step in to 'recognise,' which means control, the media council."99

"The council [Press Board of Reference] was a voluntary body, chosen by the newspaper industry and in time established high standards and independence under the direction of ex-judges. They were fortunate to have the services of a respected journalist as registrar (Bob Steyn, a former Argus political correspondent and Nieman fellow at Harvard University)."100

May 1962

In May 1962 the Minister of Justice, BJ Vorster, blames the English press for public opposition to the General Law Amendment Bill ("The Sabotage Bill"), which introduced the death penalty for "sabotage", and house arrest.101

27 June 1962

The wide definition of "sabotage" in the General Law Amendment Act 76 of 1962 ("The Sabotage Act), made it difficult for the press to be clear about what might be considered "incitement" under this Act and what was simply reporting. The Act allowed the government to close down most anti-apartheid newspapers.102

30 July 1962

A list of 102 persons banned from attending gatherings is published. It is an offence to quote such persons.103

August 1962

The pro-government Vaderland publishes a United Press report quoting Oliver Tambo, head of the ANC in exile. A row follows.104

12 October 1962

Pretoria News publishes a cartoon that reads "Yes, there is a difference.

In Mississippi, thugs are breaking the law. In South Africa, they are making them." The editor is reprimanded before the Speaker of the House of Assembly.105

15 October 1962

The Transvaler publicly apologises to the Star for alleging that the Star had tried to overthrow the government by misrepresenting facts in reports published here and abroad.106

30 October 1962

The SABC puts out a vicious attack on Helen Joseph. She cannot respond because she is under house arrest.107

30 November 1962

New Age is banned under the Suppression of Communism Act and possession of back issues becomes an offence.108

December 1962

Eddie Roux, professor of botany at Wits University, is restricted and unable to edit or contribute to the Rationalist.109

Anthony Delius, political reporter for the Sunday Times, is suspended from Parliament for one year for criticising arrangements made in Parliament regarding the removal of historical parliamentary portraits. The paper itself is subsequently denied access.110

Alex la Guma and Brian Bunting from New Age are banned.

Michael Harmel from the Guardian, and later editor of African Communist, is put under house arrest until he goes into exile in 1962.111

1963

The SABC produces and broadcasts anti-communist radio propaganda under the "paranoiac" title "Know Your Enemy". 112

The Argus Company, with funds provided by the Anglo American Corporation, acquires total ownership of the Bantu Press, publishers of Bantu World, Imvo, Ilanga, and Evening Post. "[I]t was impossible for any African newspaper to survive the competitive power of the white-controlled Bantu Press, and indeed this was the intention." World's editorial was chiefly concerned with sensational crime, violence and sex, and avoided politics.

Its general manager said that politics elicited "apparently very little interest among the Bantu." In the first half of the 1970s, World's editorial content was decided by its white editorial director in consultation with the black editor, MT Moerane.113

The Reverend Arthur Blaxall is charged with possession of three copies of New Age and one of Fighting Talk. He is sentenced to six months in jail on four counts under the Suppression of Communism Act, but this was later suspended.114

February 1963

Key members of staff of Spark (which replaced New Age) are issued with individual notices prohibiting them from being on the premises where a publication is prepared or assist in any way with the coming out of a publication. Spark subsequently closes.115

March 1963

Fighting Talk, a political and literary magazine publishing black writers in particular, is also banned under the Suppression of Communism Act.

Pixie Benjamin was subsequently given a six-month sentence for possessing a copy, but this was overturned on appeal.116

April 1963

The Sunday Times journalist Charles Bloomberg, exposes Dr Piet Koornhof's powerful position in the Broederbond and the paper goes on to publish lists of names of those associated with the organisation. Their offices are raided by police and documents seized.117

5 April 1963

The Publications and Entertainment Act 26 of 1963 establishes the Publications Control Board, which examines any publication submitted to it and advises the minister of the interior on any matter arising out of the application of this Act. NPU members were not subject to this law. It was used to ban books, films and music and affected newspapers in that they could not make use of banned material. Journalists were often raided for possession of banned books. Most books were banned for political reasons.118

2 May 1963

The General Law Amendment Act 37 of 1963 ("90-day Detention Law") is criticised by the press but there is no public protest to it. Senator JG Sutter of the Opposition says of the criticism in the press: "It was staggering to listen to the ignorance expressed on the Bill by irresponsible people... I have never seen reports in our papers so completely misleading as over the conditions prevailing in parliament over this matter..."119

August 1963

Mike Norton, Cape editor of Post, is jailed under the Criminal Procedure Act for three periods totalling 16 days, for his refusal to name sources.120

October 1963

Rivonia trial.121

1964

The Vaderland publishes a threatening editorial against Penguin's African Library series.122

National Party historian GD. Scholtz, editor of the influential Nationalist Die Transvaler, comments that to avoid economic and political domination by blacks, the policy of separate development is necessary in order "to get rid of the threatening stranglehold of the Non-White proletariat".123

Afrikaanse Pers buys Imvo and Zonk from Bantu Press.124

Argus buys Golden City Post, established in 1955 by Jim Bailey.125

26 January 1964

Dagbreek comments on the fact that the editor of the World, MT Moerane, also the Parliamentary reporter for the paper, shared an office with a white reporter and used the same toilet facilities. Certain newspapermen complain and Moerane ceases using the offices.126

April 1964

Police raid the offices of the New African, confiscating correspondence, address plates, financial books, subscription lists and 2 000 copies of the latest issue.127

May 1964: second Report of the Van Zyl Press Commission

The second report of the Van Zyl Press Commission claims that the Press Board of Reference "does not satisfy the fundamental requirements of a body designed to discipline or encourage self-control of the press". It recommended the formation of a press council with statutory powers, and the compulsory annual registration (with a registration fee) of journalists and newspapers with this council. The commission also recommended that, unlike the Press Board of Reference, on which only owners were represented, the proposed press council should include journalists, political parties, and the public. It should be able to order its judgements to be published, and impose fines of unlimited amounts.128

The report was in nine volumes and 4 250 pages long including its annexures. It weighed 60 lb and had cost R355 000. It called for a statutory Press Council to reprimand, fine and impose "self control and discipline", as well as to maintain a register of journalists with special registration for overseas transmission rights. A compromise was reached with the establishment of a Board of Reference empowered to reprimand.129

11 June 1964

Anthony Delius, Parliamentary writer for the Cape Times, is thrown out of Parliament for his column on this day, as he had also been on 2 February 1962, 130 and is permanently banned from covering Parliament.131

"[Vorster] would play with the press like a cat. On more than one occasion he used friendly Afrikaans journalists in the press gallery to pass on to people like Anthony Delius of the Cape Times warnings that 'your book is full' - meaning that some action was likely against the individual. Such warnings were calculated to temper bold journalism. They were serious, because Vorster had power to destroy lives. Delius himself simply ignored the pressure."132

7 August 1964

African Communist is banned under the Suppression of Communism Act.133

Stanley Uys, political correspondent for the Sunday Times, is questioned by police after he reported that "strange things" had happened during the recess of the opening of the Transkei Parliament.134

MT Moerane, editor of the World, and Nat Nakasa, journalist, are denied passports.135

Mark Green, ex-New York Times journalist, is denied a permanent residence permit after being offered a permanent post in South Africa.136

1965

"Upon the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white supremacist Rhodesian regime, an official South African radio broadcast openly defended Ian Smith's embrace of censorship on the simple basis that 'the Rhodesian press not only clearly opposed Mr Smith's government in the face of the clearly expressed wishes of the [all-white] electorate, but even adopted an attitude at times which can only be described as hostile.... The Rhodesian press, and those in South Africa who are now bewailing the hardships of censorship, should not forget the extent to which censorship was brought upon themselves by the Rhodesian newspapers... Reference has also been made to blank spaces in current Rhodesian newspapers. These blank spaces are supposed to indicate the high-handedness of the censors - but the censored articles, written in newspaper offices, can only be removed for one reason: because they are dangerous to Rhodesia. If the articles are genuine, it shows their hostility. If they are deliberately written in such a way as to be censored, it means that the censors are being provoked, in an attempt to create an impression of ruthlessness in the public mind. So in either case the blank spaces prove, for all to see, the extent to which censorship was necessary."137

March 1965

The Daily Dispatch complains of "unexpected attacks" on it in three successive SABC broadcasts arising from its criticisms of certain actions by Chief Kaiser Matanzima.138

April 1965

The Sunday Times (London) is seized for the purpose of blacking out a quote by Nelson Mandela.139

May 1965

New African banned.140

18 May 1965

The Suppression of Communism Amendment Act 97 of 1965 extends banning powers on individuals and publications.

25 June 1965

The Criminal Procedure Amendment Act 96 of 1965 introduced 180-day detention for potential state witnesses, but did not make any amendments which inhibited the press further than the 1956 Act.141 Sections of the Act allow the state to enter premises and seize articles which are suspected to be connected with an offence, with or without a search warrant.142

July 1965

"In 1965, the Rand Daily Mail ran a three-part series on conditions in prison, based on the experiences of a former political prisoner, Harold Strachan. After a lengthy and costly case, the paper was convicted in 1970 of breaking the Prisons Act."143

The informant on whose evidence the articles were largely based is immediately banned and charged with making false statements. He is found guilty under what some feel to be irregular court procedures. Gandar, the editor, and Pogrund, the reporter, are charged under the Prisons Act, and later found guilty.144

August 1965

Passports are withdrawn from Benjamin Pogrund and Laurence Gander after the series on prisons was published in the Rand Daily Mail. 145

1966

The SAAN board of directors "in a tactical move to placate government hostility," sacks Laurence Gandar, the editor of the Rand Daily Mail since 1957. He is replaced by Raymond Louw.146

"Laurence Gandar, editor of the Rand Daily Mail, bravely ran his campaigning liberal paper and was eased out by the cautious owners who maintained, ludicrously, that 'some of his writing was not in the national interest'."147

Abdul Kays is served with a banning order making it impossible for him to continue his work as a journalist. Kays sat on a 'District 6 Defence Committee' which was fighting against a predominantly coloured area being proclaimed white.148

Charles Cannon, a tv cameraman, is served with a banning order and forced to give up his employment.149

Two newsmen from Holland, wanting to record material on the Christian Institute, are refused visas.150

Joseph Lelyveld, New York Times correspondent, is forced to leave the country when his residence permit is not renewed.151

No journalists are allowed to come to South Africa during Senator Robert Kennedy's visit.152

1 April 1966

Todd Matshikiza, Bloke Modisane, Es'kia Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi and Can Themba are silenced under the Suppression of Communism Act.153

September 1966

Verwoerd is assassinated and Vorster becomes Prime Minister.

"Vorster told me he saw the press as a 'necessary evil,' and it is true that he never went to the comprehensive lengths of PW Botha to curb it.

Even at the height of the black youth revolt in Soweto and elsewhere in 1976 he held back from declaring a state of emergency, though he did aim a death blow at one newspaper. By contrast, four of Botha's eleven years were marked by states of emergency. Botha calculated and planned. Vorster hit out instinctively."154

"Vorster's favourite cat-and-mouse game with the newspaper owners was to tell them to 'put your house in order.' That meant to control critical editors and journalists. He knew newspaper owners and managers scared easily... Vorster never tried anything as all-embracing as Botha's 'media regulations' under the state of emergency..."155

1967

"The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, warned in 1967 that: 'Friends of mine recently returned from Britain tell me one cannot see a programme which does not show Black and White living together; where they are not continually propagating a mixture of the two races."156

Varsity, student paper from the University of Cape Town, is suspended from 1967 to 1968.157

Dr. Ralph Emerson McGill, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution and Dr. J. Bruins Slot, editor in chief of the Amsterdam Trouw, are denied visas.158

The Defence Amendment Act 85 of 1967 tightened restrictions on the publication of information relating to defence matters and makes these restrictions applicable at all times, not just in a time of war.

11 January 1967

The minister of defence and the president of the NPU enter into an agreement to ensure regular contact between the SADF, Armscor and the NPU.

It was amended several times.159 "The agreement... is not of much value since officialdom regulates the information which is passed on to the press."160

19 June 1967

The Atomic Energy Act 90 of 1967 restricts reporting on uranium production.

21 June 1967

The Terrorism Act 83 of 1967 permitted indefinite detention without trial, in solitary confinement, for purposes of interrogation. Names of detainees could not be published, nor any information of their whereabouts or of the conditions under which they were held. Unless their cases eventually came to court or they died in detention and inquests were held, a blanket of secrecy descended on their fate during the parliamentary recesses.161

3 October 1967: agreement between NPU and SAP

The Agreement between the Newspaper Press Union of South and the Commissioner of the South African Police provides for press identity cards which entitles the holder to interview senior police officers and to access to areas under police control from which the general public is excluded (unless otherwise ordered by the police). The cards were issued to individual journalists selected by their editors and approved by the commissioner. Editors had to undertake, among other things, not to allow journalists to approach members of the police force other than those described in the agreement, and identify the source of police information if requested to. The commissioner could withdraw the card at any time, giving prior notice to the editor and allowing him to make representations to the commissioner. Press identity cards could also be supplied to newspapers who were not members of the NPU, and "non-white" newspapers.162

December 1967

At this time, books are being banned by the Publications Control Board at a rate of at least two every week. The Afrikaans writer, WA de Klerk, commented that the most subtle and damaging censorship was self-censorship, however, and that the Afrikaans writer "has been so conditioned by things around him that he, too, must hesitate, look warily around him and then over his shoulder".163

1968

Seven English language journalists are jailed under the Criminal Procedures Act.164

5 June 1968

The Prohibition of Political Interference Act 51 of 1968 not only prohibited racially integrated political parties, but made it a crime for a member of one population group to "interfere" with the politics of another population group. Any type of assistance to a party of another population group, or even to a member of another population group was strictly prohibited. This allowed the government to inhibit the press from publicising and advocating the activities of multi-racial groups.

19 June 1968

The Armaments Development and Production Act 57 of 1968 "...prohibits the disclosure by any person, including the news media, of any information relating to the acquisition, supply, marketing, importation, export, development, manufacture, maintenance or repair of or research in connection with armaments by, for or on behalf of the Armaments Corporation or a subsidiary company, without the written authority of the minister or other authorised person...The prohibition on the imparting of knowledge relates to almost all aspects of information relating to armaments and 'armaments' are widely defined in the Act, so as to include vessels, vehicles, aircraft, bombs, ammunition, weapons, material or raw materials, components, equipment systems."165

Section 9 gives the state president the power to make regulations in regard to the preservation of secrecy in regard to the affairs of Armscor.

13 September 1968

The Star publishes an editorial which expresses unease over the lack of public response to the Press Board of Reference (press council), that is, that the public was not making use of the board to register complaints about the press. "In any democratic society an institution of this kind - and most have them - is invaluable, and the more it is used the more effective it becomes."166

9 October 1968

Constitution of the press council amended.

November 1968

Only 16 complaints have been received by the press board of reference, with nine verdicts going against the press.167

The Bailey Trust, major shareholders in SAAN, offers its shares to the Argus Company without consulting the board or management of SAAN. Prime Minister John Vorster announces that the Cabinet is considering legislation to prevent newspaper take-overs such as this, and Argus decides not to take up its options.168

1969

Prime Minister Vorster creates the Bureau for State Security (BOSS), responsible only to the Prime Minister.169

"In 1969, newspapers reported that 'local demand for moon news has been phenomenal,' and families voraciously tuned in to radio broadcasts of words from the men on the moon, while crowds jostled for 'lunar souvenirs.'

Alongside this, the problems of black fellow-citizens were wilfully ignored as though they were the remote concern of another planet."170

5 June 1969

Nationalist MP for Carletonville, Cas Greyling, demands, in Parliament, a press court, and a register of journalists, claiming that the press reference board was ineffective and took "meaningless decisions". When he says that no one should be ashamed to register their qualifications for their job, Mr JD "Japie" Basson interjects: "What about parliamentarians?"171

30 June 1969

The General Law Amendment Act 101 of 1969 (The BOSS Law) was designed to control all information prejudicial to the interests of the state.172

July 1969

Laurence Gandar and Benjamin Pogrund are found guilty under Section 44(F) of the Prisons Act of publishing false information about prisons without taking reasonable steps to verify information. Gandar is fined R100 or three months on each of two counts, SAAN is fined R150 on each count and Pogrund receives a three-month suspended sentence on each count.173

The case was "of great importance in clarifying the contradictions of a 'free' press in a repressive state. The crippling legal fees [estimated at R500 000] were certainly also a deterrent against further contentious stories."174

October 1969

Several reporters from the Rand Daily Mail are detained and questioned while investigating a story about a tent town in Morsgat.175

MT Moerane, editor of the World ,is refused a passport.176

David Garner, editor of Drum, is forced to leave the country when the renewal of his residence permit is refused.177

Russell W. Howe, American journalist, is refused entry.178

The 1970s

The 1960s were relatively quiet after the bannings of African nationalist movements. In the 1970s resistance increased. The state responded with heavier repression: bannings and propaganda. Media which supported the status quo was allowed to continue to do so, and supplemented (e.g. the Citizen). Critical media (even at the level of attacking individuals) were threatened, and if that was unsuccessful, were legislated against.179

A group of "white supremacist thugs" threatens and harasses journalists, churchmen, politicians and others in Cape Town. The police appeared to be unable to do much about it. "Finally, a determined Supreme Court prosecutor put together a case based on incriminating letters and other factors and pressed charges in an atmosphere of police scepticism." Two men were sent to jail, but a man widely suspected as the ringleader was not prosecuted. The senior management of the Cape Times was "exceptionally supportive" and provided security measures in senior editorial staff's homes.180

1970

"In United Party and English-speaking big business circles, criticism of the ruling National Party was regarded as desirable and legitimate, as long as it did not go 'too far'. The cautious moguls with gimlet eyes who dominated the economy - and owned the English-language newspapers - had to keep on cordial terms with government because of their financial interests.

There were deals to be done with Pretoria. They would say to editors, referring to Nationalist leaders: 'But remember, he is the prime minister.'

The endless refrain was 'Give him a chance.' I lost count of the number of times I heard this."181

The SABC bans "non-white" pianists from a Beethoven music competition, maintaining that "different races perform best in their own idiom".182

early 1970

The Cape Times editorial office is petrol bombed.183

February 1970

Police in the Sunday Times building threaten to stop by force publication of a report that Jaap Marais, leader of the Herstigte National Party, had criticised the security police. Instead, the paper runs a story about the police intervention, quoting Colonel JFL Engelbrecht as saying: "I am instructed on the highest authority to inform you that if you publish the interview with Mr Jaap Marais you will do so at your own risk. If you publish the report you can expect that steps will immediately be taken to prevent the distribution of the Sunday Times".184

1971

The SASJ recognises the press board of reference at its 1971 congress, some of the misgivings of liberal journalists having been allayed by the relatively moderate tones of the board over the years. SASJ president Brian Rudden says: "...By its actions and decision it has done a first-class job. We were very impressed by it".185

Minister of the Interior Theo Gerdner suggests that the press board of reference be given powers to impose heavy fines on newspapers and to initiate investigations into press behaviour.186

"The council [press board of reference] was, in time, given the controversial power to fine newspapers up to ten thousand rands for professional transgressions - a move opposed by many editors, including myself in a public statement."187

"The government was never satisfied with the council's performance. It wanted more 'blood,' more disciplining of erring or 'hostile' journalists.

What it could not achieve by informal pressure, it achieved by legislation."188

A journalist, Marais, received police and security documents from an unknown person and was interdicted from publishing this information. On appeal, however, the case was dismissed when the court found that the information had become generally known.189

March 1971

Photographer Peter Magubane is detained and held for 98 days before being released with no charges laid against him. He is subsequently banned and cannot continue with his work as a photographer.190

4 June 1971

The Newspaper and Imprint Registration Act 63 of 1971 obliges all periodicals appearing more than once a month to register.191

1 July 1971

The National Supplies Procurement Act 89 of 1970 restricts reporting on the stockpiling of strategic commodities.

October 1971

Prime Minister Vorster accuses the press of "stabbing South Africa in the back". A few weeks later, interior minister Theo Gerdner suggests that the press council be given far wider powers, including the ability to impose heavy fines on offending newspapers. He also suggested that the press council should be able to take action on its own initiative.192

24 October 1971

The home of a newspaper editor is among about 115 homes raided by police between 4 and 5 am.193

29 November 1971

Benjamin Pogrund, night editor of the Rand Daily Mail, is charged with theft and possession of documents banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. He is working on a PhD on South African nationalism. Some of the documents in question were 20-year old publications recently banned, as well as notes on the ANC.194

December 1971

General HJ van den Bergh, chief of the Bureau for State Security, claims that criticism levelled at the government by the English Press all stemmed from an organised campaign with well worked out plans. Donald Woods, editor of the Daily Dispatch said he was going to sue van den Bergh for defamation.195

1972

"In one of the countless exchanges with the Cape Times in 1972, the Burger dismissed racist incidents, which we had suggested both newspapers could jointly campaign against, as just the odd case of 'administrative stupidity'." Dr. Piet Cillie was the editor of the Burger at the time.196

Prime Minister Vorster tries to secure the compliance of the press in an "informal" state of emergency, involving self-censorship, which the public never knew about. Many editors opposed the idea, and that attempt failed."197

May 1972

Scope is banned by State Publications Control Board on the grounds that a photograph of a black man embracing a white woman would offend those against integration. The ban is later lifted.198

9 May 1972

Mark Douglas-Home (nephew of British Foreign Secretary and student at Wits) is served with a police notice that his temporary residence permit would expire at midnight and he would be deported. A cartoon depicting a small boy peering into a lavatory bowl with "Excuse me, are you the Prime Minister" written above, appeared in the 21 April edition of Wits of which

Douglas-Home was the editor.199

9 June 1972

"A [Cape Times] editorial... referred to the police as 'official law-breakers' after the police beat students on the steps of St George's Cathedral in Cape Town. The students had demonstrated peacefully and had been laid into in a vicious way... immediately after the editorial comment appeared... the Cape Times had all police news cut off. We managed to restore relations by explaining in an editorial that our reference to official law-breakers did not mean all police, but the 'excesses of certain individuals.'"200

28 June 1972

The commissioner of police, on the occasion of a passing-out parade of graduates from the police college, criticises news reports of police handling of white student demonstrations.201

August 1972

John Jordi, editor of the Star, becomes the first newspaperman to be charged under the Defence Act of 1957 after the Star had reported that the Minister of Defence was in Lisbon, and repeated speculation on the purchase of naval frigates. Jordi refused to pay an admission of guilt and, with his counsel Sydney Kentridge and attorney Peter Reynolds prepared to attend a secret trial. Then he subpoenaed the Minister as a witness. The charges were dropped. After some debate in Parliament and in the press, the dispute was settled.202

Communist signs and slogans are painted on the offices of the Cape Times , among other places.203

September 1972

In the early seventies the Sunday Times begins to be critical of the United Party, which it had previously supported, supporting a younger, more liberal faction within it. The paper (Mervis, Uys, Serfontein) calls for the resignation of Sir de Villiers Graaff, the leader of the party, in

September 1972.204

The newly elected Transvaal leader of the National Party, says at its Transvaal congress, that "if the press acted irresponsibly, it did not deserve the freedom it enjoyed and the government would act, even if the price was the freedom of the press."205

1973

The independently owned Cape Times is bought by the Johannesburg based SAAN group, which had been an associate of the paper for years.206

Patrick Laurence is sentenced under the Suppression of Communism Act to 18 months suspended for three years for sending an interview with banned PAC leader Robert Sobukwe to the Observer in London.207

January 1973

Union of Black Journalists established.208

The UBJ is described by Patrick Laurence as "a black consciousness union (which) sought to mobilise black journalists and synchronise their aspirations with those of the broader black community."209

22 May 1973

Derek Louw and Franco Frescura, editor and cartoonist of the Wits Student, are arrested and detained overnight on charges of defamation and contravention of the Publications and Entertainment Act. They are released on bail the following day.210

30 May 1973

Under the Gathering and Demonstration Act 52 of 1973 newspapers were unable to inform the public about planned gatherings. Some got around this by approaching the police for statements on public safety and thus being able to "announce" a gathering.

8 June 1973

Colin Legum, associate editor of the London Observer, is refused transit through Jan Smuts Airport to Swaziland in the interests of "national security". 211

September 1973

Addressing the National Party's Cape Congress, Vorster said the government would amend the Riotous Assemblies Act to enable the courts to "deal properly" with people who were sowing enmity between the races. Newspapers were clearly the target. Vorster repeated these allegations against the press at the Transvaal congress that same month, and told the press it had until January 1974 to "clean up its house". Vorster replied to angry responses from the press, including from Willem de Klerk, editor of the Transvaler, who defied the official line by saying that politicians, not the press, are irresponsible, that: "I am looking at legislation now which will contain a clause providing that if a newspaper continues to be guilty of publishing articles inciting racial hatred it will simply not appear on the streets." Once again there was a flood of comment.212

"[Willem] de Klerk's defiance was staggering, in that previously his newspaper had seldom if ever deviated from the party line. In later years, the Afrikaans papers showed even more independence."213

October 1973

The NPU tries to meet with Vorster who declines and announces that he plans to go ahead with legislation to control the press. He says that editors who had refused to censor their papers had clearly done so with the approval of their directors. He writes to the NPU: "Under the circumstances, I have no option but to finalise the contemplated legislation and to proceed with my plans."214

When a commission of enquiry into Publications Control is set up, regulations in terms of the Commissions Act are gazetted making it an offence to publish any part of the proceedings or evidence, influence or anticipate the findings, or disparage any members of the commission. This pr ohibiting proclamation appears to have been a response to considerable interest in the press in the commission of enquiry.215

27 November 1973

"I saw [Prime Minister Vorster] in his office... He was extremely worried about the effects of the oil crisis on the West's ability to act with resolve in world events. He spoke of the danger of 'say, a thousand' whites being killed in Rhodesia, which would cause a war psychosis in South Africa. 'Then I will close newspapers without hesitation.'"216

1974

In the 1974 elections, the Sunday Times supports the UP, and the Progressive Party where candidates were up against the UP "old guard".217

BJ Vorster suggests an amended press code granting power to penalise editors and journalists with fines.218

The Publications Act No 42 of 1974 was passed for the purposes of suppressing the critical media, and putting into place a more efficient system of control. While the Publications Committees attempted to control publications themselves, the Security Police harassed and victimised individuals involved in the production and distribution of the publications.219 The Act was the strongest piece of legislation affecting the Student Press. 220

Peter Wellman, reporter on the Rand Daily Mail, is tried and imprisoned under Section 83 of the Criminal Procedures Act for refusing to give evidence against house-arrested Catholic priest Father Cosmas Desmond. His term includes time in solitary confinement. "The outside world took note when I went to jail for refusing to give evidence in a minor political case in 1974 - it was an entire paragraph in the miscellany column of The Guardian."221

The SASJ deregisters as a trade union in order to allow black journalists to become members. It is the first union to do so.222

15 March 1974

The Affected Organisations Act 31 of 1974 prohibits the press from publishing anything about an "affected" organisation, and severely restricts the publications of the organisations themselves.

July 1974: amendments to the constitution of the press council

Only English press editors attended an SASJ symposium on press freedom in Cape Town in response to Vorster's threatened legislation. Leyton Slater, NPU chairman and chairman of the Argus Group, said the NPU would fight any form of control by the government. He did not disclose that the NPU was involved in secret talks with the government, nor that a revised constitution and code of conduct had been delivered to Vorster two days before the symposium.223

The amended constitution would allow the council to impose fines of up to R10 000 and required all members of the NPU to accept the jurisdiction of the council. It also allowed the council to insist on the prominent publication of its findings in the newspaper concerned. The new code of conduct was even more controversial, two clauses in particular. One demanded of newspapers "due care and responsibility concerning matters which can have the effect of stirring up feelings of hostility between racial, ethnic, religious or cultural groups in South Africa, or which can affect the safety and defence of the country and its peoples", the other required "due compliance with agreements entered into between the Newspaper Press Union and any department of the Government of South Africa with view to public safety or security or the general good."224

The Argus group and its editors, as well as the NPU, supported the amendments to the constitution, believing them to be an effort to keep control of the press in the face of the threatened legislation. SAAN editors opposed them, as did most local SASJ chapels. The Afrikaans Press also supported the amendments, with the same rationale as the Argus group and the NPU - that it would encourage the government not to enact legislation against the press. The government kept the press in suspense, with Vorster refusing to say whether he had accepted the new council or was planning to proceed with legislation.225

September 1974

The Minister of Justice, James Kruger, warns that if the NPU could not discipline its members, press legislation would be necessary. He was responding to the breaking of an embargo on some photographs released by the government.226

Wits Student editor, Sean Moroney, is the first person to be prosecuted under the Publications Act. The prosecution involved two editions of the paper, which were later banned. The conviction was later set aside by the Appeal Court. (Between April 1975 and June 1979, 167 student publications were banned for distribution, another 60 for possession and seven were banned for all future editions.)

25 September 1974

John O'Malley, editor of Natal Daily News and Michael Green, assistant editor, are arrested and charged with contravening the Riotous Assemblies Act for publishing a report with the time and place of a pro-Frelimo rally.227

November 1974

Vorster attacks the press for "irresponsible reporting" at the opening of the Free State congress of the National Party. Of a report in the Financial Mail he said: "I want to say before my discussions with the Newspaper Press Union that if editors carry on that line then the discussions are a waste of time. That would be a pity because I believe the new code is an improvement on the old one. But it is not worth the paper it is written on if that is the way the editors carry on."228

Minister of Defence PW Botha threatens to scrap the eight-year-old NPU-Defence Agreement because some newspapers were using blank spaces in reports where permission to publish information was withheld by the Defence Department.229

20 November 1974

The Second General Law Amendment Act 94 of 1974 prohibits anyone from "uttering words or performing any other act with intent to cause, encourage, or foment feelings of hostility between different population groups."

1975

The Media Liaison Section of the South African Prisons Service is set up.230

1975

Harvey Tyson issues a memorandum to editorial executives instructing them not to identify people by race unless it is relevant. The memorandum was a reminder of a decision that had been taken previously but was not being carried out consistently.231

The official yearbook of the republic states: "The Press is the freest in Africa and amongst the freest in the world. The merest glance at any newspaper, particularly at one of the more articulate opponents of the government, will confirm this." This statement was omitted in the 1976 yearbook.232

Parents of the first South African soldier to die in the war are not allowed to announce the reasons for his death. Their funeral notice said that Chris Robins had died in a fatal accident. Raymond Louw, editor of the Rand Daily Mail, placed the classified advertisement on Page One, immediately below the SADF denial that South African soldiers were at war in Angola.233

23 January 1975

John O'Malley is acquitted of contravening the Riotous Assemblies Act. The publishers of his paper, Argus Printing and Publishing Company, receive a fine of R10 on the charge. Michael Green, the senior assistant editor is found guilty, cautioned and discharged. 234

February 1975

The Cape Times is given a detailed briefing on a joint South African-Israeli deal to do with missile boats. Defence Minister Botha tells them that if anything came out in the press he would simply deny it.235

3 February 1975

James MacManus correspondent of the Guardian, is refused entry into South Africa.236

14 February 1975

Prime Minister Vorster predicts to Tony Heard that he (Vorster) will address the OAU by the end of the year. He added: "If I do not make the OAU, it will be the fault of the English press and there will be war. I will have done what I could, and will say this to the youth of South Africa, and they can fight with a clean conscience."237

24 February 1975

"Vorster had powerful likes and dislikes. He cherished an institutional hostility toward the English-language press, though not toward all its individuals. At a private meeting of English-language editors he declared:

'Let us be candid about it. You hate me and I hate you. You have tried to bring me down at every turn.'When his detente moves in Africa suffered setbacks, he became sullen and belligerent. He warned at the above occasion that if detente broke down , he would blame the press and take action against newspapers, 'because it will mean war with Africa.' He was bitter that newspapers dubbed him pro-German and pro-nazi during the war."238

3 March 1975

Prime Minister John Vorster gives a confidential briefing on South Africa's relationships with other African countries to political correspondents.

Among other things, Vorster tells them that the president of ZANU, the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole, is the "fly in the ointment" in the process of establishing Ian Smith's policy in what was then Rhodesia. Sithole was arrested a few days later.239

1 April 1975

The Publications Act 42 of 1974 governs the country's censorship apparatus, to which all publications which are not members of the NPU are subject.240

It was passed for the purposes of suppressing the critical media, and putting into place a more efficient system of control. While the publications committees attempted to control publications themselves, the security police harassed and victimised individuals involved in the production and distribution of the publications.241

June 1975

Raymond Suttner is detained under the Terrorism Act, and later sentenced to seven and a half years under the Suppression of Communism Act for producing Inkululeko (SACP) and Vukani! (ANC) and for training overseas in pamphlet production.242

18 July 1975

Chris van Gass, on secondment to the Argus Africa News Service (AANS), becomes the first South African to interview the then MPLA leader and first president of Angola, Augustino Neto. The interview is brokered and attended by AANS stringer in Luanda, Jose Ricardo, and also attended by the Stockholm-based newspaper Expression. Dr Neto gives, for the first time, a clear and public indication that South Africa planned the "occupation" of Angola. He told of clashes between the SADF and Angolans which had begun in January that year, and of South Africa's intention to occupy the southern half of Angola and set up a separate "ethnic" region.243

21 July 1975

Guenther Peus, West German TV journalist, is expelled from the country. His visa is withdrawn one week before it expired. He had arrived in the country on 10 July to produce a programme about black artists.244

9 August 1975

South African military units invade Angola near the Ruacana Falls on the then South West African border. "They pushed about 35 km into the neighbouring country without declaring war and without their own parliament having even a hint of what was happening. Parliament and the South African electorate were soon piecing together information from rumours from their own sons on the border, and from rumours and oblique messages in the press... Yet no-one spoke out; no-one was prepared to give evidence... The government deliberately delayed confirmation of the invasion... Peter Sullivan, who was later trained on the Rand Daily Mail and joined Argus newspapers as a political correspondent, recalls that as a citizen force conscript he found himself 200 km inside Angola with his unit when they at last came across a radio broadcasting from home. They listened eagerly for news of the war - only to hear an official denial of their presence in Angola."245

10 August 1975

In terms of the Defence Act the Star is unable to publish an unconfirmed report on the invasion, and attempts to check the rumours it is picking up via its London bureau. The Act prohibits all reports of troop movements, as well as "any statement, comment or rumour (concerning the SADF or its allies) calculated to prejudice or embarrass the government in its foreign relations or to alarm or depress members of the public".246

11 August 1975

Minister of Defence, PW Botha, bans "reports or speculations concerning South African military movements and activities on the South West Africa/Angola border or at any border posts, in particular at Ruacana..." saying that "such reports and speculation only cause unnecessary confusion".

247

13 August 1975

Harvey Tyson writes a column announcing that there is news of national and international importance which cannot be published and suggests that readers listen to the BBC. The BBC had carried unconfirmed reports on its Africa Service.248

"[Prime Minister] Vorster would tell me darkly how close the Rand Daily Mail was on the brink of closure or other government action, knowing I would run straight to Raymond Louw, its editor at the time, to tell him.

Louw had some titanic run-ins with Vorster, but held firm - unlike some others." This was a deliberate attempt to intimidate the press on Vorster's part.249

16 August 1975

The minister of defence officially re-issues his ban on any news about activity on the South West African border.250

6 September 1975

PW Botha acknowledges the SADF's official involvement in the war in Angola.251

9 September 1975

PW Botha sends a confidential message explaining to editors why he had forbidden the war to be publicised. Botha says that protracted negotiations with the Portuguese had only been concluded a week before.252

October 1975

Louis Luyt, well-known National Party supporter, proposes a takeover bid for SAAN, claiming to be acting in his personal capacity and with no formal links to the National Party. A hastily formed trust manages to purchase enough shares in SAAN to prevent this.253

19 November 1975

Prime Minister Vorster, at a private talk with Tony Heard in the Union Buildings, tells Heard about the Angola invasion, which was being flatly denied in public. Heard is sworn to silence, and all the Cape Times could do was campaign publicly against any involvement, knowing that it was already happening.254

23 November 1975

Eric Abraham, international coordinator of SAPA, has his passport confiscated at DF Malan Airport as he is about to fly to Europe. No official reason is given.255

December 1975

Vorster returns the NPU's amended code with some suggested changes. A meeting with the NPU is scheduled for early 1976, but before that, events in South Africa lead to a "truly draconian set of new proposals to discipline the press".256

December 1975

Laura Hickling, a New Zealand journalist, is expelled from the country without explanation.257

9 December 1975

A discussion takes place between minister of defence PW Botha and newspaper editors in his office in Cape Town. Botha and his senior defence staff briefed editors on the extent of the Angola invasion.258

19 December 1975

Donald Woods, editor of the East London Daily Dispatch, is sentenced to six months imprisonment for refusing to disclose the name of an informant who had told him that an official of BOSS had burgled the offices of the Black Community Programme in King William's Town. His sentence was later overturned on appeal. This was in terms of the Criminal Procedures Act of 1955.259

1976

South Africa's first television channel is opened.260

"Television, which had been displayed as early as 1936 at a Johannesburg trade fair, was prohibited until 1976 because the regime feared that it would have undesirable 'liberalistic' influence on the electorate. HF Verwoerd himself suggested that television posed risks of a magnitude similar to those posed by poison gas and the atom bomb... When the regime finally succumbed to pressure to allow television - and also saw tv's propaganda potential - the technology was permitted, but only along segregated lines. Programmes were aimed at either blacks or whites, never both, and programmes for Africans were required to be in one of the five principal African languages."261

Albert Hertzog had earlier described television as "the evils of the piccaninny bioscope in your own home".262

May 1976

The minister of sport, Dr. Piet Koornhof, secures the co-operation of Cape Town newspapers not to "make a big thing" out of the resumption of the traditional rugby match between the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch. The game had previously been discontinued because of Cape Town's objections to enforced apartheid at games with Stellenbosch. Prime Mi nister Vorster was also chancellor of Stellenbosch and risked attack for upholding apartheid as head of government but undermining it as university chancellor. "While warning Koornhof that any 'hard news' that broke about the resumption would be reported, we agreed not to blow things up unnecessarily."263

26 May 1976

Dr Eschel Rhoodie addresses the University of Port Elizabeth during Republic Day celebrations. He says certain individuals. including journalists, under the influence of Russia, Cuba, the UN and the World Council of Churches, are creating climate of crisis in South Africa when there is none. There has been no racial conflict with loss of life in South Africa in the last thirty years, he says, unlike in the rest of the world.

He claims that South Africa is caught up in a propaganda war between the US and "Russia," involving the mass media, churches, education institutes and so on. He attacks the foreign media for creating a caricature of South Africa in their reporting.264

11 June 1976

Vuyani Mrwetyana, editor of the Xhosa language newspaper, Umtate, is arrested by Natal security police under the Terrorism Act after the paper was critical of the territory's Chief Minister and government. 265

16 June 1976: Soweto uprisings266

"These few days were the start of ten months of round-the-clock work by a small group of reporters and photographers employed by the Johannesburg press. The dangers of working in close proximity to ongoing clashes between the protagonists and the police cannot be underestimated. On the opening morning a group of black photographers including Peter Magubane of the Rand Daily Mail and Alf Khumalo of the Sunday Times ran for their lives over fences and through backyards before and advancing column of school children, numbers armed with garden implements."267

Press photographer Len Khumalo's camera is smashed by a group of schoolchildren who notice him taking pictures of the carnage. He is threatened and accused of being a "sell-out". He is forced to throw a stone at a building to prove himself and taken on a rampage with the group. His brother Alf Khumalo of the Sunday Times, also taking pictures, is stoned.

He is identified as a "friend" in time to prevent his being knifed. He said years later: "It seems the crowds had been told to attack photographers to ensure that no students would be identified in press pictures. But we were part of the community. And this was soon appreciated by the kids. The more the police harassed us, the more this was recognised in Soweto." White photographers Alf Chapman of the Star and Andre de Kock of the Beeld had, in similar situations, to make their escapes unaided. Moffat Zungu of the World was savaged by a police dog while taking pictures.268

Black reporters and photographers came to the fore, partly because white journalists were not allowed into black areas. These journalists were subjected to intimidation, arrests, detentions and assaults. "They faced increasing harassment by the police as they became more and more effective at reporting the events of Soweto and the black communities on the Witwatersrand and Pretoria."269

Tyson also claims that black journalists "came into their own" at this time, as they could report "from the inside". "It was a turning point in newsrooms," he says.270

Mervyn Rees believes the 1960s and 1970s were a golden age for South African journalism generally: "The editors were very courageous, morality and ethics were unbelievable, there was no cheque-book journalism. Social issues were just as important as political ones." After the 1976 riots, Rees believes that social issues took on less importance than the overriding political ones. Police/press relations deteriorated further and it became more difficult to conduct certain kinds of investigation.271

While the relationship between the authorities and the press was antagonistic in the 1960s, after 1976 it was undisguisedly hostile.272

Constraints around covering the uprisings involve the prevention of journalists from entering townships and taking photographs, placing photographers and reporters in "preventive detention", direct raids and searches of homes of journalists, questioning and interrogating them, threatening, arresting and assaulting them. 273

Some of the constraints on reporting following June 1976 and the subsequent civil revolt were: the prevention of journalists from entering townships and taking pictures; placing reporters and photographers in "preventive detention"; direct raids and searches of the homes of journalists; questioning and interrogating them; and threatening, arresting and assaulting them. Harassment and interference increased "in direct proportion" to police and military involvement in the civil revolt.274

Reporter Rian Malan finds that his usual police sources are no longer willing to provide him with information. He discovers that they are acting on instructions from the Minister [Kruger]. At a meeting with Brigadier Jan Visser, then co-ordinating police activities throughout the Witwatersrand, Malan is told "The P[rime] M[inister] says we must shoot first and then table a report in Parliament when it's all over."275

The Internal Security Amendment Act 79 of 1976, effective from 16 June 1976, differed from the previous Suppression of Communism Acts (which it amended) in that people could be banned for anything calculated to endanger the state, not just for encouraging communism. The Act gave the Minister of Justice power to ban individuals and publications without there being recourse to the courts if they were seen to be "expressing views or conveying information the publication of which is calculated to endanger the security of the state or the maintenance of public order".276

18 June 1976

Police come under heavy fire in Alexandra, "but this was almost completely concealed in order to protect white morale and the confidence of investors.

Alexandra was at war, with the army called in to back up the police, but the press collaborated with the government to conceal the fact. The police were caught by surprise and suffered casualties (including probable deaths) but these were not revealed." 277

24 June 1976: the Cillie Commission of Inquiry into the uprisings

State President Diederichs appoints a commission of enquiry into the riots in Soweto and elsewhere, with the Honourable Petrus Malan Cillie as chair.

On 8 October the terms of the commission are expanded to include uprisings which followed after June 1976. The final report is handed over to State President Viljoen in 1979.278

In a memorandum to the Cillie Commission, the Department of Information notes that both the English and the Afrikaans press show government policy in a bad light. The memorandum points to an article in Rapport of 12 June as an example. It notes that the new press code of conduct is unlikely to make a difference. It suggests that the Department might, however, have a better chance under the new code to set things straight by writing letters to the local press. Loosely translated from the Afrikaans, the memorandum said: "Under the old code the press always had the last word, but now, with the new code, there is a better chance of forcing a paper to reject a "one-sided" report. I suggest that the department sets up a unit which daily goes through newspapers with a fine-tooth comb looking for misreporting and bringing the correct description or interpretation to the attention of the paper. In the old days, such a tactic would not have succeeded, but now, with the obligatory code of conduct, things can go differently. I also think it will be help to popularise the Department with the ordinary citizen if the Department makes itself heard more often in the press. The press plays an exceptionally important role in the psychological war which is being waged against Whites and the Government.

It is the English press' hobby to ridicule the White government and fan the flames of dissatisfaction amongst black people to the point where a revolution is unavoidable...t he press must be forced to be more circumspect..."279

A document called "The role of the press during the Soweto unrest", (author not acknowledged), notes that a responsible press would make regular and dramatic pleas for peace, directed at the agitators, withhold opinion in a bid to calm feelings and make an effort to support the police. It notes that black journalists and photographers who are being used to report on unrest are in general "politically compromised," and are opposed to the state, or at best, in a delicate position within black society. The document provides four lists: reports not based on fact, and characterised by falseness and distortion; reports presented as factual but based on inadequate information; and reports presented as factual, but not verifiable. The fourth list is of articles from the World.280

Vorster had still not given the NPU a final answer on its revised press council and code of conduct. Now he was pressing them to accept legislative curbs on the press.281

28 July 1976

David Rabkin, sub-editor of Cape Argus, his wife Susan Rabkin and Anthony Holiday, Cape Times political reporter, are arrested under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act.282

29 July 1976

Harry Mashabela, reporter for the Star and Patrick Weech, sub-editor for the Rand Daily Mail, are arrested under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act.

Mashabela is assaulted by detectives in the office before he was even officially taken into custody.283 He was on leave at the time, but was in the newsroom when he was arrested. The Star's lawyers could not help him unless his arrest was declared to be connected to his reporting. It appears that he was arrested for his alleged role in a sabotage case and the newspaper could only attempt to help in a limited way by constantly phoning the police in the hope of protecting Mashabela from injury.

Mashabela had already been assaulted by the time the police realised he was being "watched" in this way.284

6 August 1976

While reporting on the burning of a policeman's house, Enoch Duma of the Sunday Times is threatened with being shot, and then punched in the face by four policemen who beat him with their rifle butts. His eye is injured in the assault and he spends 10 days in bed recovering.285

21 August 1976

Agreement between the NPU and the Commissioner of the South African Police is signed. 286

September 1976

"The President of the South African Society of Journalists (SASJ), Johnathan Hobday, warned... that there was a 'growing impression that attempts are being made to curb the rightful activities of newspapers by creating an atmosphere of suspicion, uncertainty and fear.'"287

Thirteen journalists covering the disturbances from 16 June are arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act, including: Joe Thloloe, president of the Union of Black Journalists and staff writer for Drum; arrested at the publication's office on 1 September; Thenjiwe Mtintso, journalist for the East London Daily Dispatch, released in December; Willie Bokala, journalist from the World, arrested 23 September covering demonstrations; Moffat Zungu, chief photographer for the World.; Godwin Mohlomi, deputy news editor for the World, released in December; Zuluboy Molefe, labour correspondent for the World; and three black journalists from the Rand Daily Mail.288

7 September 1976

The first issue of the Citizen is published.289 "...in direct competition with the Rand Daily Mail."290

"Numbers of attempts were made by supporters of the apartheid system to take over influential but financially vulnerable newspapers like the Natal Mercury and the Rand Daily Mail. Unable to subvert the English-language newspaper chains, or even to grab single publications, the government resorted to deceit and fraud by setting up the Citizen as an ostensibly independent newspaper, paid for illegitimately out of taxpayers' money.

That exercise alone shows how strongly threatened were South Africa's remaining democratic institutions under a regime determined to cling to power at any cost - and how necessary was the role of the mining houses and big business in avoiding the take-over of an opposition press that aspired to be free."291

Gavin Relly, chairman of Anglo American at the time, said: "In some senses the maintenance of an interest in the English press in such an indirect manner can be likened to holding the ring against forces which did not share the same commitment to the freedom of the press: in the 1970s it became necessary to actively defend the ring against a hostile bid for SAAN. It was never the intention, however, that such a defensive interest would entail subsidising a commercial loss..." 292

23 September 1976

Don Mattera, copy-editor on the Star, is arrested under Section 10-1a of the Internal Security Act. Mattera has been banned from writing and publishing as a result of his poetry. Tyson had convinced the authorities that as a copy-editor, Mattera would not be expressing his own views.

Deputy editor Cliff Scott reports to Tyson that in answer to Scott's question to Colonel Coetzee about whether the Star could expect any more of its staff to be arrested, Coetzee said: "Not unless they are black and at any riots".293

29 September 1976

David Rabkin, British journalist working for the Cape Times and Jeremy Cronin, lecturer, are sentenced to seven years imprisonment respectively under the Terrorism Act and the Internal Security Act. Both were alleged to have been involved with banned organisations.

29 September 1976

Susan Rabkin is convicted on a charge under the Internal Security Act and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.294

26 October 1976

Ray Whitaker of the Star's Pretoria Bureau reports in a memorandum to the editor a discussion with General Prinsloo of the police in which the general says: "We have a press agreement that if any agreement is revealed, they've got to give us the information..."295

"When Oliver Tambo, ANC leader, and David Sibeko, of the Pan-Africanist Congress, addressed the United Nations in 1976, the newspapers in South Africa faced the decision of whether to publish. Both Tambo and Sibeko were 'listed' persons, thus unquotable. But some editors recalled a dispensation, extended by a former justice minister, Peet Pelser, that statements at the United Nations would be exempt from the no-quoting laws.

As editors prepared to publish, there was a problem. An urgent message was sent from the new minister of justice, Jimmy Kruger, to newspapers: 'I have not given my permission for publication and people must look to the situation in their country before they publish this stuff.' The message made it plain enough: in view of the situation in the country caused by the Soweto upheaval, Tambo and Sibeko should not be quoted. Kruger's predecessor Pelser had not changed the law but just arranged that newspapers would not be prosecuted if statements made at the UN were published... Despite Kruger's message, the Cape Times took the chance and published. We got away with it, and there was no prosecution. Kruger remained unfriendly toward the paper, however."296

November 1976

Denis Herbstein, a South African with British nationality and correspondent for the Guardian, Sunday Times and the BBC, is expelled from the country with no reason given.297

14 December 1976

Percy Qoboza, editor of the World, and member of the Committee of Ten, is detained and released after 18 hours, under section 6 of the Terrorism Act.298

16 November 1976: NPU representations to the Cillie Commission

The NPU requests to place representations before the Cillie Commission on the role of the press. It requests access to in camera evidence relating to the press given to the commission. On 10 February 1977 the NPU renews its request and after a meeting with the commission prepares a memorandum in which it declines to comment on charges made against individual newspapers, and simply points the commission to the Code of Conduct, which governs NPU papers. On 3 November 1977 the NPU submits a second memorandum in response to a request from the commission. This one addresses the questions whether the press reports on the riots influenced and motivated them and whether the press contributed to giving the SAP a poor image. On 4 May 1977, the NPU submits to the commission the circulation figures for 1976 of the Rand Daily Mail Extra.299

19 November 1976

Anthony Holiday, political reporter for the Cape Times, is sentenced to six years imprisonment for charges under the Terrorism Act. 300

25 November 1976

Cedric Mayson, executive of the Christian Institute and editor of its Pro Veritate magazine, is arrested and held for two weeks for questioning after raids on the offices by security police.301

29 November 1976

Eric Abraham, freelance journalist and founder of SAPA, is served a five-year banning order. In January 1977, he escaped to Botswana and then to Europe.302

1977

Introduction of commercial television by the SABC.303

Compulsory military service is doubled from one year to two years.

Proclamation by the military, through Minister of Defence PW Botha, of the "total strategy" programme to meet the crisis confronting the South African state.304

The Department of Information attempts to buy out Drum, "not content with [Drum's] competitors in the Afrikaanse Pers stable, Imvo and Zonk." When these efforts failed, it founded Hit under the control of Johnny Johnson, later to become editor of the Citizen.305

The Transkei weekly Isasizo is banned.306

Raymond Louw, editor of the Rand Daily Mail since 1966, is "relieved of his post" having followed the same "pioneering editorial policies" as his predecessor, Laurence Gandar.307

The Publications Act 42 of 1974 is amended. The 1977 annual report from the director discusses what kind of political criticism is permissible: "...to so frame your criticism as to incite defiance of the law and the violent overthrow of the government is undesirable in terms of the

Publications Act."308

Central Energy Fund Act 38 of 1977: "...provided for a fine, imprisonment, or both, if any information in respect of any levy paid by government to the Fund was disclosed, including by its publication. It was an offence to tell taxpayers about the use of their own money in subsidising a state-sponsored commercial exercise."309

January 1977

The head of the security police General Mike Geldenhuys informs the Star that he is breaking off relations with the paper. The commissioner of police announces a total boycott of the paper - nationwide.310

February 1977

The NPU is given copies of the proposed Newspaper Press Bill, which it rejects out of hand. Talks with the government break down.311

1 March 1977

Joe Thloloe is rearrested and detained under the Terrorism Act for well over a year.312

12 March 1977: Vorster's Newspaper Press Bill

Prime Minister Vorster puts forward the Newspaper Press Bill which provides for a statutory press council and sets out the terms of its code of conduct. It embodies the Nationalist ideal of how the press should be controlled.313

"Publication of the Bill united the English and Afrikaans newspapers in an unprecedented show of opposition." In a meeting between the NPU and the prime minister, the NPU undertakes to include much of the legislation in their own, revised, code of conduct. The prime minister agrees to withdraw the Bill.314

April 1977

Nat Serache, a journalist formerly employed by the Rand Daily Mail, flees to Botswana. He had been arrested in the previous month and tortured for 11 successive days by the security police for possession of banned pamphlets.315

"Sunday Times reporter, Enoch Duma, gives detailed estimates of 1 000 deaths in the 10 months from June 1976, while the official figures were 575 dead and 2 389 wounded."316

21 April 1977

The Executive Director of SAAN writes to the Cillie Commission to defend the Rand Daily Mail against accusations that it "conducted a merciless campaign against the West Rand Administration Board".317

June 1977

Thenjiwe Mtintso, reporter for the East London Daily Dispatch is rearrested. She was released later in the month but prohibited from writing. 318

30 June 1977

Gabu Tugwana, reporter for the Rand Daily Mail, is detained under the Terrorism Act.319

July 1977

"There were some commercial sacred cows in the editorial offices when I took over the Cape Times. A certain kid-glove treatment was reserved for Syfrets Trust Company, the City Tramways Company and the Aerial Cableway on Table Mountain. Needless to say, our chairman was their chairman."320

When Cape Town's privately run bus company, City Tramways, is given government permission to desegregate buses on condition that it happened "with no fuss or bother", management of the company visited the Cape Times and asked the paper to "go easy" in its handling of the matter, which they did. Management also refused to give any public comment. Later government was to turn to the opposition press for help in promoting its reforms.

"'You boys must help us, man!' was a not uncommon a appeal made in private to newspaper editors as ministers prepared the way for cautious changes in racial policy...It was in this atmosphere of loosening up that the English-language newspapers - and the Cape Times in particular - did their thankless bit for 'reform'...our assessment was that as long as the move was to a more integrated society, whatever official gobbledegook was used to describe it, we would help....as long as it did not conflict with our essential news function and the public interest...Over the years, the South African press made a number of 'arrangements' to help the government out of its self-made difficulties...It certainly did not change the hostile attitude of government toward liberal papers. Our journalists were detained, charged in court, harassed, and threatened. Newspapers like the World and Post were closed. We were still seen by many in government as enemies of the country."321

12 July 1977

Gene Travers, reporter on the Windhoek Advertiser, is imprisoned for six months for refusing to disclose a source of a report that South African officials were indiscriminately shooting game in northern Namibia.322

22 July 1977

The Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977: Section 205 of this Act destroys the ability of journalists to protect their sources Section 205 was been used to [attempt to] force journalists to disclose information and their sources. The courts do not recognise journalists' right to protect the confidentiality of their sources, and can imprison a reporter for refusing to comply with a subpoena under the section.323

August 1977

Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger threatens to close down the World, despite the fact that the paper had not broken any law. The editor, Percy Qoboza, is summoned to meetings with Prime Minister Vorster and Minister Kruger.324

10 August 1977

Note from the government to editors: "The confidential note sent to editors on Thursday July 28, 1977, concerning an expected propaganda campaign against government institutions in respect of the future of South West Africa was discussed at a recent meeting of the joint NPU-defence liaison committee. The intention of the confidential note was purely informative and was intended to warn editors about an anticipated increase in extravagant propaganda by South Africa's enemies. Nevertheless all accusations against the South African defence force should be referred to the defence force. Other accusations may be referred to the authorities concerned."325

18 August 1977

Steve Biko detained without being charged, under section 6 of the Terrorism Act.326

2 September 1977

The Rand Daily Mail publishes a report called "Kruger Gives Detention Figures", in which Mr. Kruger informed South Africans that there had been 2 430 detentions under security laws since June 1976.

8 September 1977

Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger makes a public attack on the Star at the National Party's annual congress in Bloemfontein. 327

10 September 1977

Biko lapses into a coma.

12 September 1977

Steve Biko dies.328

13 September 1977

South Africa first learns of Steve Biko's death through a statement issued by Mr. Kruger, in which he states a hunger strike as the cause.

After the World calls for an immediate judicial inquiry into Biko's death, and expresses the black community's anger at Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger's remark that the death "left him cold", Kruger issues a veiled threat to close the paper at a meeting in the Eastern Transvaal. The audience responds with shouts of verban hulle. He also lodges a complaint with the Press Council claiming "unfair and malicious comment".329

Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger says in an interview: "We would never close down a newspaper for criticising the government, but we are talking about the country, my friend."330

14 September 1977

The English language newspapers, led by the Daily Dispatch and the Rand Daily Mail, begin their attack on the credibility of Mr. Kruger's explanation.

The death of Steve Biko immediately becomes synonymous with the struggle to abolish the Terrorism Act and to end detention without trial. An editorial in the Star titled "How Many Deaths Will It Take . . ." derides the government for allowing another death in detention and expresses concern over the damage this incident would do to South Africa's international reputation.

15 September 1977

Following the death of Steve Biko, the international community condemns the Nationalist government as never before. The government begins its attempt to redeem itself and to justify the system of detention without trial.

Mr. Kruger accuses the Black Consciousness Movement of advocating "a violent end to capitalist economic structures".

16 September 1977

Mr. Kruger admits that Biko had been fed on an intravenous drip. This revelation made the front page of the Daily Dispatch, the Rand Daily Mail and the Citizen, and made the second page of the World.

The Petroleum Products Act 120 of 1977: "As the international sanctions campaign mounted, reporting on straightforward commercial matters such as trade in petroleum products became a matter of national security, and restrictions were imposed by the 1977 Petroleum Products Act."331

17 September 1977

The lead story in the Rand Daily Mail reads : "I Didn't Say He Starved To Death - Kruger".

Kruger's "anti-terrorist" disinformation campaign begins, supported by the Citizen and the Afrikaans press.

The home of Percy Qoboza, editor of the World, is fire bombed.

18-30 September 1977

After Donald Woods, the Daily Dispatch editor, sees Biko in the mortuary and reports that he had a beaten up face, pressure on the government would not relent. During this time, the Rand Daily Mail, the Daily Dispatch, and the World, continually made demands for Minister Kruger's resignation, a full judicial enquiry into the death of Steve Biko, and the abolition of detention without trial.

23 September 1977

The Daily Dispatch and the Rand Daily Mail both report on the Johannesburg Bar Council's call for an end to detention without trial.

25 September 1977

Steve Biko's funeral, held at a stadium in King William's Town and attended by 20 000 peaceful mourners, receives extensive local and international coverage.

late September 1977

The Citizen continues its propaganda campaign through to the end of September and beyond, about the danger of terrorists and expounding its communist conspiracy theory, while the World returns to its attack on the government and detention without trial early October 1977: press council hearings of Rand Daily Mail's reports on Biko

The Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger, demands an "urgent" hearing of his complaint to the press council against the Rand Daily Mail's headline: "No sign of hunger strike - Biko doctors". Neither Kruger nor any of his legal representative appears at the hearing and the press council was thus forced to interpret the Minister's charges. The Rand Daily Mail said it was not prepared to defend the charges there, and was found guilty. It seems the hearing was confused and dominated by arguments between the newspaper and the council.332

The Rand Daily Mail was twice brought before the Media Council on charges of printing unsubstantiated facts in regard to the Biko case. On both 7 October and 16 October, the Media Council ruled in favour of the government and reprimanded the paper.333 On 11 October, Mr. Kruger also filed a complaint with the Media Council against the World for publishing an article which was critical of the press council's action against the Rand Daily Mail.

19 October 1977: bannings of newspapers, organisations and individuals

The government declares 18 anti-apartheid organisations to be unlawful.

Between 50 and 70 black leaders, the majority of whom were associated with the Black Consciousness Movement, are arrested.334

Two newspapers, Pro Veritate and the World (including the Weekend World), are closed down. The World is banned in terms of the Internal Security Act for creating a "revolutionary climate". Percy Qoboza, editor of the World, and Aggrey Klaaste (news editor) are placed in 'preventive detention' for five months under the Internal Security Act. At this time, three World journalists had been detained by the security police for periods from 69 to 239 days: Joe Thloloe, Willie Bokala and Moffat Zungu.335 "It is possible that the material which led to the banning of World, its editor, Percy Qoboza, and David Adler of Turret College had actually been discarded and then pilfered by the Bureau for State Security (BOSS). The authorities were also worried by the recording of Black Consciousness viewpoints."336

It has been suggested that at the time of the banning, World was "more widely-read and... more influential than almost all other newspapers, black or white, in South Africa",337 and that "[World and Weekend World] had played an important role in reporting news from Soweto and had become an authoritative vehicle for black opinion..."338 Two weeks after the bannings, the Argus-owned and run Natal-based Post start publishing in the Transvaal. Most of the staff of World and Weekend World were employed on these newspapers339.

The Union of Black Journalists is banned.340

Banning orders are served on: Cedric Mayson (Pro Veritate), Brian Brown (Pro Veritate) and Donald Woods (East London Daily Dispatch).341

The effects of such bannings included: the loss of vehicles for information and for the expression of a community's views; the loss of employment and professional worth of the journalists; enormous losses in revenue to publishers and advertisers; and of course the more general loss of the "watchdog" and other functions of the media.342

November 1977

Phil Mtimkulu and Juby Mayet, two journalists from the Voice, are arrested.343

Donald Woods escapes to Lesotho, and then to Britain by December 31.344

The Transvaler publishes a picture of a prisoner, which is prohibited under section 27 of the Police Act, and Perskor goes to trial.345

22 November 1977

Wiseman Khuzwayo, reporter for the Durban Daily News surrenders to police after hearing they were looking for him. He brought a lawyer with him who asked the police to note that Khuzwayo was completely fit medically. He was released on 22 February.346

Robert and Jeanne Cora Smit are murdered in their home. Smit had been South Africa's representative to the International Monetary Fund, a National Party candidate in a coming by-election, and was tipped as a future Minister of Finance. It was rumoured that he had discovered currency fraud at a high level and was about to expose it. The murders were never solved but the Star's investigations raised the possibility of hired killers.347

30 November 1977

The inquest into Biko's death concludes as the Nationalist government wins a landslide election victory.

Reporter Barry Levy and photographer Danie Coetzer of the Sunday Express witness the arrest of Rand Daily Mail reporter Mike Ndlazi with others in a crowd in Commissioner Street. Coetzer takes photographs and Levy identifies himself and questions police about the reason for the arrests.

A policeman grabs him and pushes him into a police car. Levy protests and the policeman raises his fist and then shakes Levy. Levy is charged, with 28 other journalists, with protesting (under the Riotous Assemblies Act).

He refuses to answer any questions. A policeman says: "I hope you have all got parachutes" before they are all locked in the cells for the night, They were released the next day on bail of R50 each.348

1 December 1977

In a three-minute decision, Magistrate Martinus Prins passes his verdict that despite all the evidence, no one could be blamed "for any criminal act or omission by any person" for the death in detention of Bantu Stephen Biko. The case is closed.

7 December 1977

The Rand Daily Mail publishes an editorial called "Small Hope from the Biko Case", in which it considers it a hopeful sign that four nationalist newspapers reacted with concern and strong calls for change in the handling of detainees. "Yet," it said, "Not one of these papers have gone so far as to say that detention without trial should be scrapped".

11 December 1977

Quraish Patel of the Daily News in Durban is arrested and detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. He is kept standing and deprived of sleep for 48 hours while he is interrogated. Thereafter he is held in solitary confinement and interrogated daily.349

20 December 1977

Five reporters are arrested at a carol singing meeting outside John Vorster Square. Mr Brian O'Flaherty was cuffed on the jaw and his notebook was taken. Captain Schwartz of the Parkview Police tells the reporters that they (the reporters) had followed the convoy of carol singers to John Vorster Square and therefore could be said to have convened the meeting.

The reporters were, in fact, waiting for two hours at John Vorster Square before the singers arrived.350

1978

"South Africa intensified its bloody repression of the Namibian people throughout the 1970s and '80s, imperfectly concealing these actions from South Africa's privileged electorate by heavy-handed military censorship.

In one attack in 1978, South African planes bombed the SWAPO refugee camp at Kassinga in southern Angola for twelve hours. Some 600 people were killed and a thousand wounded, including many children. Two hundred prisoners were taken, of whom 137 were detained and held incommunicado without charge or trial; two years later over one hundred of them were still being held."351

The SASJ joins the International Federation of Journalists.352

Joe Thloloe and other journalists on the Sowetan are banned. Shortly before the three-year ban was due to end, Thloloe is arrested and charged under the Internal Security Act. After ten months he is brought to trial and found guilty of possessing PAC literature. His two-and-half year jail sentence is set aside by the Supreme Court.353

Argus makes an unsuccessful attempt to buy a 65 per cent share of SAAN. It was prevented by an invocation of the Monopolies Act. "From that time the Argus made slow, but effective incursions into the control of SAAN."354

1978/9

"In the Muldergate or 'Information Scandal', secret government defence funds were poured into various pro-apartheid ventures, including the creation of a government-supporting newspaper given a patriotic-sounding title, the Citizen. The responsible Minister Connie Mulder, then a fully risen star - and even heir apparent - of the National Party, lied outright to parliament in denying that the government had funded the newspaper.

Outside the country's border, funds from the same military secret slush find were deployed in elaborate attempts to buy influence, including attempts to purchase the right-wing Washington Times and other US newspapers, the funding of pro-apartheid 'research' and lobbying efforts, and a range of assorted dirty tricks against prominent overseas foes of apartheid, including Senator Dick Clark, who lost his seat apparently in part because of the 'Info' project's success in discrediting him."355

"At the time of Info, we worked out that there were more than 100 items of legislation which inhibited what we could write."356

January 1978

The press council finds for the minister of police in his complaint against an editorial in the Star which criticised police and the laws which they worked under. The editorial came less than four months after the death in detention of Steve Biko and the flight out of South Africa of Donald Woods, banned editor of the Dispatch in East London. The Star first heard of the action from television and rival newspapers such as the Citizen. All police communication with the Star was cut off pending the outcome of the hearing.357

Isasizo, banned in 1977, reappears as Isizwe, and is banned six months later. The publisher moved to Lesotho where he set up that country's first commercial news service.358

22 January 1978

Seven journalists are detained for nearly two hours in Soweto - two from AP, one from AFP, one from Voice of America, and two cameramen - because their permits to visit the township had expired. They were reporting on a Black Consciousness rally at a local church.359

2 February 1978

A note from the government to newspaper editors requests them to refrain, "in the national interest", from speculating about the length of compulsory military service.360

"When [Cape Times] political correspondent Tom Copeland sent [Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger] a note in Parliament to ask whether the Burger had been given permission to quote the banned exile Donald Woods, who had been involved in a clash with a South African lawyer at a US congressional hearing in Washington, Kruger scribbled on Copeland's note: 'You tell your editor that is an impertinent question which has nothing to do with him.'"361

12 February 1978

Don Mattera, poet, and sub-editor on the Star, is arrested for breaking his five-year banning order.362

February/March 1978

The Commissioner of Police withdraws the press card of NV Xayimpi, journalist on the Eastern Province Herald, despite protests from the editor, HE O'Connor. The Commissioner claims that Xayimpi "reported certain events in such manner that, taking into account the testimony of a number of eyewitnesses, can only be considered heavily slanted. The reporting was done without compliance with paragraph 5(b) of the agreement."363

10 March 1978

Percy Qoboza is released having been in "preventive detention" for five months, under the Internal Security Act.364

23 March 1978

Aggrey Klaaste, news editor of the World, is released.365

April 1978

Ashally Rambally, editor of the Black Review, detained in 1977, is transferred to detention under Internal Security Regulations, banned on release and restricted to Colenso, Natal until 1983.

3 April 1978

Under the wide censorship provisions of the Defence Act, a Cape Times story about the sale of gunboats by Israel to South Africa, is killed.366

5 April 1978

Phone call to Cape Times office: "Tell Anthony Heard not to be surprised to find his wife... family dead tonight. He'll die soon... He's anti-white..."367

11 April 1978

Michael Mzileni, black press photographer, is released after being held without trial for 14 months.368

May 1978

The Transkei weekly Isaziso is banned.369

Note from the government to newspaper editors: "A friendly request was conveyed to our media to refrain from publishing any more military details of the recent operation in Angola and accounts by individual participants.

In spite of this request detailed stories about alleged action by paratroopers appeared in certain newspapers. Certain soldiers and officers were even named, while units concerned were also identified. This specific item was never cleared by defence headquarters... and constitutes a contravention of the defence act and of the press agreement. Defence headquarters wishes to repeat its earnest request that newspapers refrain from publishing any further military details or reports on the South African action in Angola. We have of course no reservations or request to make about the political consequences of this action."370

29 May 1978

Juby Mayet and Phil Mtimkulu, both journalists from the Voice and members of the UBJ, are detained.371

June 1978

Department of Information dissolved, and its secretary, Dr Eschel Rhoodie, retired.372

The first Annual Congress of the Writer's Association, the organisation formed when the Union of Black Journalists was banned, is banned by a local magistrate "because there was reason to believe it would endanger the public peace."373

16 June 1978: the closure of the Voice

Voice, the weekly newspaper funded by the South African Council of Churches, is banned. Its journalists included Phil Mtimkulu, Juby Mayet and Mike Norton. Many were part of the black consciousness movement. The Voice successfully appealed against the banning. It accused the NPU of delaying the newspaper's application for membership, and as a non-member it did not have the benefit of the limited protection that the NPU could offer. The NPU denied the accusation. Voice was made a member in September 1978.374

"Analysis of conditions leading to the demise of the church-funded the Voice indicates that legislative control is only one factor in the viability of newspapers, particularly black-oriented papers. Editor of the Voice, Revelation Ntoula, experienced difficulty in finding typesetters willing to work on the publication, in obtaining Newspaper Press Union accreditation, and in contracting with a professional distribution agency.

The Springs Advertiser agreed to print the Voice provided that all articles had been vetted by a legal adviser prior to publication. To add to these problems, only one advertising broker agreed to deal with the paper, and only two years after its establishment was the paper able to secure a distribution deal. This fell through almost immediately when the editor published a front page article predicating the election victory of Robert Mugabe's ZANU Party in Zimbabwe."375

September and October 1978

These issues of the Cape Town-based Muslim News are banned.376

September 1978

Prime Minister Vorster resigns as a result of the Information Scandal.

Minister of Defence, PW Botha is elected to take his place.

"The press won against Vorster over the Information Scandal. It lost to his successor PW Botha. After Muldergate, Botha was determined that the secret business of government should not be at the mercy of press disclosure again... he turned savagely on the press, notably the Rand Daily Mail and the morning group."377

29 October 1978

The Sunday Express discloses that the Citizen has been financed by public money through secret state funds.378

October 1978

Post is closed.379

October to December 1978

Joe Thloloe and Isaac Moroe of the Sowetan are banned.380

Ms. Juby Mayet, journalist and former member of the Union of Black

Journalists, is also banned.381

Don Mattera's banning order is renewed until 31 October 1983.382

November 1978

"In November 1978 the Cape Times carried a front-page editorial suggesting that Vorster, who had by then become state president, should stand down from this high office in view of the commission investigating the Information Scandal. Prime Minister Botha exploded about it at a meeting with the Newspaper Press Union, and I received a midnight call from the head of South African Associated Newspapers, Clive Kinsley, saying the 'PM' was 'mad at us'. The government referred the editorial to the attorney-general for prosecution on the grounds that we had injured the dignity of the president, a very serious offence under the constitution.

Nothing came of it, but it was powerful pressure."383

7 November 1978

A regulation is promulgated in terms of the Commissions Act to restrict reporting on commissions of inquiry.384 It was aimed at the commission of enquiry into the former department of information.

9 November 1978

Allister Sparks, editor of the Rand Daily Mail, is summoned to Pretoria and given a stern warning following a report on the Info Scandal.385

16 November 1978

An NPU delegation meets the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers.

Aspects of the meeting include: improving communication between the press and the government; the NPU's strong objections to the Press Council being empowered to act in a "preventative way"; the provision by the NPU of legal assistance to complainants in a Press Council hearing; the NPU's unwillingness to control in any way foreign correspondents in South Africa (stringers for overseas newspapers were to be instructed to observe the Code of Conduct of the Press Council); the NPU's objections to a government-appointed chairman of the Press Council; the NPU's objection to allowing the Press Council to prohibit a report on the basis of a complaint; and others.386

December 1978

Sadeque Variava, a former SASO author held under the Internal Security Act from October 1977, is released and banned for five years from entering

Lenasia.387

1979

Section 27B of the Police Act (7 of 1958), introduced in 1979, "was an anathema to press reporting. It attempted to place a blanket prohibition on reporting of contentious areas of police...". However, it seems that no successful prosecution under this Act took place, and that newspapers reported extensively on police actions in the public eye at this time.

They were able to circumvent prosecution by using the word "alleged" in describing actions of the police, for example. Police ill-treatment of detainees, however, was able to be denied by them, as it was not witnessed by journalists or anyone else.

Publication or communication of any information given to the Rabie Commission of Enquiry into Security Legislation is prohibited.388

12 February 1979

James Kruger, minister of justice, apologises to Parliament for the interrogation of journalists in the Parliamentary building on February 9 by police investigating the Smit murders.389

March 1979

The Nation is suspended, following the banning of several issues.390

9 March 1979

John Mattison, a journalist, is sentenced to two weeks in prison for refusing to answer court questions about a source.391

12 March 1979

The morning group newspapers publish the whole story of the Information Scandal, having traced Dr Eschel Rhoodie, secretary for information, and interviewed him in Ecuador. They are issued with a letter of warning by the Department of Justice, on behalf of the commission of inquiry into the Department of Information, on the grounds that the newspapers are contravening the law which prohibits prejudicing, influencing and anticipating the proceedings or findings of a commission of enquiry. The commission applied to the Supreme Court or an interdict against future editions of the newspapers. Allister Sparks, editor of the Rand Daily Mail was convicted and fined under the Commissions Act for anticipating the findings of the commission. He later won his appeal. In discussions with Rhoodie and various informers, reporters learned about an alleged government informer high up in the press - an editor.392

15 March 1979

Mr Justice Coetzee judges against the Erasmus Commission's seeking an interdict against the Rand Daily Mail from making further public disclosures about Dr Eschel Rhoodie.

The following lines were omitted from the original report of the Erasmus Commission of Inquiry into the Department of Information. They came from General Van den Bergh, head of the Bureau for State Security (BOSS), and were admitted to after attention had been drawn to them in a Cape Times editorial. Van den Bergh said: "I have good men. I don't have weak men.

I have enough men to commit murder if I tell them [to] kill. I don't care who the prey is... They are the types of men I have."393

29 March 1979

An NPU delegation meets Mr. Heunis, Minister of Economic Affairs, to discuss the question of oil supplies. The Minister "addressed an urgent plea" not to run any stories involving petrol supplies. Since the Conference of Editors in February, stories had appeared in Hoofstad and the Vaderland which had "effectively nullified negotiations with at least one foreign country", said the Minister. In a memorandum to editors, Raymond Louw, General Manager of SAAN, requests that no stories of this nature be run without the editors' approval, and possibly with approval from the Minister.394

11 April 1979

The Supreme Court discharges an order stopping the Rand Daily Mail from publishing claims involving the minister of justice.395

14 April 1979

The home of Deon Du Plessis, assistant editor of Argus Group's Africa News Service, is raided. A few days later, he is arrested and detained overnight on charges under the Criminal Procedures Act and the Official Secrets Act.396

19 April 1979

James Beaumont, Star reporter, is arrested and detained for 12 hours.397

May 1979

The NPU submit possible amendments to the Petroleum Products Amendment Act and the National Supplies Procurement Act to the Minister of Economic Affairs, JC Heunis. These include the extension of the restrictions on publishing to include the broadcast media (and not only the press), and a provision for agreements to be entered into between the Minister and publishers which would exempt them from the restrictions of the Act.398

1 May 1979

The SADF-NPU Liaison Committee agrees: "Where something falls within the ambit of the Defence Act, reference should be made to the Act and not the Agreement."399

13 June 1979

Police Amendment Act 64 of 1979: "This amendment Act added Section 27B to the 1958 Police Act, which made it an offence to publish any 'untrue matter' about the police without having 'reasonable grounds' for believing it to be true. The onus of proof is on the newspaper..."400

Inquest Amendment Act 65 of 1979: In response to the Biko inquest of November 1977, this Act added a prohibitive section to the principal Act of 1959.

22 June 1979

The National Supplies Procurement Act of 1979 arbitrarily allowed prohibitions on the disclosure of information401 and prohibited reporting more explicitly than the prior National Supplies Procurement Act 89 of 1970.

Petroleum Products Amendment Act 72 of 1979: "This restricts information on the source, manufacture or storage of any petroleum products. Oil is the economy's Achilles' heel, as South Africa has no deposits of its own, and is a major target for the sanctions campaign."402

July 1979

National Student, the official quarterly of the National Union of South African Students, is banned permanently for criticising the country's military call-up policy.403

18 July 1979

The Advocate General Act 118 of 1979 was introduced by the government in response to the Information Scandal. It affected information about the findings of investigations into corruption.404

"Had the Advocate-General Act been in operation at the time of the [information] scandal, the entire affair could legally have been kept secret..."405

The Afrikaans press, the English press, the NPU and others opposed this Bill which would limit publishing about investigations into corruption.

The clauses affecting the press were dropped, but the Bill went through and still curtailed what might be published.406

17 August 1979

The NPU meets with the minister of police.407

27 September 1979

Editors meet the minister of police and the commissioner of police.408

17 October 1979

A delegation of the NPU meets a delegation of the SAP to discuss relations between the press and the police, following the meetings with the Minister on 17 August 1979 and with the Minister, the Commissioner and editors on 27 September 1979. A system for accrediting senior journalists is discussed and Ton Vosloo is asked to prepare a memorandum.409

24 October 1979

Ton Vosloo's (editor of Beeld) memorandum concerning the accreditation of senior reporters by the SAP goes out.410

29 October 1979

Allister Sparks, editor of the Rand Daily Mail, in a memo to SAAN General Manager Raymond Louw, notes that four accredited reporters will not be enough and proposes six, excluding the editor whom Sparks believes should have this sort of privilege as a matter of course. The Financial Mail also in a memo to Louw notes "I'm reluctant to get embroiled in 'confidential' relationships with these people..." but offers names for accreditation, given the Financial Mail's limited contact with the police.411

30 October 1979

Raymond Louw, General Manager of SAAN, objects strenuously to the memorandum written by Vosloo in which it is stated that a system of accrediting senior reporters has been "generally accepted" by the NPU.

Louw is "horrified" and "appalled". He challenges the right of an NPU delegation to accept suggestions without the approval of the Executive Council. He notes that the accreditation system will "censor the press and allow the police to keep certain kinds of information away from the public by creating a circle of 'in-people'". "It is a diabolical form of press censorship, imposing on the senior members of the Press corps the responsibility of ensuring that no news embarrassing to the police is published. It is so much more effective than having individual censors in newsrooms... It goes without saying that SAAN must oppose this totally at the next NPU meeting."412

16 November 1979

Eddie Daniels, a South African photographer, ends a 15-year prison term on Robben Island and is given a five-year banning order which confines him to Cape Town.413

December 1979

The Steyn Commission of Inquiry into the Reporting of Security Matters is set up. It reports in February 1980.

The 1980s

This decade saw the development of the "alternative press" as a result of the "perceived failure of the commercial press to adequately reflect either the events or issues of the day". Newspapers: Weekly Mail, the Voice, New Nation, Grassroots, South, Saamstaan, UmAfrika, New African, Indicator, Cosatu News, Saspu National.

Magazines and journals: Work in Progress, Learn and Teach, Upbeat, EcuNews, Azanian Focus, Free Azania.

News agencies: Press Trust (Durban), Veritas (Eastern Cape), PEN (Port Elizabeth), Elnews, now ELNA (East London), Albany News Agency, now ECNA (Grahamstown), Concord (Durban), The Other Press Service (TOPS), Agenda Press Agency (Johannesburg).414

Journalists in the Eastern Cape are subject to intense and constant harassment, by the police themselves and by unidentified men.415

By the 1980s the Cape Times has coloured staffers in fairly senior positions - a night news editor and senior-level reporters. Up to a quarter or a third of the newsroom was made up of coloured workers.

African staff were more difficult to recruit and employ. Heard lists the following reasons: job reservation laws, influx control, "Bantu education" and the fact that many potential African journalists were too bitter to write objectively. Coloured staff handled any stories that came up ,not just special interest "black stories", pay rates were equal and relations between staff were good. "Yet in attitude, those running the paper, including myself, had a 'white' outlook - indeed, were captives of history, of generations of lingering prejudice."416

"...in Botha's early years as premier, there were attempts to secure the agreement of the press for 'guidelines' on the reporting of 'terrorism.'

The self-discipline would have surrendered independent journalism... A member of Parliament, David Dalling, got hold of a copy of the secret guidelines and read them out in Parliament, to the outrage of Defence Minister Magnus Malan - and they were never proceeded with by the government."417

1980

Work in Progress is founded.418

In the year 1980, six Acts restricting the press and freedom of speech were passed by Parliament. About 100 laws covering newspaper reporting were in existence at that time.419

Zwelakhe Sisulu, news editor of Sunday Post, refuses to give evidence against a Post reporter and is sentenced to nine months in prison. On appeal, the Supreme Court sets the sentence aside, but six months later, Sisulu is banned for three years.420

Wimpie de Klerk, editor of the Transvaler, pays an admission of guilt fine of R75 for quoting Thabo Mbeki.

January 1980

The NPU drafted an agreement between itself and the minister of industries and of commerce and consumer affairs in terms of the Petroleum Products Act, with amendments following a discussion with the Minister in November

1979.421

10 January 1980

Mono Badela, a journalist, is arrested with three other black civic leaders in Port Elizabeth, under Section 6 of the Terrorist Act.422

February 1980

The press is prevented from reporting on "the Salem incident" which involved an oil deal and insurance fraud. The Minister of Industrial Affairs, Trade and Consumer Affairs, invoked the National Supplies Procurement Act to restrict what might be published. All stories had to be cleared with the Ministry or with the Prime Minister. The Sunday Tribune had been prevented from publishing a London story that was going to be published worldwide. In a memo from Rex Gibson, editor of the Sunday Express, to Raymond Louw, General Manager of SAAN, Gibson says: "The Minister's general attitude seemed to boil down to this: that merely by mentioning oil, Salem, and South African ports in he same breath South African newspapers would be giving credence to speculation about South African involvement. This is of course nonsense. It became even more nonsensical when the Minister insisted that even repeating material originally published in this country might have the same effect."423

1 February 1980

A Transkei Supreme Court judge orders the release of Peter Honey, a white journalist detained in the Transkei for nearly three weeks after writing a report about the Transkei Attorney-General.424

The Electoral Act 45 of 1979 stipulated that everything of a political nature published in a paper must bear the full name and address of the author, and that any article dealing with electoral matters must include in its headline the word "advertisement".

21 February 1980

Meeting between members of the NPU and the Minister of Home Affairs, AL Schlebusch. In a follow up letter (date illegible), Schlebusch notes that there were matters about which no agreement could be reached, and that the government would have to consider future actions in this regard.425

27 March 1980

In a letter to Minister of Home Affairs Schlebusch, the manager of the NPU notes that the Citizen and the Afrikaner have indicated that they will not become members of the NPU nor accept the jurisdiction of the Press Council. It is suggested that should the Minister write a letter to the Citizen, the paper would agree to underwrite the Code of Conduct and accept the jurisdiction of the Press Council. The letter suggests that with the free newspapers and the Citizen thus brought in line, the proposed legislation will not be justifiable. It suggests that the Publications Law be amended so that a newspaper which is not a member of the NPU but accepts the jurisdiction of the Press Council, be exempt from the Publications law. The letter notes that the NPU is against a code of conduct for journalists, and that responsibility for what is published lies with the editor. It notes that the only country other than Spain where the government can decide who might work as a journalist was Germany under Hitler, and currently behind the "Iron Curtain". Other points are to do with employing non-South African citizens as editors, state action against stringers, payment for tips; giving powers to the press council to prohibit a report which jeopardises state security; in-camera hearings; giving the press council the power to decide whether publication of court proceedings and those of commissions of enquiry should be published.426

April 1980

The Steyn Commission of Enquiry into reporting of security matters, reports.

"A key proposal in the 1980 report called for the formulation of a 'national communication policy,' which in turn would be 'determined and controlled by the national strategy'... The clear intention of the first Steyn Commission, then, was to convert the press from a passive chronicler to an active participant, even partner, in the government's reopens to the 'total onslaught.'"427

17 April 1980

Richard Wicksteed and Sidney Moses, both from the Daily Dispatch, are detained in the Transkei.428

The Daily Dispatch is banned by the Transkei Prime Minister for three weeks following a report of the arrest of 200 people in the aftermath of an alleged assassination attempt of Kaizer Matanzima. "That the banning order was of a temporary nature was due to the fact that the Dispatch was the only regionally circulated newspaper and its banning created a vacuum: government tenders could not be publicised and there was no vehicle for the utterances of members of the Transkei Cabinet."429

May 1980

The Department of Defence invites members of the NPU executive committee and editors "for visit to border". R Louw and CH Kinsley from SAAN are invited, and the editors of the Rand Daily Mail, Sunday Times and Sunday Express.430

Enoch Duma, from the Sunday Times, flees to Botswana after a second refusal by authorities in Pretoria to renew his passport.431

Ken Owen, assistant editor of the Sunday Times, is ordered to appear in court for refusing to identify a government official he mentioned in evidence to the Erasmus commission on the Info Scandal.432

17 May 1980

Sidney Moses, from the East London Daily Dispatch, is released after his month-long detention in Transkei.433

24 May 1980

Journalist Sylvia Vollenhoven is beaten by police while covering protests for the Sunday Times in the Golden Acre in Cape Town. She is hit after being identified as a journalist. One policeman says "Sy was nou met my hardegat. Sy's van die koerant." When she asks for the policeman's name he says "I don't have to give you anything".434

June 1980

The Commissioner of Police issues a blanket ban on "TV crews and journalists entering trouble spots". The restrictions were announced after the police accused some pressmen of "inciting Soweto groups to give Black Power salutes for the benefit of the cameramen".435

17 June 1980

Zubeida Jaffer, Cape Times reporter, is questioned by police at Caledon Square, Cape Town.436

18 June 1980

Raymond Louw, General Manager of SAAN, issues a statement demanding proof of the commissioner of police's statement that "certain Pressmen, especially those attached to foreign news media and television networks, are openly inciting Black Youths in Soweto and other parts of the country to stone-throwing and riotous behaviour".437

19 June 1980

The NPU meets with the Minister of Police Mr Louis Le Grange to discuss the Commissioner's blanket ban. The Minister states that the commissioner is acting under the authority of the law relating to "illegal gatherings".438

23 June 1980

The Conference of Editors asks the NPU for legal opinion on General Geldenhuys' "arbitrary ban" on reporters in riot areas. Among other things it requests opinion on whether the NPU-Police agreement provides any additional rights to journalists. Legal opinion subsequently provided notes that the agreement is not statutory and thus if it is breached there can be no legal consequences "although it may lead to an undesirable deterioration in relations between the press and the police..." The Commissioner had not observed certain clauses of the agreement, but the NPU could do nothing about it other than bring this to the Commissioner's attention. The legal opinion given also has it that the Commissioner of Police had no legal power to impose the blanket ban, not under the Riotous Assemblies Act, the Police Act, the Criminal Procedure Act nor any of the security legislation. Only the Minister would have such power.439

24 June 1980

"Where the word 'terrorist' was used by the SADF in official news releases, it should be used by the media in their news reports."440

25 July 1980

National Key Points Act 102 of 1980: At the discretion of the minister of defence, any place or area could be declared a "national key point".

Entering or being in the vicinity of such a national key point "for any purpose prejudicial to the security or interests of the Republic" was an offence which could carry a prison sentence of up to twenty years.

Publishing information about a national key point without authorisation by the minister of defence was an offence which could carry a fine of up to R10 000 and/or imprisonment for up to three years.441 This Act was promulgated after attacks at Silverton, Sasol, Secunda, Natref and Booysens.442

August 1980

Strikes initiated by WASA on Post Transvaal and Sunday Post end with the introduction of a wage scale system higher than that applying to white journalists at the time.443

Allister Sparks, editor of the Rand Daily Mail appears at a court hearing over a recent article published about an unofficial trade union leader.444

26 August 1980

Zubeida Jaffer, a journalist for the Cape Times, is arrested under the General Law Amendment Act, transferred to Port Elizabeth and detained under the Internal Security Act. She had written a report about riots near Cape Town where 30 people were killed and police were allegedly using firearms indiscriminately to quell the unrest.445

September 1980: Second Steyn Commission of Enquiry

The second Steyn Commission of Enquiry (into the Mass Media) is appointed.

Its terms of reference include: "to enquire into and report on the question whether the conduct of, and handling of matters by, the mass media meet the needs and interests of the South African community and the demands of the time and, if not, how they can be improved."446

Former editor of the Sunday Times, Joel Mervis, submits to the commission that it is politically tainted to the extent that its work is unviable.

Justice Steyn repudiates the claims and proceeds.447

Those that gave evidence included Brigadier G. Wassenaar and Brigadier Gerard van Rooy of the SADF; Brigadier Johan Coetzee, chief of the Security Police; Vlok Delport of the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Information; JL Scheepers of the Department of Manpower Utilisation; Harvey Tyson of the Star; and Allister Sparks of the Rand Daily Mail and also "experts" on South Africa's "situation", the English press, the SA Society of Journalists (English-language journalists in the commercial media), and the NPU. Government officials stressed the need for new measures against the press, including a statutory council. Both the English and the Afrikaans Press called for fewer regulations not more. Black journalists in MWASA, and others, declined to give evidence. MWASA president, Zwelakhe Sisulu, was in detention at the time.448

In his submission to the second Steyn Commission on behalf of the Star, Tyson notes that the first commission's findings had been used by the government to motivate Section 27(c) of the Police Act, which allowed another form of imprisonment without trial.449

Leading representatives of the Afrikaans press all called for fewer and not more restrictions on the press in their representations to the Steyn Commission.450

"The white press of South Africa enjoyed a rare, if brief, moment of consensus when all segments informed the Steyn Commission during 1980-81 that further legislation to restrict news gathering was unneeded."451

Evidence from the SAP to the Commission is given in camera. The Star's Harvey Tyson discovers that some of the "evidence" has been produced by spies in the Star's editorial department.452

"PW Botha's major effort to find a lever [to control the press] was through the mechanism of the 'Commission of Inquiry into the Mass Media'."453

3 September 1980

In a circular to all members dated 3.9.1980, the general manager of the NPU notes that "When this [National Key Points] Act was rushed through Parliament during the last two days of the past Session, the NPU was not given an opportunity to make representations thereon. The Central Standing Committee is now considering doing this but would first like to hear the views of editors..." Editors' attention is drawn, in particular, to subsection 2(c), which makes it an offence to provide information on a "national key point" without the authority of the minister, with a fine of up to R10 000 and a prison sentence of up to three years.454

16 September 1980

Richard Wicksteed, a reporter on the Cape Times, and Frans Krüger, from the University of Cape Town's students' representative council, are detained for questioning under the Internal Security Act.455

17 September 1980: amended NPU-defence agreement

Amendments to the agreement between the Minister of Defence and the NPU.

Signed by HJ Coetzee, Minister of Defence and RWJ Opperman, President of the NPU.456

"As amended in September 1980, the agreement set up a joint 'Liaison Committee' to meet at least once a month 'to consider matters of policy and principle including the amendment' of the agreement itself. The agreement provided that the press 'must abide by' any request by the defence minister that 'no reference be made to the fact that he had been approached and refused to comment as even a "no comment" reply could embarrass him.'

Additionally, the minister of defence was given a right of pre-publication comment and the guidelines further provided that reporters 'should understand that there are to be no arguments with the Minister or the [relevant] officers on matters that have leaked out somewhere in their publication. A request that a report or comment should not appear is accepted as such.' In 1980, participation in this agreement was extended to the state-owned arms company, Armscor, which was given a seat on the Liaison Committee. These agreements were voluntarily entered upon by the Newspaper Press Union."457

"The press got used to coping with a regular flow of unsolicited notices from defence which stopped or inhibited the flow of information. They were issued in terms of an agreement between the defence authorities and the owners of the press, the Newspaper Press Union, which was monitored by a special liaison committee made up of a hotchpotch of editors, newspaper managers , and bureaucratic brass. All this was supposed to ease the news flow, and lots of tea was cordially consumed. But in practice it was little more than a one-way mechanism to facilitate the flow of defence propaganda and whitewash to the unsuspecting public. The supposed communist onslaught facing the country was frequently used as justification for making 'requests', but often this was a transparent excuse to brow beat the press and to stop it from delving into dark corners of government."458

19 September 1980

The Armaments Development and Production Amendment Act 86 of 1980 placed further limitations on the way the press could report on Armscor and its subsidiaries.

26 September 1980

Message from the directorate of public relations of the police to the Cape Times: "Security branch is not prepared to keep the media posted on releases of detainees as their immediate families already have knowledge of their releases."459

October 1980

Workers at the Cape Herald strike for the same wage scales as those won for workers on the Post. A solidarity strike soon becomes country-wide.460

Formation of MWASA (Media Workers Association of South Africa) from WASA (Writers' Association of South Africa), in keeping with its policy to open its membership to include non-journalists in the media industries. The organisation was open to blacks only and grew out of organisations linked to the Black Consciousness Movement.461

The pro-government newspaper the Transvaler is fined seventy-five rands for quoting ANC official Thabo Mbeki, who was banned.462

11 November 1980

Transkeian journalist, Marcus Ngani, of the Sunday Post is "deported" out of the Transkei by being driven out of the former homeland across an unmanned part of the border. Ngani was a Transkei "citizen".463

1981

By 1981 Argus owns 39.9 per cent of SAAN. The two groups struggle for dominance in the press market place from the early 1980s. They had a 'gentleman's agreement' whereby SAAN would run the morning and Sunday papers and Argus the evening weekly papers.464

Ameen Akhalwaya in Kwasa, MWASA's journal, writes that whites in the English press saw themselves as the custodians of the truth and Western liberal values (objectivity being one of these), and that they feared that black journalists might contaminate these sensibilities and the integrity of newspapers by identifying too closely with "the masses" and with the oppression of apartheid, and also with anti-capitalist ideas.465

One of the first applications of the Official Secrets Act... was to prosecute journalists for writing about the alleged involvement of the South African security forces in a failed attempt to overthrow the Seychelles government in1981.466

In that same year, a South African journalist, Derek Du Plessis, was convicted under the Official Secrets Act of handing a book containing military information to his publishers. Du Plessis had written the book, on the Rhodesian war, and the manuscript was forwarded to a legal expert before publication went ahead. It was seized by security police before it could be cleared by the legal adviser.

Nat Serache, an exiled journalist, escapes death when his Gaborone home is blown up.467

January 1981

Dr Eschel Rhoodie discloses that the SABC had been paid R500 000 [by the Department of Information] over a five year period to run a series of propaganda projects directed at overseas audiences.468

3 January 1981

Kenneth Ashton, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, is detained for five hours by immigration officials and then refused entry into South Africa. He had been invited by MWASA to advise them on drawing up a formal recognition and procedure agreement with employers after a two-month strike at the Argus group.469

9 January 1981

Mathata Tsedu, secretary of MWASA, is banned.470

Ton Vosloo, verligte editor of Beeld, says in a column in the paper that the day will come when a South African government will sit down at the negotiating table with the ANC.471

20 January 1981

Post and Weekend Post are closed as the consequence of support on these newspapers for the national strike for higher pay.472 Minister of Internal Affairs Christiaan Heunis informs their owners that they will be banned if they re-apply for registration.473 "When the Argus applied for a condonation of the lapse in the registration or a re-registration of the newspapers, it was informed by the Government that resumption of publication would result in these newspapers being banned. This threat was designed to intimidate the Argus into reducing its operations amongst black readers. Post and Weekend Post were... replaced by... the Sowetan. 'The company's activities in the black newspaper field will, however, be considerably reduced as a result of the closure of the Post newspapers,' commented Argus managing director."474

28 January 1981

Phil Mtimkulu, acting president of MWASA and Joe Thloloe, Transvaal vice president, are served three-year banning orders.475

2 February 1981

Meeting of the joint NPU/SAP Liaison Committee. The following were discussed: drafts of an amended agreement; the deputation by the NPU to the Minister of Police, the Commissioner, and senior police officers shortly after the Soweto riots of 1980 and the NPU's counsel's opinion on the matter. In addition, Brigadier Grobbelaar explained that information had been released to certain newspapers and not others as the result of "an unfortunate error on the part of his directorate" and he apologised for the treatment received by a Beeld photographer after a departmental enquiry had laid the blame on the police. Press identity cards for non-NPU members were to be applied for from the Commissioner and he said that the SABC had intimated that it would abide by the agreement currently being negotiated between the police and the NPU.476

9 March 1981

Agreement between NPU and commissioner of police tabled at SAAN meeting.477

31 May 1981

Allister Sparks, editor of the Rand Daily Mail, is dismissed.478

June 1981

Zwelakhe Sisulu's banning is transformed into detention without trial. He remained in jail for 251 days. After his release he again refuses to give evidence in a political trial. He is sentenced but wins the appeal against it.479

17 June 1981

Thami Mazwai, news editor of the Sowetan and senior official of MWASA, is detained after the paper gave extensive coverage of police action in Soweto the previous day.480

August 1981

Charles Nqakula, acting president of MWASA, is served with a two-and-a-half-year banning order.481

12 August 1981: amended NPU-police agreement

Amendments to the agreement between the NPU and the Commissioner of the SA Police. In the discussions between NPU members before the amended agreement was signed, there appears to have been widespread unease about the increased powers given to the police.482

In a circular to members, the NPU notes that the NPU delegation which negotiated the final agreement included three editors, and that all are satisfied that the new agreement is the best possible and in several respects an improvement on the previous one. For example, the responsibility for the issue of general press cards now lay with editors and not the commissioner. It notes that there was strenuous resistance to attempts to compel editors to disclose names of sources. As it stood, the police might "request" disclosure. The circular encourages members to test the agreement, and reminds them that there is no statutory backing for it.

It is a "gentleman's agreement".483

"In the end the working arrangement simply broke down through mistrust and a mutual belief that the two partied had different agendas."484

The agreement is further amended on 14 July 1983 and on 20 July 1989.485

30 September 1981

Cynthia Stevens, AP news correspondent, is expelled with no reason given.486

27 November 1981

Merle Favis, editor of the Labour Bulletin, is arrested with about 16 other leader trade union leaders, labour experts and student leaders under section 22 of the General Laws Amendment Act. She was released without being charged on 21 April.487

December 1981

Michael Hornsby, correspondent for the London Times, and Julie Frederikse of the American National Public Radio, are arrested in the Ciskei for "going round the country asking people's opinions".488

1982

Golden City Press is launched by Jim Bailey and SAAN in early 1982 to fill the gap left by the banning of Weekend World and Sunday Post. After a conflict over control, SAAN withdrew, and the paper closed on 31 January 1983.489

14 January 1982

The amended agreement between the NPU and the commissioner of police made provision for a "two-card system". All journalists were to have a press identity card, and then "senior" journalists were able to apply for cards which would give them access to senior police spokespeople to discuss "confidential" or "sensitive" information. In a circular to members, the NPU notes that some members have applied for accreditation for all their journalists, "...some of the smaller members having applied for up to seventeen accreditations...", which has been brought to the NPU's attention by the Commissioner.490

February 1982: Steyn Commission of Enquiry into the Mass Media reports

The Steyn Commission of Enquiry into the Mass Media reports its findings, amongst them that at the time there were 255 working black journalists and 3 800 white journalists employed in the South African press.491 It also notes that "Soweto returned to normal" after the bannings of the World and organisations. In contrast to this, the Cillie Commission had absolved the press of any blame for the Soweto riots.492 Summary of recommendations of the second Steyn Commission: all practising journalists in South Africa, including foreign journalists, should be placed on a register or statutory role and that only these journalists be employed by any of the media; a statutory council should control the enrolment of journalists, and have the powers to reprimand, fine, suspend or bar journalists; individual shareholders in newspaper companies should be limited and the crossholding of shares be prevented; and the status of the SABC should be elevated and its autonomy increased.493

"...two major recommendations of the 1982 report of the Steyn Commission - a system of licensing journalists and a proposal to break up ownership of the major newspaper groups, Argus and SAAN - had been advocated for years by government spokesmen."494

"...nothing better sums up the apartheid ruling caste's abdication of intellect in favour of coercion than the report of the 1982 Steyn Commission headed by Justice Tienie Steyn. This body was a further step in the apartheid tradition, traceable to Prime Minister Malan's press commission headed by Judge van Zyl, of appointing judges to horse-whip the press. Ostensibly a critical investigation of the mass media, the report of almost 1,400 pages was largely an ill-executed attempt to legitimise the then government's 'total onslaught' propaganda. Over 900 pages of the report offered an approving exegesis of the idea that South Africa faced a dangerous communist onslaught."495

From the report:

South Africa has to "gird its loins and marshal all the forces at its disposal, as such an onslaught demands total manning of the ramparts and mustering of the sallyports."496

"We are told the press is a 'watchdog'. But just what does that mean? To whom does the watchdog belong? Whom is watching and for what reasons? If the press is a watchdog, presumably it is protecting something. Just what is that? Is it the people's watchdog, watching the government, and keeping the government from doing harm to the people?...Who gave the watchdog this task? Did the 'people' buy this dog for this purpose?"497

"No journalist can report or comment with real insight, impartiality, and truth on people or institutions he dislikes. Journalists reporting in such a state of mind perform a disservice to the country."

PW Botha in parliament when he tabled the report:

"...we have a right to be proud of the large measure of freedom which the press continues to enjoy here... But I wish to repeat my appeal... Let those who, in common with myself and the government, value sound working relationships between the public, the press and the authorities in South Africa, now offer their co-operation to help put an end to certain abuses which have become unbearable and a threat to the nation."498

The myth that the English-language press was the public representative of black interests was given additional credibility by the second Steyn Commission, which described it as causing irreparable harm to intergroup relations and aiding an "unholy alliance" of external forces attacking South Africa.499

"[MWASA] was the subject of a vicious, but confused, attack from the second Steyn Commission which painted it as functioning as 'shock troops for the revolution'."500

In response to the Steyn Commission the government tables a Journalists' Bill in Parliament, which is vehemently opposed by the NPU, backed by its Afrikaans press members. After five months of bargaining between Minister of the Interior, Chris Heunis and the NPU, government withdraws the Bill.

The NPU agrees to set up a new Media Council, this time with the powers to reprimand and fine journalists, though not strike them from a register.

The government would formally recognise this body. Peter McLean, chairman of the NPU, said that the support shown by Afrikaans publishers was decisive in this compromise.501

Harvey Tyson notes that at times the Afrikaans press played as important a role in "the fight for press freedom" as did the English press. He mentions, specifically, "Lang Dawid" de Villiers, managing director of Nasionale Pers in the mid-eighties.502

The proposed Journalists Bill would have required all journalists to be listed on a "roll of journalists". They would need certain qualifications and have o pass certain examinations in order to practice. No one who had been convicted of "any subversive activity" would be allowed to practice as a journalist. Black journalists would have been particularly vulnerable.

The proposed general council would initially be appointed by the government and would enforce a code of conduct that was "so vague that its requirements were likely to be whatever the general council dais they were".

"...[A]fter Interior Minister Heunis failed to shake the publishers' unity, a compromise draft law was worked out. The press acquiesced to the minister's demands that it improve its system of 'self-discipline' by replacing the old press council with a new one. At the last minute, however, Heunis suddenly introduced another press law on June 11, 1982, to make the new media council a statutory body and force all newspapers to submit to it by joining the Newspaper Press Union." This was seen as an attempt to control two right-wing Afrikaner newspapers, Die Afrikaner and Die Patriot. The clause making the body a statutory one was withdrawn by Heunis. "The final compromise, passed in the last hours of the parliamentary session in July 1982, was the Registration of Newspapers Amendment Act, No. 84 of 1982. Key provisions were that the minister of internal affairs could cancel the registration of newspapers if the publishers did not subject themselves for disciplinary purposes to the NPU's new media council...Further, the act provided for recognition of the new media council by the minister...The clause on government recognition caused a good deal of concern among publishers."503

4 February 1982

"Relations between Botha and the opposition press were always bad. On February 4, 1982, at a meeting in Botha's parliamentary office called for general discussion, he sailed into South African Associated Newspapers editors. He said they were constantly denigrating South African leaders and were guilty of 'vindictive and irresponsible' reporting and were playing into the hands of the communists...He tore into me over an editorial complaining about the 'snail's pace of reform'. He also objected to a story in the Cape Times that day giving details of his emoluments - which, after all, were public knowledge. He claimed this was published to 'embarrass' him."504

12 February 1982

Journalist Thami Mazwai is jailed for two years for refusing to give evidence against a former fellow student-leader charged under the Terrorism Act. He writes, at the time: "As a journalist I am part and parcel of my people and cannot turn against our aspirations simply because the going is rough... nor can I reveal in a courtroom what I am told by a source 'off the record'." When he emerged from jail he wrote: "I could have gone back to my normal, cosy life...but the scrutinising glares of my family, my colleagues and my community made sure I did not blunder in that direction..."505

28 February 1982

Chairman of the Cape Times, DA. St. C. Hennessy, writes a letter to PW Botha, who had complained that he was belittled by Tony Heard, the editor, in the meeting on 4 February. It says: "We should like to place on record our view that , whatever differences might exist between the newspaper and the government on issues of the day, we have the highest respect for your person and for your office - as well as appreciation of what you are trying to achieve as Prime Minister in trying circumstances. It is our hope that the difficulties in relations which led to our discussion can be speedily remedied."506

10 April 1982

Keith Coleman and Clive Van Heerden, co-editors of Wits University's student magazine, are released after nearly five months in detention under the Terrorism Act. Both are issued two-year banning orders under the Internal Security Act.507

16 April 1982

The NPU sends a circular to its members drawing their attention to complaints from General Visser of the Police that members of the press were attending formal functions arranged by the police "dressed in a manner not befitting the occasion".508

May 1982

Documents relating to Martin Colinchek, detained in the Seychelles in connection with an abortive coup there in November, are seized by the SAP from the premises of the Rand Daily Mail, the Sunday Times, and Rapport.509

Before they have served their full term, bans are lifted on Dan Mattera and Horatius Vuylsile Mdleleni, poet and director of the black writers" association, MEDUPE.510

June 1982

Information about Joe Thloloe, senior Sowetan reporter; Quraish Patel, Natal Daily News, Vas Soni, Durban Post; and Mathata Tsedu, banned former reporter for the Transvaal Post, is prevented from being published after some reports were made.511

2 June 1982

Intimidation Act 72 of 1982: "Although the provisions of the Act do not affect the freedom of the media in the broad sense, they may affect the freedom of the individual journalist in certain instances. Where, for example, a journalist publishes an article relating to a public person or official, the provisions of the Act may apply to him [sic] where the article compels or induces that person or official to perform or abstain from performing a particular act. The effect is, therefore, that journalists may have to impose self-censorship to avoid contravening the provisions of the Act."512

13 June 1982

Black journalists and trade unionists are among more than 200 people arrested when police break up a memorial service in Soweto.513

16 June 1982

The Protection of Information Act 84 of 1982 replaced the Official Secrets Act 16 of 1956 and detailed the prohibitions on information which affected the security interests of the state. Certain sections of the Act particularly affected journalists, such that, for example, they might acquire information which was newsworthy but not be able to keep it nor use it without risking prosecution under this Act.514

23 June 1982

The Media Liaison Service of the South African Prison Services begins to apply the unilateral policy of regarding the following steps as reasonable in terms of the verification of information for publishing: the proposed report must be submitted to the liaison service for comment, and the comment must be published with the same prominence as the report. This makes reporting on prisons much easier than previously.515

July 1982

The Registration of Newspapers Amendment Act 84 of 1982 was passed in the last hours of the parliamentary session in July 1982. "Within a month of the announcement that the Conservatives would launch Die Patriot, the government introduced its Newspaper Registration Amendment Bill. It preserved the Newspaper Press Union's Press Council, but stipulated that all papers would have to submit themselves to the council's discipline.

Those refusing would have their registration cancelled, and in effect be banned. This struck at the roots of a voluntary press council, introducing an element of statutory control that the newspapers had long fought to avoid... The NPU, representing proprietors, and the Conference of Editors, comprising editors of both English and Afrikaans papers, issued a joint statement announcing that they would establish their own voluntary media council. The council would refuse to serve as a basis for government decisions on whether or not the registration of a paper should be withdrawn."516

1 July 1982

The Nuclear Energy Act 92 of 1982 effectively prohibited the press from reporting on nuclear and other source material, without the written consent of the Atomic Energy Corporation.517

2 July 1982: the Internal Security Act

The Internal Security Act 74 of 1982 updated previous security legislation, in response to recommendations from the Rabie Commission of Inquiry into Security Legislation. For media people, there were four groups of criminal offences under the Act which they were vulnerable to: the promotion of "communism" or the aims of unlawful organisations; "terrorism" and "subversion"; the encouragement and incitement to commit offences that might arise out of organised campaigns of resistance or prohibited gatherings; and the incitement of hostility between racial groups. The Minister of Law and Order was given extensive powers to place serious restrictions on all aspects of any form of media.518

In 1990 the Human Rights Commission described the Internal Security Act as "a monument to the way in loopholes and avenues of expression could be closed own one by one, until space for legitimate political opposition vanished altogether."519

In terms of section 29 of this Act, a person can be detained for the purpose of interrogation: "The effect of a detention order is not confined to the removal and silencing of the detainees, but has far wider implications since the press has no access to detained persons which means that it, too, is effectively silenced by the detention order."520

16 July 1982

The Rand Daily Mail reports that the Department of Health has clamped down on publicity about poliomyelitis. There had been an outbreak of the disease between August 1981 and May 1982, and in the three months prior to this editorial, the RDM had not published a single article on it.521

28 July 1982

In a circular to its members dated 28 July 1982, the NPU notes that it has tried since 1980 without success to enter into an agreement with the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs "to seek some relief from the very strict provisions" of the National Supplies Procurement and Petroleum Products Acts. In a letter from FW de Klerk, Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs at the time, de Klerk says he cannot see his way to making such an agreement, but suggests that the Ministry and the NPU meet from time to time to discuss specific matters that might come up in this regard.522

August 1982

Willem De Klerk is fired as editor of the Transvaler for his political views. Harald Pakendorf is subsequently fired as editor of the Vaderland.

The editors blame top management - with good reason, says Tyson - for their dwindling circulations.523

17 August 1982

Ruth First killed by a parcel-bomb.524

19 October 1982

Gerard Jacobs, a Dutch foreign correspondent, is expelled with no reason given.525

November 1982

The May and June issues of MWASA's publication, Kwasa, are banned.526

3 November 1982

Rex Gibson, editor for the Rand Daily Mail; Tertius Myburgh, editor of the Sunday Times; Clive Kingsley, managing director of South African Associated Newspaper; and Eugene Hugo, investigations editor of the Rand Daily Mail, are all charged under the Protection of Information Act.527

5 November 1982

Donald Woods is re-issued a banning order, while still in exile.528

9 November 1982

Perold and Botha, both from Rapport, are accused of infringing the Protection of Information Act.529

18 November 1982

Anthony Holiday, former political reporter for Rand Daily Mail and the Cape Times, is released from prison after serving six years on charges of terrorism.530

23 November 1982

The film and soundtrack of a documentary on a black trade union made by an ABC news crew in South Africa is allegedly ruined deliberately while in transit to Port Elizabeth.531

December 1982

SADF attack on Maseru.532

1983

Saamstaan begins.533

The press discuss the detention, history and background of Commodore Dieter Gerhard and his wife Ruth, whereupon the Minister of Law and Order drew their attention to section 118 of the Defence Act which prohibits the publication of any statement, comment or rumour relating to a member of the defence force. The penalty for this offence is a fine not exceeding R1 000, or imprisonment for up to 5 years, or both.534

After the Rand Daily Mail case under the Prisons Act, the press confines its reporting on prison matters to information emerging from he courts.

Thus, in 1983, when a number of prisoners died violent deaths at Barberton Prison, and certain warders were convicted of brutality at the Leeuwkop prison, most of the information was not brought to the public's attention at the time of the incident, but at a later date, when the warders appeared in court.535

February 1983

Minister of Home Affairs, FWD de Klerk, tells Parliament that the government will keep the promulgation of the Registration of Newspapers Act of 1982 in abeyance to give the South African Media Council a chance to prove itself. The Council was planned by the NPU and the Conference of Editors.

2 February 1983

Jim Bailey launches a new paper called City Press, identical in every way to Golden City Press, which had folded in January of this year after SAAN withdrew from it.536

March 1983

Veritas, the news agency of Charles Nqakula, president of MWASA, is searched. Nqakula and his assistant Elliot Maziko are taken in for questioning.537

16 March 1983

The home and office of Allister Sparks, former editor of the Rand Daily Mail and correspondent for the London Observer and the Washington Post, is raided by security police. Two days later Sparks was told that he was suspected of violating the Internal Security Act and Police Act for an article he had written for the Observer in June 1982 about Winnie Mandela.

Bernard Simon, a journalist for the Economist and Financial Times, is arrested in connection with the search and charged with obstructing a police investigation.538

18 March 1983

The February 14 issue of Newsweek with a cover story on apartheid is banned. Pik Botha, Foreign Minister, commented: "This piece of journalism is an example of what the West means by freedom of speech - the right to lie, deceive and distort".539

14 April 1983

Bernard Simon and Suzanne Sparks (wife of Allister Sparks) are charged with attempting to defeat the ends of justice because they had tried to hide and remove documents during the police raid on March 16 of Allister Spark's home and office.540

20 April 1983

Joe Thloloe, detained since 24 June 1982, is sentenced to two and a half years in prison for possession of PAC literature.541

1 May 1983

The Registration of Newspapers Amendment Act 98 of 1982 allowed the Minister of Internal Affairs to cancel the registration of newspapers, and thus stop them from publishing, if the publishers did not subject themselves to discipline by a body concerned with journalistic standards.

The NPU had negotiated with the Minister, prior to the finalising of the Act, that this body should be independent and voluntary, with none of its members appointed by the government.542

4 May 1983

Rex Gibson of the Rand Daily Mail and Johnny Johnson of the Citizen are questioned by the police for publishing a speech by Catholic Archbishop Dennis Hurley.

July 1983

Agreement between NPU and police amended.543

"As amended in 1983, [the agreement] provided for de facto police certification of journalists through a system of carefully issued press cards. The agreement was further modified orally from time to time."544

1 July 1983

Mathatha Tsedu's banning orders are renewed for up to five years. Three other journalists banned at the same time were not subject to new restrictions. Joe Thloloe, in prison at the time, was also not rebanned.

95 formerly banned people cannot be quoted, including Dennis Brutus - poet and writer, and Donald Woods, former newspaper editor.545

14 July 1983

NPU-Police agreement is amended.

8 August 1983

Leslie Xinwa, a journalist with the East London Daily Dispatch, is arrested with attorney Hintsa Siwisa, in Ciskei during civil unrest and held incommunicado under Section 26 of the National Security Act of 1982.546

16 August 1983

Charles Ngakula, a journalist with the news agency, Veritas, and also a correspondent for South African newspapers and former acting president of the MWASA, is arrested with five other union organisers during serious civil unrest in Ciskei.547

September 1983

The general-secretary of the NPU announces the terms and functions of the SA Media Council. An advertising campaign is launched, describing the Council and calling for nominations for people to serve on it. The SASJ called for better representation of working journalists on the Council, finding the proposed representation favoured editors and managers. This was countered by the NPU and the Conference of Editors who said that editors, not journalists, were at risk in Council hearings.548

6 September 1983

Police announce that action would be taken against the Star for quoting a speech made by Oliver Tambo at the University of Amsterdam.549

17 September 1983

Jacobo Timmerman, Israeli writer and journalist of Argentian origin, is refused an entry visa into South Africa to take part in a conference at Wits University.550

27 September 1983

Charles Ngakula is released after his detention in Ciskei.551

October 1983

Announcement of public representatives on the Media Council.552

The battle for the press market place, between Argus and SAAN, intensifies when Argus launches a Sunday edition of the Star.553

5 October 1983

Montshiwa Moroke, a reporter for the Rand Daily Mail; Jacoob Rykliff, a photographer for the Star; and Edward Maffa, a driver for the Star, are among eight journalists assaulted and threatened by employees of the East Rand Administration Board, while covering the forced removal of black squatters. Moroke suffered a broken arm, cuts to the head and severe bruising. Maffa was cut over one eye when he was head-butted by security police. The next day, 22 journalists (black and white) were arrested for pro testing the assault and were later released in Johannesburg.554

November 1983

The November issue of the black magazine, Pace, is banned for satirising apartheid. The ban was suspended, pending appeal in the same months.555

David Rabkin, a British journalist, is released from prison after serving seven years for offences under South African security laws.556

1 November 1983: South African Media Council established.

The SABC, the SASJ and MWASA all decline to become members. At its November congress, SASPU opposed the establishment of the Council.

However, the Council had "informal" powers from the government to investigate reports in media who had not voluntarily subjected themselves to it.557

The SASJ and others held the Media Council "in deep suspicion" because it negotiated with the government to avoid direct state censorship. Another criticism is that the Media Council is exclusive to newspapers, thereby leaving other less powerful publications vulnerable.558

Tyson resigns from the Media Council and publishes an editorial criticising it for being unrepresentative.559

2 November 1983

Referendum on tricameral Parliament: "The 1983 Constitution would be incomprehensible without the key concepts of apartheid - how else would one make sense of the three racially separate chambers? It made apartheid a crucial ingredient of constitutional clearsightedness. Yet in a referendum this constitution was decisively approved by white voters, including a substantial number of English speakers, the business community led by Anglo-American Chairperson Gavin Relly, and some leading publications such as the Sunday Times and the Financial Mail. They took this position even though they knew that the majority of the country's people opposed it."560

29 November 1983

The trial of Allister Sparks is adjourned until 24 April 1984. "The adjournment was agreed to since the case raises serious issues of principle, including whether journalists working wholly for foreign newspapers should be subject to South African censorship laws."561

30 November 1983

L. Slater, chairman of the Argus newspaper group, and Harvey Tyson, editor of the Star, are charged under the same Section of the Internal Security Act as Sparks, for quoting Oliver Tambo.562

15 December 1983

Bafana Mkefa and Sabelo Ngani, journalists for Imvo Zabantsaudu (Black Opinion), a Xhosa and Zulu newspaper in King William's Town, are detained by Ciskei Security police in connection with an article about official 'independence' anniversary celebrations held in Ciskei at the beginning of December.563

1984

In a fortnight in 1984 three editors in the Cape (one of them Afrikaans) and nine reporters in the Transvaal were summoned to court under Section 205 of the Criminal Procedures Act.564

Raymond Louw, formerly of SAAN takes over City Press as joint general manager, and Percy Qoboza is recruited as editor.565

Regarding the Prisons Act, a statement in Parliament by the Minister of Justice, HJ Coetsee, demonstrates that "the era of an absolute bar on reporting on prisons and prisoners is over".566

January 1984

Bafana Mkefa and Sabelo Ngani are released.567

February 1984

Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi quotes Oliver Tambo in Clarion Call, published by the KwaZulu government, without being prosecuted.568

13 February 1984

Harvey Tyson, editor of the Star is acquitted in court after publishing a brief remark by Tambo. The report quoted Tambo as saying that he was banned and could not be quoted. The owner of the Star, the Argus company, was deemed responsible and fined five hundred rands. Tyson comments that it is impossible to edit a newspaper without coming into conflict with the law: "That is why numbers of law-abiding newspapers supporting the government, have criminal records."569

15 February 1984

Journalists and photographers are refused entry into the village of Mogopa, which police had sealed off and from which they were evicting inhabitants. Media were told that they needed permits, which the magistrate in Ventersdorp said he could not issue.570

March 1984

Charges against Allister Sparks quoting Winnie Mandela and making "untrue claims" about the South African police, as well as against Suzanne Sparks and Bernard Simon for removing documents from Sparks' office prior to a security raid, are dropped by the State.571

5 April 1984

Jim Bailey sells City Press, Drum and True Love to Nasionale Pers. Naspers was seen as "the faithful voice of the Cape National Party," and they needed an established and well accepted black newspaper with which to win hearts and minds in the townships.572

April 1984

A party of editors visits Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi's bush head-quarters at Jamba. The visit was arranged "through quarters friendly to Pretoria and Savimbi".573

31 August 1984

Cry Amandla! SA Women and the Question of Power, a selection of interviews by American journalist, June Godwin, is banned.574

Foreign Minister Pik Botha addresses a conference of editorial writers about, among other things, South Africa's importance as a "regional power" in southern Africa.575

September 1984

The Bailey Trust sells its shares in SAAN to Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI), an Anglo American subsidiary mining company which had considerable holdings in Argus. "It is not known, though there has been considerable speculation, what part the Argus company as a major shareholder played in the eventual decision to close the three SAAN newspapers."576

Film of a Soweto funeral, of black people killed by police during unrest, is seized by police from German TV network, ARD, and British VISNEWS.577

October 1984

Journalist Gary van Staden is twice subpoenaed under Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act to reveal the names of members of the Vaal Civic Association with whom he had held a meeting. It was suspected that the police already had the names from a source of their own and were using van Staden to protect their operation. Van Staden settles the case in mid-1985 by producing a list of Vaal activists who had died by then. The police do not pursue the matter. Van Staden reflects on the ethics of having lied under oath and asserts with confidence that given the illegitimacy of the laws and the disgust he felt for the system "no means of escape is unethical".578

4 October 1984

Phila Ngqumba, journalist from the Ciskei, is detained.579

5 October 1984

Theo Mthembu, Soweto journalist, is detained.580

23 November 1984

Johannes Rantete, a 20-year-old aspirant journalist, is detained for three weeks under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act for writing an account of his experience of events and the security forces' response in Sebokeng.

It had been published by Ravan Press as The third day of September: an account of the Sebokeng rebellion of 1984. Ravan was asked for the photographs from which the drawings had been made. After Rantete's release the book was banned as a threat to the security of the state on the grounds that it glorified unrest and promoted Black Power ideology. Rapport described it, in an editorial, as a plea for reconciliation. The ban was lifted in January 1985.581

Banned activist Zollie Malindi speaks at a UDF press conference and is quoted by the Cape Times, which had not realised he was on the banned list.

"Checking lists before publication was a hit-and-miss affair. South African editors would keep special tickler boxes in their offices containing...the names of people banned or listed and who were therefore unquotable. The boxes were kept up to date by a law firm, and the government regularly published updated lists in the Government Gazette.

But it was easy to lose or miss a card, to misfile on, or even misspell a name..." Reporter Anthony Johnson and editor Tony Heard were charged with quoting a banned person. The case was remanded, and finally no one was convicted.582

28 November 1984

Twelve journalists subpoenaed to testify about offences during recent unrest at the introduction of the tricameral parliament. Also, editors of the Burger, the Cape Times, and the Argus in Cape Town are ordered to submit photos and negatives of unrest at the University of Western Cape from September 14.583

December 1984

The South African ambassador to London, Dr. Dennis Worrall, and banned exile Donald Woods, share a platform. Woods is unquotable in South Africa, but the Cape Times decides to publish some of his statements, given that Worrall had made a remark about the free press in South Africa. "In a rather prudent and tactical move, we edited out some of Woods's remarks which could have run us foul of the Defence Act; we preferred to break one Act at a time," said editor, Heard. A police prosecution was started, but never got to court.584

CBS is refused an entry visa to cover Teddy Kennedy's January visit.585

7 December 1984

Guy Berger, lecturer in journalism, is released after being detained in early November.586

The November issue of UDF News, is banned.587

19 December 1984

Johannesburg offices of ITN raided by security police. 33 tapes were seized on the subjects of civil unrest and police action, the UDF, the August 1994 election and the 1982 funeral in Maseru of ANC members killed by a South African commando raid.588

late December 1984

Mono Badela, journalist and leader of COSAS, is released from detention without being charged. He had been detained since the end of October.589

1985

"At the time of the Eastern Cape Langa massacre, there were five separate police investigations going against the Herald under Section 27(b) of the Police Act... About a year after the second case, I had an opportunity to attend a meeting of the Police-Press Liaison Committee in Cape Town. I asked the general who acted as chairman how it came about that the Herald was prosecuted in spite of a minuted undertaking from the Minister of Law and Order that action would not be taken under Section 27(b) provided a newspaper, along with other versions, reported the police version fairly and squarely. There was a long and convoluted explanation about the difficulty of getting instructions through to root level. When he stopped, I asked: 'Are you saying, general, that it was all a mistake?' The general looked around the table. 'No,' he said. 'I am not using that word. There are too many witnesses present.'"590

Campaign to boycott the Argus. After a rally where the Argus was sharply criticised, Argus journalist Robert Housing has to be escorted past an angry crowd by a community leader.591

An article in the South African Journal on Human Rights appears with a blank space because Trevor Manuel, as a person banned from gatherings under section 20 of the Internal Security Act, could not be quoted.592

January 1985

The Star exposes Dr Boesak's extra-marital affair and calls for a judicial inquiry into the "dirty tricks" operations of the security police. The security police deny that they had anything to do with investigating the affair and making information available to the press. An inquiry by the Media Council finds that the Star was right to publish the story and that the evidence that security police were not involved in the "dirty tricks" which brought the story to light was unsatisfactory. There had been some debate in the press about whether the Star was playing into the hands of the state by publishing the story. Public interest in the story was limited and there was no public pressure on the state to make a full inquiry.593

Commenting on the role the Media Council played in the Boesak case in 1985, Tyson says: "...at least the Media Council had done its job properly, and it continued to do so in the difficult days ahead. Its ability to protect freedom of speech might be small, but its presence was useful, perhaps vital, to an increasingly besieged press."594

February 1985

SAPA is permitted to send out an interview Tambo gave to an Harare newspaper in which he says that there is no alternative to armed struggle against Pretoria. The minister of law and order, Louis le Grange, cleared the full report. The editor of SAPA reported to his management board: "The request was granted, since Tambo lived up to his local image."595

19 February 1985

At a Press conference, Archbishop Dennis Hurley speaks about Koevoet, the police counter-insurgency unit in Namibia, and is charged (18 months later) under the Police Act with making untrue and defamatory statements. The state decided not to proceed with prosecution on the grounds that it had based its case on an inaccurate SAPA report in which the Archbishop had been quoted out of context. SAPA denied that its report of the Press conference was inaccurate.596

March 1985

Calls for the release of Calvin Prakasim, independent photographer and filmmaker, detained since 24 October in connection with the Afrascope community film video unit in Johannesburg. He was released from detention in the same month.597

An American TV programme is not shown by the SABC because it includes discussions between Dr. Connie Mulder, the Rev. Allen Boesak, Chief Buthelezi and Oliver Tambo. Earlier programmes in the series had been shown.598

15 March 1985

SAAN announces its decision to close the Rand Daily Mail at the end of April.599

21 March 1985

Uitenhage massacre. 47 people are shot by the police while on a march.600

April 1985: Rand Daily Mail closes

As well as the Sunday Express.601

"...white conservatives... were delighted when the paper was closed... The shabby deed was done, not by the government, but by the Mail's wealthy mine-industry owners, for 'financial' reasons - just when the Mail's voice was most needed in the black townships and white suburbs of South Africa.

The government applauded."602

"There is a widespread belief that the Mail... was closed in a trade-off with the government for the M-Net licence..."603

"The first nail in the coffin of [labour reporting] came with the closure of the Rand Daily Mail; the second was the establishment of Business Day, which replaced it in April 1985. Phillip van Niekerk, the labour reporter for Business Day, resigned when his report of a massive stay-away over the death in detention of Raditsela was replaced by a story playing down the stay-away."604

Saspu National, the NUSAS newspaper, is forced to close.605

8 May 1985

The Control of Access to Public Premises Act 53 of 1985 limits a journalist's access to public places where, for example, a public demonstration may be being held.606

14 May 1985

Minister le Grange tells the NPU that the government did not want a repetition of the Rhodesian experience "where the public was kept uninformed." The government was on the verge of introducing a state of emergency which would shackle the press.607

June 1985

Police threaten a witness to the Duduza hand grenade explosions, Vusi Mashabane, with indefinite detention under Section 29. As a result he gave the police an affidavit which contradicted a statement he had made to the Star. A lengthy court case followed in which the police sued the newspaper.608

First Edition of the Weekly Mail appears.609

SADF raid on Gaborone.610

June to December 1985

332 foreign journalists, that is half of those who applied, are refused entry into South Africa.611

16 June 1985

Ninth anniversary of Soweto uprising. National rioting. Police refuse press access to the townships and issue the "news" themselves. Foreign correspondents and opposition press express their shock. The Afrikaans press says there is more concern over the right to report the riots than the riots themselves. The ban is lifted.612

25 June 1985

Dutch journalist, Fritz Exster, is detained and released later in the day.613

26 June 1985

Three hand grenades kill and injure a group of founder-members of the ANC-allied Congress of South African Students in Duduza on the East Rand.

The Star reporters Mike Tissong and Rich Mkhondo cover the event the next day and publish a report based on statements made to them by eye-witnesses.

Mkhondo is hit when police fire teargas and birdshot at a crowd gathered around the scene of the explosions. Both the eye-witnesses and the journalists are subsequently harassed by the police.614

27 June 1985

Eastern Cape UDF leaders Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlawuli are brutally murdered on their way to Cradock.615

29 June 1985

Increasing speculation by the press (particularly the Sowetan and the

Weekly Mail) that the extensive and frequently covered "black on black" violence is in fact the work of a "third force", which is exploiting the historical UDF and Azapo conflict.

17 July 1985

Telex to Cape Times from law and order department: "Your telex, requesting permission to publish an interview with Oliver Tambo, was referred to the minister of law and order. The minister has refused permission."616

"A managerial directive from Nasionale Pers to the editorial staff of City Press a few weeks before the declaration of the state of emergency on 17 July 1985, instructed that unrest reporting had to be reduced by 50 per cent. A content analysis of the paper at the time suggests, however, that this instruction was largely ignored by the editor and staffers."617

20 July 1985

Funeral at Cradock of Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlawuli.618

21 July 1985: partial state of emergency

"In mid-1985, the State introduced a partial State of Emergency, which contained no provisions aimed directly at restricting the media. However, it was the start of a new period in which the South African Press would find itself more beleaguered than it had before."619

"Regulations tended to be framed so widely that it was difficult to know exactly what they meant. Testing their limits often showed that it was possible to get away with a great deal. Journalists and their lawyers began to see the regulations simply as a challenge to ingenuity... The progressive press... brought to the media landscape a new disrespect for authority... Many other newspapers responded meekly and cautiously..."620

"It was made an offence to make a subversive statement, incite resistance to the government, cause fear, panic and alarm or weaken public confidence.

The government gave itself the power to 'specify' any newspaper or journal which systematically published subversive matter, which would prevent further publication. The Commissioner of Police was given the power to control news and information leaving the affected areas."621

24 July 1985

Commissioner of Police, General Johan Coetzee, convenes a special meeting with the NPU, appealing that unrest coverage be "scaled down". He said he wanted to avoid using his powers.622

Tyson says that the Commissioner required an assurance of co-operation which Tyson, personally, refused to give. A wave of media regulations followed.623

26 July 1985

The East London newspaper, the Daily Dispatch, publishes a statement which reaffirms its opposition to apartheid. Below it is a statement from the UDF, which withdraws the organisation's call for the resignation of the Daily Dispatch editor, and officially ends a boycott of the paper. The boycott had been organised as a result of what the UDF perceived to be the newspaper's pro-apartheid stance. There had been several high-level initiatives to get the boycott reversed prior to the publishing of the statement.624

15 August 1985

President Botha's Rubicon speech. Next day the rand has devalued by a fifth, the largest fall ever.625

September 1985

Bureau for Information established. One of its projects was a controversial "peace song", which cost R4.3 million. The director of information for internal media was Brigadier Leon Mellett, a former police public relations officer and photo-comic hero. The director of the bureau was Mr Dave Steward.626

Louis Nel, Minister of Foreign Affairs, on foreign journalists: "There are people in South Africa who have work permits who often send out untruths, half truths, selective reporting and create a false and twisted perception of South Africa... It is time the government considers whether its hospitality should still be extended to people who share in organised lying."627

Peter Hillmore, columnist in the Observer, reports that South Africa's ambassador, at a lunch with senior BBC officials, threatened to close down the BBC's operation in South Africa if the BBC were to send in a secret team. Hillmore claims that the corporation consequently ordered its "Panorama" to stop working on a project on South Africa. The BBC denies the allegation.628

Ray Wilkinson of Newsweek is expelled from South Africa.629

Constable Vlotman assaults three journalists in Athlone with a sjambok while they were sheltering from birdshot and teargas.

October 1985

Argus takes effective control of the Natal Mercury by acquiring a 55 percent share of the newly formed Natal Newspapers. The government was perturbed at the takeover.630

4 October 1985

Bernard Bisson, French journalist for Sygma magazine, is expelled from South Africa.631

15 October 1985

The "Trojan Horse" incident in Athlone, Cape Town. An Argus photographer and reporter witness the shooting, but the Cape Times gives the story more attention. The Argus reporters express disappointment at what they perceive as too much emphasis in their paper on the official version.632

25 October 1985

Emergency extended to Cape Town after schools conflict.633

29 October 1985

Chief Buthelezi reads from a Tambo radio broadcast when he addresses the South African Federated Chamber of Industries of Natal in Durban. He is not prosecuted.634

2 November 1985

"[Emergency] regulations were published which effectively outlawed television coverage of township unrest. Reporters were forbidden to make or broadcast any sound or visual recording of "any public disturbance, disorder, riot, public violence, strike or boycott", or the damaging of any property or killing of a person. Print journalists would only be allowed to cover these events if they were accredited, and had to be escorted by the police." The government justified the regulations by claiming that journalists had inflamed the riots. There was an incident in which it was claimed that journalists had directed children to pretend they were rioting, which was proved to be false. According to one foreign correspondent, the ban was immediately effective, removing the violence from the news within less than a week, primarily because of the lack of visual material required to sustain public interest."635

3 November 1985

"Glenda Dry, information officer at the South African embassy in London, said the country's 'biggest problem' had been the television coverage, which had been '... so terribly visual. The coverage we got during the unrest was overwhelming'."636

4 November 1985

Tony Heard's Cape Times interview with Oliver Tambo.637

"In November 1985 during the extraordinary press restrictions of the state of emergency, a South African newspaper published a full length interview with ANC President Oliver Tambo (the Devil Himself, according to apartheid's lexicon). Nelson Mandela, hospitalised when the interview appeared and waking up to find it at his bedside, jokingly said he thought that he had died and gone to heaven."638

5 November 1985

The Burger quotes Minister of Law and Order Louis le Grange as saying that no permission had been granted to the Cape Times to publish the Tambo interview. A police lieutenant advises Heard that charges in terms of Section 56 (1)(p) of the Internal Security Act were being investigated.639

6 November 1985

Walter Judge, managing director of the Cape Times hands the matter of the Tambo interview over to the director of SAAN, John King, who notes in a written rebuke to Heard that Heard had acted in a "high-handed" manner and breached his terms of appointment as editor.640

9 November 1985

Tony Heard is arrested under the Internal Security Act for publishing his interview with Oliver Tambo. After a series of remands, the state lost interest and charges were dropped against Heard in July 1986. late November 1985 Three reporters on the Daily News in Durban resign over that newspaper's paltry coverage of the formation of the massive Congress of South African Trade Unions.

14 December 1985

Brian Tilly, television sound man, is shot in Mamelodi township. A group of journalists is detained in Mamelodi the same day.641 late 1985 Offices of Grassroots newspaper destroyed by fire.642 mid-eighties

"When in the mid-eighties Capital Radio in the Transkei... declined to heed Mr [Pik] Botha's editorial directives, he reported to the State Security Council that 'it is being considered to buy out the radio station in order to bring that situation under control.'"643

1986

Reuters canvasses news people around the world on the effect of South Africa's media regulations. They agree that tv and press cameramen had been badly curbed. Images of strife between security forces and youths in the townships were blacked out. The print media are less badly affected.644

The government releases a document (Talking with the ANC...) which quoted the banned SACP nine times and the ANC 34 times.645

Bestall, a photographer, is charged under the Prisons Act for taking pictures with a telephoto lens of Pollsmoor and Robben Island. He got off on appeal because he had believed that his principal had obtained the necessary permission.646

Eastern Cape journalist Brian Sokutu takes part in a hunger-strike in St Alban's prison, Port Elizabeth, where he has been detained, with others, for almost three years. On his release he is banned.

January 1986

The first edition of Newsweek goes out, minus a one-page interview with Winnie Mandela.647

16 January 1986

First edition of New Nation appears.648

Zwelakhe Sisulu, editor of New Nation says that |[the issue is] not whether one is a propagandist or not, but whether one is a collaborationist propagandist or a revolutionary propagandist... If committed is an alternative to non-committed, then surely we are propagandist..."649

29 January 1986

Brigadier Christoffel Anthonie Swart, divisional commissioner of police of the Western Province, issues an order that would in effect ban even t-shirt slogans. It says: "No person shall in any place affix, display or distribute any placard, banner, sticker, pamphlet, clothing or similar object on or in which any viewpoint of a political nature or in relation to any system of Government or Constitutional policy is expressed, advocated or propagated."650

Mohamed Saleem Badat, post-graduate student at the University of Cape Town and organiser of community newspaper, Grassroots, is released from detention without being charged, but is placed under restrictive conditions.651

31 January 1986

Zubeida Jaffer, former reporter from the Cape Times, and husband Johnny Issel, are among 335 still detained under the State of Emergency regulations. Jaffer, three months pregnant, was held incommunicado, with no access to a doctor. Her lawyer was also detained. She was released soon after this date.652

February 1986

Botha launches an unprecedented newspaper advertising campaign to sell his reform proposals. "Revolutionaries may stamp their feet. Communists may scream their lies. Our enemies may try to undermine us. But here is the reality...", is part of the double-page spread in national and international newspapers.653

The Cape Herald closes, adding to the list which includes the Rand Daily Mail, Sunday Express and Bloemfontein Friend, as well as the editorial divisions of Argus and SAAN.654

5 February 1986

The Conference of Editors refuses an offer by le Grange to give newspapers a list of names of people who could be quoted on a six-month trial basis.

This dispensation would apply only to members of the NPU. Le Grange apparently had in mind some banned people that were living abroad.

March 1986

Three staff members of the American CBS network are ordered out of South Africa for having broadcast film smuggled out of Alexandra township in defiance of a ban on coverage. They were bureau chief Bill Mutschmann, presenter Alan Pizzey, and camera operator Wim de Vos. A senior CBS official flies in, meets with Botha, and offers what amounts to a public apology. The three were allowed to stay, but de Vos was subsequently expelled a few months later (5 June 1986), despite a court appeal against the decision.655

Albrecht Heise, of the German ZDF television, is expelled from South Africa.656

3 March 1986

"The [Cape Times] was in a constant state of tension with authority. A front-page account on March 3, 1986, of a guerrilla shoot-out in Guguletu caused an instant break in relations with the police. Our report, by Chris Bateman, suggested that two out of seven African urban guerrillas who had been shot by police... were killed in cold blood - one lying on the ground, the other trying to surrender. The commissioner, Gen. Johann Coetzee, ordered police not to have anything to do with the Cape Times as soon as this version appeared. This meant we could get no police news about even the most routine incidents of accident, fire, or crime... The Cape Times formally complained at a meeting in Pretoria that the police had broken its agreement with the press whereby police were obliged to give certain items of hard news to newspapers... The upshot of the meeting was that the news flow was restored at some levels, while we all awaited the results of court proceedings."657

7 March 1986

Partial emergency lifted.658

20 March 1986

Film and video made by British ITN team of a June 1983 Durban meeting are confiscated by security police and presented as evidence in a treason trial.659

Police refuse to name the police general appointed to investigate the shooting of schoolchildren outside the Kabokweni Magistrate's Court in White River, despite repeated enquiries by newspapers.660

2 April 1986

Walter Judge, local managing director of the Cape Times, is fired by the new managing director of SAAN, Stephen Mulholland. The reason given was the restructuring of the company, which was in dire financial straits.

Leycester Walton, a director, criticised the move. "Joint Operating Agreements" are set up between SAAN papers and the more powerful Argus company. This entails heavy staff redundancies. Tony Heard attempts to get local business interests to buy the Cape Times, but is told by SAAN not to "interfere".661

4 April 1986

Montsho Lucky Kutumela, a reporter with the Lebowa Times, dies in detention shortly after his arrest by Lebowa police. He was arrested with Kgalabe Kekana, a freelance journalist and regional organiser of MWASA, and Dan Tsoaledi Thobejane from AZAPO. Both were reportedly severely assaulted after their arrest and Thobejane lost the use of one eye due to the beating.662

5 April 1986

Government warns editors that restrictions on Winnie Mandela are still in force, after the Johannesburg Sunday Star and Durban Sunday Times publish lengthy interviews with her.663

10 April 1986

Louis le Grange, Minister of Law and Order, accuses the Cape Times of being a mouthpiece of the ANC, and says it could face the same fate as the Rand Daily Mail if it does not change its ways.664

May 1986

Opening of the East London News Agency.665

Archbishop Desmond Tutu addresses the International Press Institute's annual conference in Vienna: "My basic thesis was that the South African press, controlled exclusively by powerful white bosses, had by and large been pandering to white interests at a time when they should have been opening the eyes of the white public to the dangers to which our country was exposed by the iniquitous system apartheid and its draconian state of emergency measures... They were far more concerned that their balance sheets should reflect large profits and they dared not upset their apple cart by annoying the white public by telling it the often unpalatable truth of the injustices of apartheid, of the reasonableness of black aspirations and demands and the moderation of the black liberation movements. It was better to keep on the right side of the government and the public by giving one sided and slanted accounts of all these matters... I also mentioned the wonderful exceptions. Newspapers like the then defunct Rand Daily Mail, Sunday Express, as well as the Cape Times. And I mentioned warmly Raymond Louw, and Tony Heard then Editor of the Cape Times."666

19 May 1986

SADF attacks on Lusaka, Gaborone and Harare, as the Commonwealth Eminent Persons' Group arrives.667

June 1986

Heinrich Buettgen, West German TV correspondent, Richard Manning from Newsweek; Dan Sagir, Israeli freelance reporter and Wim de Vos, CBS cameraman are all expelled from the country.668

SABC bans live radio and tv broadcasts.669

Journalists are prohibited from entering or reporting from townships without specific police permission.670

The Sowetan, the Star, and the Weekly Mail take to putting blank spaces to indicate missing material - lists of detainees, photos, etc. The Sowetan stops the practice on June 20 when the police advise that it is "subversive".671

Journalists detained: Mike Loewe and Eric Linde, freelancers for the Weekly Mail and Capital Radio; Gill de Vlieg, photographer for photo press agency Afrapix; Clive Stuurman from Saamstaan; Andre Koopman from the Cape Times: Mathata Tsedu, from the Sowetan; Brian Sekoto, from the Eastern Province Herald; Prince Msuthu, Photopressbureau; Tladi Khuele, New Nation photographer and Strinivasa Moodley from the Natal Witness.672

Police bar 119 political and church groups around Cape Town from publishing pamphlets or posters.

5 June 1986

Wim de Vos, Dutch camera operator for CBS, is expelled from South Africa.673

10 June 1986

A journalist is arrested for resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer at the Crossroads riots.674

Bert van Hees, from the Citizen; photographer Patrick Durand and George De'Ath's assistant, Andile Sosi, are injured in KTC riots.675

12 June 1986: national state of emergency declared.676

This state of emergency introduced new regulations which severely limited the freedom of newspaper journalists and editors as well as photographers and radio and television broadcasters. Regulation 9, for example, prohibited any photography or broadcast recording of "unrest" situations or the conduct of security forces. Regulations prohibited the broadly defined term "subversive statement" with large fines and heavy prison sentences for convictions.677

"The iron clamp fastened itself round the necks of journalists, and when the Supreme Court intervened and found loopholes and weaknesses in the drafting of the emergency, the government cynically reimposed the curbs in revised, more watertight wording which was often more repressive."678

"In 1986 and 1987 the Bureau for Information was, by law, the only authorised spokesman on 'unrest'. Every day the Bureau would issue an 'unrest report'. No details of unrest other than what was contained in the report could legally be published. Often the official version was dramatically different from what we saw and heard when we managed to smuggle reporters into the 'no-go' areas."679

"...once the bureau began resisting the temptation to use the report for sermonising, some facts and figures could be gleaned. But the reports remained patchy, with many incidents suppressed and distorted. More fundamentally, the daily litany of 'unrest-related incidents' merged into a grey sameness. In the absence of direct accounts, and as one unrest report looked very much like the next, they were difficult to accommodate journalistically. Inevitably, unrest slipped into the furthest, most obscure corners of the newspapers. South Africa's instability and violence was moved right off the news agenda, and turned into nothing more than a chronic niggle, worrying in a low-level way, but not shocking. It was this shift which must rank as the government's major success in news management."680

Example of an "unrest report" issued by the Bureau for Information soon after the declaration of the national emergency: "The incidence of violence has already shown a decrease as far as destruction of property and vandalism is concerned. Unfortunately, seven people were killed. One person was killed when a police patrol was attacked. In black-on-black violence, six people were murdered." No further details were given.681

Robert John McBride bombs the Magoo bar in Durban within days of the declaration of the state of emergency.682

13 June 1986

The Minister orders the removal of that day's editions of the Sowetan and the Weekly Mail under Regulation 11 of the emergency legislation.683

14 June 1986

Professor John Dugard, head of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits University, says that the declaration of the state of emergency has stripped South Africans of their right to freedom of expression and association. He said that there was a danger that people would engage in self-censorship regarding statements which could be linked to promoting the aims of the African National Congress.684

George De'Ath, ITN newsman, is killed in KTC squatter camp. He was filming at the time and his film may have included some of his death. The film was not returned to the network until April 1987. It had been edited.

Mthatha Tsedu is arrested and detained. He is released without having been charged about two months later. Neither his newspaper company's nor MWASA's lawyers' applications for his release were successful. Nor a letter written by the executive chairman of Argus Newspapers to the Minister of Law and Order, Louis le Grange.685

15 June 1986

"Press censorship was illustrated by the fact that a report was released by Amnesty International in London on the detention of an entire congregation at Elsies Rivier near Cape Town on 15 June 1986, three days before the news was widely available in South Africa. Asked to explain the delay, the Bureau for Information responded, 'We are still in the process of perfecting the free flow of information'."686

16 June 1986

The commissioner of police announces that he has used an enabling provision in the emergency regulations to prohibit the taking or dissemination of any news about the actions of the security forces in "maintaining public order", except with his permission. He also announces that he is barring journalists from entering any township for the purpose of reporting, though this order is subsequently withdrawn.687

Gerald Shaw writes in the Cape Times that the prohibition on publishing the names of detainees "could be used as a weapon of state terror" and was a "fearsome psychological weapon", with citizens "disappearing into the clutches of the state", without any possibility of sensible or informed intervention by concerned individuals.688

Sometime after this the Star publishes 20 columns of names of detainees supplied by the Detainees' Parents' Support Committee, on the grounds that if the state claimed that it always informed the family of detainees of arrests then it must be assumed that all names had officially been released. No state action followed.689

25 June 1986

Daily unrest briefings from the Bureau for Information suspended.

Deputy Minister of Information, Louis Nel, warns editors that the government will suspend publication of any papers that fail to follow regulations.690

Zwelakhe Sisulu detained for 22 days.691

Richard Manning of Newsweek is expelled from South Africa.692

28 June 1986

Dan Sagir, Israeli journalist with Ha-aretz and Israeli Army Radio, is expelled from South Africa.693

July 1986

David Hartman, freelance photographer is released in early July.694

Zandisile Mamona, freelance TV reporter and two reporters from the Eastern Herald Tribune, are detained. Also detained was Bridget Hilton-Barber of Grocott's Daily Mail and Eric Mbulelo, black freelance journalist. Total number of journalists detained under the state of emergency is 13.695

Mike Loewe, freelance journalist for the Weekly Mail and Capital Radio, is reportedly transferred to a hospital after being tortured while in detention.696

3 July 1986

Heinrich Buettgen of German ARD television is expelled.697

7 July 1986

Theophilus Mashiane, World Wide Television news sound recordist, is ordered to be released by the Supreme Court. He had been detained since June 15.698

16 July 1986

Charges dropped against Anthony Heard of Cape Times for quoting Oliver Tambo.699

17 July 1986

The Metal and Allied Workers' Union (MAWU) launches the first court challenge to the emergency. The Natal Supreme Court strikes down 5 of 6 definitions of a subversive statement, and encourages many similar court applications. The major newspaper groups, however, do not make any applications until August, when SAAN and the independent Natal Witness to go to court.700

Advocate Mailer of the Supreme Court of South Africa: "... in regard to challenges to the media regulations... whereas the regulations themselves substantially circumscribe the activity of newspapers in this country, two of the most important challenges to the media regulations or defences of press freedoms - have been brought at the instance of black organisations - a trade union, the UDF, and RMC, none of which can remotely be said to be publishing newspapers. While the defence of press freedom by these organisations is encouraging, the failure of the newspapers themselves to so act must be a source of grave disquiet."701

The unrest report's only hard fact for the day is that six people were murdered by burning. The rest is a general exposition on "black-on-black" violence and a diatribe against "radicals" and "so-called comrades".702

19 July 1986

Zwelakhe Sisulu freed.703

August 1986

14 journalists still in detention: Alison Billing, MJ Fuzile, Bridget Hilton-Barber, Humphrey Joseph, Eric Linde, Mike Loewe, Vandisilie Manoma, Phila Ngqumba, Reggie Oliphant, Brian Sekoto, Chris Stuurman, Danny Stuurman, John Stuurman, Mathata Tsedu.704

8 journalists are released: David Hartman, Andre Koopman, Tladi Khuele, Theophilus Mashiane, Prince Msuthu, Zwelakhe Sisulu, Sandra Smith, Gill de Vlieg.705

13 August 1986

SAAN is fined three hundred rand for the Cape Times interview with Oliver Tambo, charges against Heard having been withdrawn. "I always suspected that [the attorney-general] had been under pressure from the political authorities to pursue the matter. Although attorneys-general enjoy wide powers in pursuing or dropping prosecutions, pressure from the cabinet was not unknown."706

20 August 1986

In the case which SAAN and the Natal Witness bring to the Natal Supreme Court, two provisions are found to have been not properly promulgated: the police orders banning the reporting of security force action and the presence of journalists in black and unrest areas. The courts also remove the police's power to seize and ban newspapers. Newspapers respond immediately: the Cape Times publishes reports it had previously suppressed; the Weekly Mail reprints in full the reports which had previously gone out with blank spaces..707

"...a joint appeal by Argus Newspapers and Times Media to the Natal Division of the Supreme Court, where certain clauses in the emergency regulations were struck down as too vague..."708

26 August 1986

Street battles in Soweto lead to rows over the inaccuracy of the bureau's information.709

"The two-week interregnum after the court struck down initial police orders barring journalists from scenes of unrest in September 1986... allowed coverage of the Soweto rent violence, and played a direct role in discrediting the Bureau for Information's media centre."710

September 1986

The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York expresses concern over repeated raids on the offices of the Press Trust of South Africa by security forces, as well as threats to prosecute the news agency editor, Marimuthu Subramoney.711

Mike Loewe, Port Elizabeth journalist, is released from detention and served with a banning order, effectively preventing him from earning a living.712

Eric Linde, journalist, is released from detention, during which he had held a 10-day hunger strike.713 early September 1986 Discrepancies between official and unofficial information on death tolls provokes "a storm of criticism", even in the Afrikaans press.714

3 September 1986

Johan Coetzee, South African Chief of Police, reimposes media restrictions invalidated by the Natal Supreme Court. Journalists are banned from being "within sight" of any unrest, restricted gathering or security force action, including funerals.715

4 September 1986

"A Natal court... ruled certain emergency regulations invalid, describing them as 'so far-reaching and horrendous' that Parliament itself could never have intended them."716

The government quickly publishes the two regulations, which the Natal Supreme Court had declared invalid, in the Government Gazette, thereby making them legal.717

10 September 1986

The SABC decides to stop all direct television transmission of Tutu's enthronement as archbishop for fear of what he might say in his address.718

25 September 1986

The Bureau for Information's media inquiries centre is closed down "in the interests of accuracy". Not long afterwards the Deputy Minister of Information, Louis Nel, is dropped from the Cabinet. The centre continues to issue daily unrest bulletins, but no longer takes telephonic enquiries.719

7 November 1986

Graham Leach, BBC correspondent, is detained and questioned for several hours after interviewing a woman protester from the Black Sash outside the venue of a meeting between President Botha and business leaders; he was later fined for a traffic offence.720

10 November 1986

Letter to Tony Heard, editor of the Cape Times: "This is your death warrant, you pro-nigger pig. Kiss your family bye. They're going too, sincerely with haste. WASP"721

14 November 1986

"An inquest... found that 'no blame' attached to the police [in the shooting of guerrillas in Guguletu]. The authorities charged the deputy news editor of the Cape Times, Tony Weaver, with publishing false information about the police because he related the essence of the story to the BBC in London. He was acquitted... the magistrate said that although he could not say what the truth was, medical evidence had revealed that the two could not have been shot as the police said. The failed prosecution against Weaver was to vindicate the Cape Times. The immediate confrontation with the police came to an end, though relations remained tense."722

December 1986

Michael Parks, correspondent for the Los Angeles Times is expelled from the country: he was later allowed to stay a further three months.723

1 December 1986

Assassination of Dr Fabian Ribiero and his wife Florence at their home in Mamelodi. The Star's investigation leads to the Civil Co-operation Bureau and a recommendation by the Harms Commission that one of its members, Noel James Robey, be investigated by the Attorney-General. One of the reporters was Craig Kotze, who went on to be made a captain in the South African Police media liaison section.724

When Maokeng "Touch" Kgwete begins investigating the Ribeiro killings he specifically asked witnesses not to identify themselves, to protect them and his newspaper from prosecution under section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act.725

11 December 1986: state of emergency redeclared

The government announces a new set of emergency regulations, which codified and replaced all pre-existing restrictions. Definitions of "subversive statements" were tighter and more focused. Seizure provisions were reinstated, and a procedure for banning a publication for up to three months was laid down. Reporters and photographers were banned from scenes of unrest. These regulations paid increased attention to the non-print media. The most important innovation of these regulations was Section 3, which placed a blanket ban on coverage of a wide range of subjects which might touch on resistance to the government of any kind.726

"The media has become the government's target market... [The government] published yet another set of press curbs. In part a refinement of the old, in part new, they contain a formidable array of restrictions... The Regulations are not as onerous as they, at first glance, appeared to be.

They contain harsh and wide ranging new restrictions, specifically in the area of publicity being given to the initiatives of extra parliamentary organisations (boycotts, informal representative and judicial structures and strikes). For the rest, there has been a closing of some of the loopholes that were exposed by the Courts, in a fairly skilful manner."727

The regulations covered not only the press but individuals, including members of parliament when not in parliament. Further challenges in court were unlikely as the regulations took account of previous supreme court objections. The regulations were much wider and covered previous loopholes.728

Tony Heard: "The editors of many South African newspapers were highly critical of the emergency. Some risked heavy penalties trying to evade its provisions... Most newspapers published daily front-page warnings to readers that they were not getting the full picture of what was happening.

Many strong editorials were written. Yet I well remember how it was not possible to get agreement in the Conference of Editors, at a meeting in Durban, nor of the Newspaper Press Union, for a public declaration against the emergency. There was great fear of PW Botha - particularly from the quarter of the government-supporting press. In contrast, the Media Council came out with a forthright and lucid statement in defence of the right to publish, making the point that readers were even being deprived of the knowledge that they were being deprived of information."729

The Interdepartmental Press Liaison Centre (IPLC) is set up. All reports dealing with a list of contentious subjects had to be cleared by the IPLC.

In the first few days of its existence, the IPLC ruled that 40 of the 134 pieces submitted to it fell outside of the [emergency] regulations. This was interpreted as evidence of the press' "over-interpretation" of the regulations. The IPLC was under-resourced and staffed by unqualified people, and newspapers soon stopped making use of it, relying instead on their own lawyers.730

"For a whole decade we had constantly been asking ourselves the question: 'Can we uphold journalistic standards in an authoritarian society?'

Finally, in December 1986 we had to answer publicly: 'No. We can no longer report fairly in this unfairly restricted society.'"731

12 December 1986

Zwelakhe Sisulu redetained.732

15 December 1986

Thami Mazwai, editor of the Sowetan and member of the IFJ, is refused a renewal of his passport.

18 December 1986

The NPU says that it accepts the need to "avoid giving support and encouragement to those seeking revolutionary change by overt as well as covert means". The government, in discussions with the NPU and the Media Council, was attempting to persuade the mainstream press to submit itself to a revised Media Council code of conduct in exchange for exemption from the emergency regulations. Within the NPU, proprietors were willing to do so, while some editors were not. The NPU informs the government that it cannot agree on the proposed changes to the Media Council constitution, and the government cancels a meeting scheduled for mid-February.733

"There were clear benefits to those journalists, parliamentarians, and other individuals who accepted the alluring invitation to enter an inner circle where they had privileged access to information and to the untiring blandishments of office-holders. PW Botha only narrowly failed, for instance, to tempt the Newspaper Press Union with an exemption from the restrictions of the 1986 state of emergency - while non-members would have suffered its full force."734

"The government's main target by then was the flurry of 'alternative' newspapers which mushroomed as unrest in the country grew after 1984...

They operated outside the clubby atmosphere of the NPU, with which the government would hold regular, confidential discussions. Botha set out to secure the support of the established newspapers in a strategy that would have destroyed alternative newspapers. It happened at a stage when the government was considering whether, and tot what extent, to renew the state of emergency. It was toying with the idea of freeing the established (NPU) newspapers from the provisions of the state of emergency. But if they had accepted the deal he offered they would have been in a worse position.

Once again, the press would have to accept 'guidelines.' These amounted, in effect, to working under the same conditions as the state of emergency...but it would be worse than the emergency - the public would not even know about the arrangement. By regulating themselves secretlyunder voluntary 'guidelines,' and not being openly coerced by state of emergency law, the participating newspapers would escape heavy fines, or jail, for their staffs. The price was treachery against others. The 'alternative' newspapers, significantly not part of this deal, would then be dealt with under the state of emergency by the government, and with a vengeance. The government would get what it always wanted: a 'responsible' and 'patriotic' (which means compliant) established press, with the rest bludgeoned into submission. Though Botha subsequently admitted to its existence, the government proposal was never published. After much discussion, the English-language newspaper groups refused to go along with the Afrikaans groups in their acceptance of the guidelines. At one stage in the discussion, which I attended, it looked touch and go, with lots of wavering, and the NPU was unable to reach agreement, and there were some recriminations between the newspaper groups. All the press remained under the same state of emergency provisions - preferable to one section being used to destroy the other."735

29 December 1986

Sipho Ngcobo, journalist with Business Day, is detained by security police under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act. He was released on 23 January 1987.736

1987

The Dakar talks.737

Stoffel Botha argues that ANC president Oliver Tambo cannot be interviewed alongside the state president as it would give him a status he does not deserve.738

In an interview with Thomas Winship, former editor of the Boston Globe, Stoffel Botha responds to his question about why Zwelakhe Sisulu is in detention by saying "He must be in jail because he is not conducive to the state of affairs we want at this time".739

New Nation succeeds in becoming a weekly instead of a fortnightly newspaper.740

January 1987

Stoffel van der Merwe, head of the government's Bureau for Information, appears on television to justify the government's ban on reports on the ANC.741

6 January 1987

Passport issued to Marimuthu Subramoney, a Durban journalist, is withdrawn.742

Tony Weaver, Cape Times reporter, is charged under section 27B of the Police Act.743

8 January 1987

The Commissioner of Police issues an order prohibiting advertisements or reports calculated to improve the esteem of an unlawful organisation, or explain or defend the actions of such an organisation. This was in response to adverts which appeared in the Argus and Pretoria News on that same day, calling for the unbanning of the ANC. In a subsequent editorial on the matter, the Financial Mail noted that the two newspapers had previously carried an advertisement for the Bureau for Information.744

10 January 1987

Alan Cowell, New York Times Johannesburg Bureau chief, is ordered to leave the country. His replacement, Serge Schmemann, is refused an entry visa.745

18 January 1987

A policeman who assaulted three journalists in Athlone, Cape Town, in September 1985, is given a R500 fine, suspended for three years.

Constable Vlotman had jumped out of a police Casspir and assaulted the journalists with a sjambok while they were sheltering from birdshot and teargas.746

23 January 1987

Sipho Ngcobo, a journalist with Business Day, is released after 25 days in detention under the Internal Security Act. He was questioned about articles he had written, particularly articles about "Comrades".747

29 January 1987

On application by SAAN and Argus, the Court rules that the ban on ANC ads is illegal. The government immediately gives the commissioner of police the power to ban media reports on "any matter", effectively overturning the court ruling. Within two hours of being granted this power, the commissioner prohibits advertisements supporting banned organisations.748

30 January 1987

Message to newspapers from minister of law and order: "Please note that the Minister of law and order has not given carte blanche permission to quote Oliver Tambo. He has given permission to quote freely from three particular newspaper articles which appeared in the New York Times, NewYork Post and the Wall Street Journal."749

22 February 1987

Graham Brown, Agence France Presse correspondent, is detained by Transkei police at a roadblock outside Umtata after covering a raid on the palace of Ciskei's President Sebe. He was released two days later following the intervention of the agency bureau chief and the South African ambassador to Transkei.750

27 February 1987

Two full pages of the Government Gazette are devoted to restrictions on a funeral in Natal.751

Saspu National, a student publication, and Free Azania are ordered to submit all copy for future editing to pre-publication censorship under Section 9(2) of the Publications Act.752

March 1987

First edition of South appears.753

Jo-Anne Bekker, reporter for the Weekly Mail, Koos Viviers, editor in chief of the Eastern Province Herald and Debbie March, Herald reporter, face charges under the Police Act in connection with a story written two years previously, concerning unrest in Cradock in the Eastern Cape.754

5 March 1987

The inquest into the death in police custody of journalist Makompa Kutumela begins. He was last seen alive with sjambok wounds on his body and wounds on his head and face.755

11 March 1987

The Star gets a court order to stop police confiscating an edition with a DPSC ad.756

13 March 1987

Two editions of the New Nation are banned.757

17 March 1987

AFP photographer Walter Dladla and freelance journalist Nana Kutumela are held for questioning by municipal police in Duduza township. Dladla's film and an expired press card were confiscated.758

18 March 1987

Star reporter JoAnne Richards is ordered under section 205 to reveal her sources for a report on detainee injuries.759

The Weekly Mail receives an official warning that it is being investigated under the emergency regulations for publishing an eye-witness account of a violent clash between security forces and members of the Metal and Allied Workers' Union at a rally in Durban.760

22 March 1987

Message from ministry of law and order to newspapers: "The law and order ministry has prohibited publication of anything, including comment, on American television Nightline interview with Oliver Tambo until minister Louis le Grange will have had opportunity to examine a transcript..." Tony Heard: "The significance of that edict was twofold. It showed that le Grange wanted to manage the news; otherwise, why would he first want to 'examine' it? But it went further: It contained a ban that, even in the conditions of a widely defined state of emergency in South Africa, was of no validity. There was no power to prohibit, in advance of publication, 'comment' by newspapers. If papers commented in any way that could run foul of the emergency laws, or the many other laws, that was a chance they took. They could face charges or even seizure. But no law gave the minister power to instruct newspapers not to 'comment'. It was an example of how the government sought to extend already onerous laws by telex to editors."761

April 1987

The Natal Supreme Court throws out definitions of both "security action" and "unrest" in the emergency regulations. It also throws out the ban on ads supporting banned organisations.762

Inkatha gains control of Ilanga.763

11 April 1987

Visnews cameraman Rob Celliers, his sound recorder Dave Copeland and Reuters photographer Wendy Schwegmann are arrested, and cameras confiscated while covering a mine disaster. They were charged with trespassing and photographing bodies before a post-mortem.764

12 April 1987

Rhodes University officials use electric cattle prodders on CBS cameraman George Luse and Reuters photographer Steve Hilton-Barber covering a demonstration at a post-graduation garden party.765

14 April 1987

Michael Burke, BBC television correspondent and Peter Sharpe, ITN correspondent, are told their work permits will not be renewed when they expire later in the month.766

21 April 1987

The Weekly Mail receives a phone call from a man with an Afrikaans accent who says he belongs to an organisation that had decided to eliminate the publication within 10 days.767

May 1987

The Media Council votes, by a narrow margin, to reject the government's proposals that it police non-members (that is, the "progressive press").768

Mona Badela, journalist with the Weekly Mail and Stockholm daily Aftonbladet, is refused a passport to travel abroad.769

1 May 1987

Five journalists are held for questioning after covering a Cosatu rally in Port Elizabeth. Two are members of El-news agency, one is a CBS cameraman, and the others are an ITN cameraman and soundman.770

4 May1987

Students and journalists are arrested at Wits University to prevent a meeting of students which would be addressed by Winnie Mandela.771

5 May 1987

Humphrey Joseph, editor of Saamstaan, is convicted of contravening the Police Act and fined R100 (or 25 days) suspended for three years. He had stated incorrectly that three - instead of two - boys were shot dead by police.772

6 May 1987

Massive stayaway against white election.773

Richard Carleton and Jennifer Ainge, from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, have their work permits withdrawn for alleged biased reporting. In addition, the SABC refused to relay a video report by Carleton to Australia because he had 'totally exceeded the limits of freedom of expression'.774

8 May 1987

Dr. Jon Lewis, British editor of the South African Labour Bulletin is told to leave the country within 30 days.775

12 May 1987

Jon Qwelane, reporter, Herbert Mabuza, photographer and Sam Mathe, driver, all from the Sunday Star, are detained under emergency regulations in Kwandebele while attempting to investigate unrest reports.776

13 May 1987

Jennifer Ainge and Richard Charleton of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation are expelled from South Africa.777

14 May 1987

Michael Burke, a BBC reporter and Peter Sharpe, an ITN reporter, are expelled from the country. Their expulsion coincided with reports quoting "government sources" that there was to be "a sweeping security clampdown on trade unions, universities, organisations using foreign funds for domestic political purposes and "alternative media publications".778

"The Burke/Sharpe incident put the fear of God into people... Nobody would believe that they would take two English journalists and expel them at the same time."779

15 May 1987

Interdepartmental Press Liaison Committee scrapped. Police take back issuing of unrest reports.780

19 May 1987

Steve Mufson of Business Week expelled from South Africa.781

Eleven reporters are arrested when they arrive within minutes of a bomb blast near their offices in central Johannesburg. Police officers claim that they had been tipped off, and were waiting nearby for the bomb to go off.782

June 1987

Film of a visit by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Mozambique is seized by police as it is flown into Lanseria airport in Johannesburg. The German network ARD goes to court over it and wins. Subsequently, tapes are mysteriously wiped or "lost" in transit.783

9 June 1987

An inquest into the death of journalist Lucky Kutumela concludes that 10 Lebowa policemen were responsible for his death. Kutumela died after sustaining 41 sjambok wounds and blows to his head with a blunt instrument.784

11 June 1987: state of emergency reimposed.

Clauses in the regulations which had been removed by the courts are reinstated; the definition of a subversive statement is tightened up; there is a specific prohibition on advertisements supporting banned organisations.785

Police powers in this emergency were substantially augmented (the main difference from the 1986 state of emergency was that the initial period of detention which could be authorised by an ordinary member of the security forces was extended from 14 to 30 days). There had been broad-ranging attacks on the media regulations of the 1986 emergency, with partial success, but restrictions were reintroduced in the 1987 regulations.

Public accountability was prohibited or limited by a ban on information on "unrest events" and police conduct. Political expression and news was restricted by prohibiting the publication of a widelydefined category of statements called "subversive statements". The regulations were not only wide-sweeping, but inscrutable and obscure. Legal process and legal supervision of the exercise of emergency powers was limited, with the following result, for journalists in particular: "[t]he authorities are armed with wide administrative powers to punish without proceeding through legal process. An overseas correspondent faces deportation, not prosecution; a local correspondent faces detention or the seizure of his publication, not prosecution. Authoritarian caprice is as powerful a barrier to the free flow of information as the inscrutable regulations have been."786

15 June 1987

Rehana Roussouw, Argus student reporter, is detained in her home under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act.787

July 1987

Jon Lewis, UK citizen working on the South African Labour Bulletin is expelled from South Africa.788

Marimuthu Subramoney, a journalist at the Press Trust of South Africa in Durban, is denied a passport, with no reason given.789

20 July 1987

Craig Matthew, TV cameraman, pleads not guilty to a charge of resisting arrest at the funeral of Ashley Kriel.790

21 July 1987

Fifteen journalists are arrested at Jan Smuts airport after police charged a crowd. They were released after being questioned.

22 July 1987

"...a delegation of prominent Afrikaners, returning from talks with the ANC in Dakar, was forced to cancel a scheduled press conference and use side exits in order to avoid a band of thugs, led by Eugene Terre'Blanche, that had assembled at the airport to molest them. The press, not the thugs, were bundled into vans and driven away from the scene."791

August 1987

Oliver Baube, an independent French journalist, is refused an extension to his visa.792

7 August 1987

Tony Heard, editor of the Cape Times, is fired, having refused a severance agreement and to sign a letter which said that his dismissal was not political.793

"It was not the government which got him, indeed the government ended up throwing in the towel against him for it withdrew charges preferred against him for publishing the Tambo interview. It was the white business interest which controlled the press which had it in for him. He was really sacked for daring to want to tell the truth."794

12 August 1987

The World Television News offices of Johannesburg are raided by security branch members in search of a video tape covering a speech made by Winnie Mandela.795

13 August 1987

The SADF telexes newspaper editors for lists of staff members who have Citizen Force commitments as it is investigating using journalists, called up for camps, in a new media unit.796

18 August 1987

President Botha attacks the progressive press in Parliament, singling out news agencies for the first time.797

26 August 1987

Robert van Tonder, editor of Die Stem, is visited by security police asking for copies of the latest edition of his paper, in which he attacked PW Botha.798

28 August 1987

Minister of Home Affairs, Stoffel Botha, announces new provisions which empower him to impose a censor on or suspend a publication for up to three months. This power was not new in itself, but the list of reasons for using it was more detailed. The Directorate of Media Relations is set up to administer these provisions. Its function is to monitor newspapers with a view to deciding on potential suspensions.799

18 September 1987

The Weekly Mail reveals the existence of the Interdepartmental Monitoring Committee, which predates the emergency and watches the media for any contraventions of legislation.800

19 September 1987

Patrick Nyoka, a Saamstaan journalist, is shot by kitskonstabels in Bongolethu after a welcome-home party.801

October 1987

Warnings in terms of the new provisions are served on New Nation. Then on South, the Sowetan, the journal Work in Progress, the Weekly Mail, and the ultra right-wing Die Stem.802

In its response to its first warning, the Weekly Mail submits 174 typed pages to Minister Stoffel Botha, saying that it could not discern any rational criteria for what he had objected to and could find no way of inferring such criteria. It also begins a campaign against the warning.

The campaign included engaging the government directly on the legal front, running a campaign in the paper's own pages, and lobbying in South Africa and abroad.803

The Star's "Conflict and the Press" conference in Johannesburg.804

Marapodi Mapalakanye, Transvaal organiser for MWASA, Vincent Mfundisi of the SABC and Themba Kumalo, stringer for AP and the Southern News Group, are held under the Internal Security Act.805

Mbulelo Grootboom, journalist for Saamstaan, is re-arrested shortly after his release, following a year's detention.806

6 October 1987

The home of Mudini Maivha, Star reporter and trade unionist, is raided by more than 20 armed plainclothes police. Maivha had been missing for three days. Police denied he was being detained. He later resurfaced in Zimbabwe.807

23 October 1987

Police confirm they are holding Mapalakanye under security legislation.808

November 1987

During unsuccessful court proceedings challenging Zwelakhe Sisulu's detention, police Major Cornelius van Wyk says in an affidavit: "The reasons for the applicant's first detention were mainly based on his involvement in writing and publishing articles in this newspaper, which led to the creation of conditions of unrest."809

At the same time as Sisulu's appeal was rejected, two Eastern Cape journalists were released after almost 17 months in detention, days before their appeal was due to be heard. MJ Fuzile and Phila Ngqumba jointly ran the Veritas News Agency.810

November 1987

David Turnley, American photographer for National Geographic, is expelled for sending "biased material" overseas.811

17 November 1987

Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Stoffel Botha, gives notice to the Sowetan that a gazetted warning was being considered against it for promoting "inter alia the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress".

30 November 1987

David Turnley, photographer for Detroit Free Press, is expelled from South Africa.812

December 1987

Die Stem, a right-wing newspaper and organ of the Boerestaat Movement, closes down.813

The New Nation is issued a final warning by the Minister of Home Affairs and Communication Stoffel Botha, for publishing "subversive propaganda".814

18 December 1987

Frontline magazine is required to pay Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi R12 000 for an article that called him "pompous" and "self-important".815 late December 1987 Gabu Tugwana, acting editor of New Nation, goes abroad to campaign against the closure of the newspaper.816

1988

Warnings, suspensions and bannings under Section 6 of the Internal Security Act 74 of 1982: New Nation, Grassroots, Out of Step, Saamstaan, South, the Weekly Mail and Work in Progress.817

Periodicals such as Grassroots and New Era were hit by the regulation which empowered the minister to prohibit the publishing of all future issues of a periodical.818

Foreign Minister Pik Botha addresses the Foreign Correspondents' Association: "He accused the assembled journalists of ignoring the country's 'beauty, promise and goodwill' in favour of a relentless focus on the 'dirty work'. Invoking Paul Kruger, Pik Botha addressed the assembled international press corps as 'friends, citizens, thieves and enemies.' He was forced to retreat from the hall under a hail of hisses, boos and shouts of 'Go home.'"819

In 1988 the Eastern Cape News Agency planned a new progressive newspaper which was prevented from being launched because the maximum deposit of R40 000 was asked for under the provision which gave the Minister that power if he considered that he might ban the paper in the future. Also in that year, Vrye Weekblad was asked for R30 000, and the editor faced charges for failing to register the newspaper.820

The Robert Gersony report commissioned by the government of the United States and published in 1988 documents the mass murder, rape and arson carried out by Renamo. The report provoked the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa to describe the activities of the South African supported rebels as "the most brutal holocaust against ordinary human beings" since the Nazis. South Africa's ambassador to Washington, Dr Piet Koornhof, attempted to delay publication of the Report, or to have it copublished in the joint names of the US and South Africa. He was both times rebuffed, but his vigorous attempts to repress the truth about apartheid atrocities demonstrates the evasiveness of the perpetrators and the need for a meticulous reckoning of apartheid's cross-border past.

Secret smear campaign against the ECC. Court cases reveal SADF involvement.821

Delmas treason trial.822

January 1988

New Nation runs a front page report on allegations of police murder and torture, and notes, inside, the 400th day in detention of Zwelakhe Sisulu.823

New Nation is suspended for three months under the emergency media regulations of 1987. The newspaper challenged the media regulations and although the case was dismissed with costs they were given leave to appeal and granted a temporary interdict preventing the minister from suspending the paper or appointing a censor. Until 1990, New Nation was the subject of a warning under the emergency regulations.824

24 February 1988

The UDF and 16 other organisations are restricted.825

The Minister of Home Affairs Stoffel Botha was aiming exclusively at the alternative press at this stage, using a "scientific" method to measure "positive" and "negative" news in any publication.826

March 1988

Mbulelo Grootboom, Reggie Oliphant and Derek Jackson, all from Saamstaan, are banned. Grootboom had been detained for one year after the 1986 emergency was declared, Oliphant headed the Saamstaan project in 1986, and Jackson was detained in 1985 and 1986.827

8 March 1988

Police hold nine journalists and one member of the Federation of Transvaal Women after demonstrations outside the Chamber of Mines in Johannesburg.828

22 March 1988

New Nation suspended for three months in terms of emergency regulations, after the court ruled against the paper in its application against the suspension provisions. The judge said: "Censorship is like a guillotine.

And there is very little use growing honeysuckle up against a guillotine."

The newspaper had been able to continue publishing during the trial.829

25 March 1988

The Weekly Mail publishes the page three which the New Nation had already prepared for that week's edition, on its own page two. The bulk of its front page is given over to New Nation's acting editor Gabu Tugwana's reaction to the suspension.830

16 April 1988

Grassroots, Saamstaan and Out of Step are officially warned, by Minister of Home Affairs Mr Stoffel Botha, that their contents were "causing a threat to public safety or the maintenance of public order or causing a delay in the termination of the state of emergency."831

21 April 1988

Riaan Eksteen, head of the SABC, is relieved of his post following a political row with President Botha.832

May 1988

Worldwide Television News and Visnews protest to South African Airways after four video tapes of an anti-removals church service were wiped in transit.833

2 May 1988

Minister Stoffel Botha appears on television to respond to the Weekly Mail's campaign against its warning.834

9 May 1988

South suspended for a month.835

22 May 1988

Launch of Cape Town's "Save the Press" campaign. The mainstream press was reluctant, on the whole, to become involved.836

1 June 1988

British tv agencies demand that SAA explains the erasure, en route to London, of video tapes of a Lawaaikamp church service.837

10 June 1988: state of emergency re-declared.

The new emergency regulations introduce a news agency register.838

28 June 1988

"The State of Emergency, we fear, is here to stay. And with it, this guide, which is now in its fourth edition. We take no pleasure in producing it. Indeed, we find the very notion of expending scarce time and resources in the task of unravelling a web of gobbledegook that passes for law in name only, repugnant. Unfortunately, it must be done."839

July 1988

PEN's offices are burgled. Files, equipment and all the negatives belonging to photographer Chris Qwazi are found to be missing, but the petty cash has been left behind. The offices had a sophisticated alarm system, which has also been stolen. The security company is baffled.840

Omar Badsha, Rehana Rossouw and Jonathan Shapiro, journalists who were among a group of anti-apartheid activists, are detained under the emergency regulations for helping to organise a concert to mark the 70th birthday of Nelson Mandela.841

20 July 1988

Using the emergency regulations alongside the Internal Security Act, police confiscate 14 300 copies of the Learn and Teach publication The historic speech of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela at the Rivonia Trial, which is part of open court proceedings and the historical record. The publishers' invoice book was photocopied, names and addresses of members of staff were taken, and Exclusive Books was asked to provide descriptions of purchasers of the book.842

22 July 1988

At a meeting called by the Anti-Censorship Action Group and The Save the Press Campaign, it was agreed that journalists and agencies who register in terms of the latest emergency media regulations could be considered government agents. Under the regulation promulgated on 10 June, news agencies are expected to register by 31 July. Mr John Dugard of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies said: "Registration is an attempt to force self-censorship... It is the Government's intention to deprive newspapers of their sources of information instead of closing papers down.843

28 July 1988

News agency register suspended.844 Stoffel Botha, Minister of Home Affairs, states that "practical considerations" had made the suspension necessary. The mainstream media ignored the regulation and the campaigns against it until it became obvious that the terms of the regulation would include themselves, and not only the independent media at which it was aimed.845

Although the Bill [to register news agencies] was aimed at the "subversives" it was vague and too wide and would affect anyone who was doing any reporting at all. At first there was little reaction to the Bill, but soon the "big guns" were firing over the heads of the "little subversives" and the Bill was withdrawn.846

August 1988

5 000 copies of the Muslim community paper Al Qalam are seized. Through continual harassment by police, the paper was effectively banned.847

Then 30 000 copies of Crisis News, published by the Western Province Council of Churches were seized, and shortly after, copies of one issue of the Weekly Mail were confiscated on the grounds that its contents undermined the system of conscription through the combined effects of a cartoon, an advertisement by War Resisters International and a report on 143 men who stated they would never serve in the apartheid army.848

The ECC becomes the first white organisation to be banned since the Congress of Democrats in the 1960s. Shortly before the banning, the Citizen says that: "...the government will have to act firmly to prevent the rot spreading and it will have the support of most South Africans".849

6 August 1988

Police seize the Weekly Mail under emergency regulations.850

October 1988

The Argus publishes coverage of a call, from the courtroom, for a boycott of the municipal elections by terrorism accused, Ashley Kriel. The emergency regulations made such calls illegal. According to Argus journalist Linda Galloway, this indicates that while the Argus tended not to challenge the regulations, "...if the story was good enough we would run with it".851

11 October 1988

Offices of the Namibian in Windhoek are gutted by arsonists; Wit Wolwe claim responsibility.852

16 October 1988

Veliswa Mhlawuli, journalist for Grassroots, is arrested and held under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act. She was held in solitary confinement without access to lawyers, family or friends and was interrogated regularly.853

November 1988

A Lebowa youth was arrested at a bus stop for reading New Nation, questioned at a police station and then taken home, where copies of Learning Nation supplement and a T-shirt were confiscated.854

Vrye Weekblad is launched. It is the target of 47 prosecutions in the next four years.855

Cape Town's "Save the Press" campaign decides to expand its work (pickets and mass meetings against issues such as suspensions) and investigate the setting up of an independent news agency in Cape Town, to involve itself in training initiatives, and to work towards a national structure.856

Aziz Pahad, ANC NEC member, on the foreign media: "We are surprised that foreign correspondents haven't done more to dig out the facts, irrespective of whether it's illegal or not. They did nothing about the restrictions; there's been little reporting about the democratic movement."857

Glenda Dry, information officer at the South African Embassy in London, on coverage in the British press: "Usually it's well-balanced. The restrictions unquestionably worked."858

Eight protesters are arrested and held for 4 days under the emergency regulations while protesting the suspension of the Weekly Mail. Charges were later dropped.859

1 November 1988

Weekly Mail suspended for a month. This was the culmination of a 13-month period of investigation and warnings issued to the paper.860 It is generally believed that the paper's relatively short suspension was the result of its effective campaign. The campaign's success can be attributed in part to the fact that the Weekly Mail's image and readership allowed it to draw on support from "establishment" groups.861

The Star is fined R100 000 by the Minister of Home Affairs, Stoffel Botha, for a letter they published criticising his banning of the Weekly Mail.

The demand arrived at the Star's offices at the same time as two charges, one under the Police Act and one under the Prisons Act. The Star faced several other prosecutions that month.862

December 1988

The Weekly Mail, publishes a double-page spread on Nelson Mandela who had been moved from hospital to a warder's house in the grounds of Victor Verster prison, arguing that he was no longer a prisoner and thus publication of his picture was no longer illegal. It also publishes an interview with Govan Mbeki who had been released from prison but forbidden to speak to the press, without referring to him by name, but clearly identifying him in the headline.863

2 December 1988

Zwelakhe Sisulu freed after almost two years in detention. He is restricted from working as a journalist, giving interviews, attending political meetings, leaving Johannesburg and participating in the activities of 10 named organisations. He has to report to the police twice a day.864

1989

Ferdi Barnard, an alleged hitman employed by the state, is held incommunicado by the police. The police issued a "request" in terms of the old NPU-Police Agreement for newspapers not to publish Barnard's picture.

The Star published the picture on the principle that he had not been charged with a crime, and that prisoners needed all the publicity possible.

The Media Council found in favour of the SAP complainants.865

Harvey Tyson in 1989 at a university symposium in Canada, concerned that he was deliberately breaking the law as a newspaper editor in South Africa:

"Our lawyers are on 24-hour standby. Their brief is not to tell us if the reports referred to them infringe the regulations - we know they do - but to assess the risk. One way or another we are breaking the law perhaps five times a day. It is impossible not to if you are to run any kind of meaningful paper. We believe that - - apart from melodramatic defiance - it hardly matters what you publish, because if the authorities think it safe to get you, they will."866 early 1989

The detainees' hunger strike is widely reported, because it had the necessary "news value", which violence of a more ongoing kind, and processes as opposed to events, did not.867

January 1989

Vrye Weekblad editor, Max du Preez, is found guilty of summarising (not quoting) a contribution to the Leverkusen Conference to which Soviet and South African academics contributed. The prosecutor argued that the aim of the list (of persons not to be quoted) was to silence completely anti-government individuals.868

6 January 1989

The home of Irwin Manoim, co-editor of the Weekly Mail, is damaged by a petrol bomb.869

11 January 1989

Work in Progress, Grassroots, New Era and Al-Qalam are issued with final warnings before they are to be shut down.870

24 January 1989

Zimbabwean-born Fred Kockott, a reporter for the Natal Witness, is held at his desk by military police who tried to register him forcibly for military service. He refused to sign without a lawyer present.871

3 February 1989

KwaNdebele police briefly confiscate two video tapes from an independent documentary film crew at the opening of the homeland's houses of Parliament and order the crew to leave the scene.872

19 February 1989

New Era and Grassroots are suspended for three months.873

23 February 1989

Police prevent a Wits student meeting on campus, ordering an ITN crew to stop filming and leave.874

March 1989

The Media Council commissions two lawyers and three editors to draw up a list of laws which needed to be scrapped or amended to allow proper freedom of information. The intention was to persuade the successor to State President PW Botha that this was a necessary early stage of reform. Some of the laws were scrapped in 1992.875

9 March 1989

Several journalists are arrested while covering a series of protests against detentions. The journalists included Moegsien Williams, editor of South; Mansor Jaffer, a Save the Press coordinator and staff from Grassroots. Police confiscate film from photographer Eric Miller.876

Brian Sokutu, a freelance journalist from Port Elizabeth is released from detention and served with a restriction order.877

25 March 1989

Seven journalists including members of a US television crew are questioned by police after filming a protest in solidarity with hunger-striking detainees in Durban. They had video tapes confiscated.878

April 1989

"...the launch of the Durban-based New Africa was attended by financial and propaganda harassment from the authorities: amongst other factors, it was asked for a R20 000 registration fee, and was visited by security police posing as insurance agents."879

9 April 1989

News editor of the Natal Post, Muhammad Rafiq Rohan, is arrested in connection with a bomb blast near the CR Swart police station. Eleven months later he is convicted on a number of charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison on Robben Island. He is paid his salary until the conviction. He is not released with other political prisoners in terms of the Pretoria Minute of 30 April 1991 and goes on hunger-strike in protest.

He is released on an unconditional pardon from the state president soon after.880

20 April 1989

Kerry Cullinan, Johannesburg journalist, appears in court on charges of possessing the publication Umsebenzi (SACP).881

June 1989

Association of Democratic Journalists launched.882

A Learn and Teach photographer has his film confiscated for taking a picture of police removing 1 340 copies of the book Comrade Moss.883

Max du Preez, editor of Vrye Weekblad, is found guilty of contravening the Internal Security Act and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, suspended for five years for indirectly quoting Joe Slovo. Vrye Weekblad's publishers were also fined R1000, suspended for five years.884

Ken Owen, editor of Business Day and Harvey Tyson, editor of The Star are subpoenaed under Sect 205 of the Criminal Procedures Act.885

9 June 1989: state of emergency re-declared.

Important emergency media regulations are promulgated, similar to those promulgated in 1988. For example, they gave the commissioner power, among others, to prohibit any publication, film or sound recording, subject only to the requirement that the prohibition was in the public interest, maintenance of order, or termination of the state of emergency. "This is a good example of the application of prior censorship in its most stringent form." 886

6 July 1989

Albany News Agency's offices are found to have been burgled, but with no sign of forced entry. This is the fourth such burglary at an ECNA office.

The other three were at PEN.887

13 July 1989

Derrick Jackson, co-editor of Saamstaan, is charged under the Internal Security Act for publishing a photograph of Nelson Mandela.888

17 July 1989

Rashid Seria, former editor of South is charged with contravening emergency regulations with an article entitled "It's 1985 in the schools again."889

19 July 1989

Tertius Myburgh, editor of the Sunday Times and Mandla Tyala, reporter for The Sunday Times, are charged under the Internal Security Act for quoting Harry Gwala.890

20 July 1989

The Minister of Law and Order is ordered to return to CBS News a video-tape of a meeting seized by the police under emergency regulations in February.891

The NPU-Police agreement is amended.

Anton Harber, co-editor of the Weekly Mail , Jo-Ann Bekker, former Weekly Mail reporter and Franz Kruger, former Elnews bureau chief, are charged under emergency regulations in connection with articles appearing in the Weekly Mail in 1987.

Aggrey Klaaste, editor of the Sowetan, is charged under the Internal Security Act for quoting Harry Gwala, a listed person.892

25 July 1989

"...the Argus reported... that it had information that at least three incidents of vehicle stonings had occurred in Cape Town during the weekend, whereas only one had been reported in the unrest report. The [government] spokesperson told the Argus that the official reports did not always contain all the incidents reported, even though they might be classified as 'unrest.'"893

August 1989

Harvey Tyson, editor of the Star, is summoned to a private meeting with "State President-to-be" FW De Klerk at the Inanda Club. He briefed Tyson on his intermediate plans.894

Saamstaan is charged with publishing a picture of Nelson Mandela when other newspapers had done the same after his tea party with PW Botha.895

7 August 1989

Katherine Mary Savage and Annalise Laura Bosman, University of Cape Town students, are charged with contravening the emergency regulations by publishing comments about a school boycott.896

8 August 1989

Benny Gool, photographer from Grassroots, is detained with two priests after an "illegal gathering" of high school students in Cape Town.897

9 August 1989

Seven journalists are arrested at the University of the Western Cape for being in an unrest area.898

15 August 1989

Three New African reporters suffer burns to their eyes when they opened a "poisoned" copy of the New Nation, posted from Johannesburg.899

Mathatha Tsedu, Sowetan reporter, is turned away from a meeting due to be addressed by FW de Klerk in Pietersburg as he was said to have no press accreditation. White reporters covering the event said that they had not been asked for press accreditation.900

17 August 1989

Security police confiscate a tape-recording made by Sowetan reporter Ismael Lagardien at an MDM press conference in Johannesburg. Lagardien was told the tape was "needed for an exhibition case regarding the promotion of the aims of a banned organisation." 901

The Port Elizabeth News is robbed of all its equipment, including a fax machine, a photocopier and two computers. There was no sign of forced entry.902

18 August 1989

The tape of a BBC TV interview with UDF leader Mohammed Valli Moosa is seized and Moosa is arrested at his Braamfontein office.903

19 August 1989

Several photographers and foreign cameramen are arrested while covering defiance campaign protests in Cape Town against segregated beaches. Police used sjamboks and dogs against the protesters shortly afterwards.904

20 August 1989

SABC presenter Martin Locke is suspended after displaying a copy of the Star newspaper on television for a few seconds.905

23 August 1989

A photographer is arrested at the University of the Western Cape while covering a demonstration by academics, students and campus workers demanding the right to protest peacefully. The same day, a reporter is escorted out of Guguletu by security police, and other journalists ordered to leave the area while covering demonstrations which included a march by teachers and students to the local police station, and a second march in which Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rector Jakes Gerwel were tear-gassed.906

26 August 1989

Three foreign television crews covering a demonstration in Durban against a rebel rugby tour are arrested.907

27 August 1989

Four journalists are detained briefly by Ciskei police on their way to cover defiance activity in King William's Town.908

28 August 1989

Police confiscate film from photographers who were filming police arresting people trying to board segregated buses in Pretoria as part of the MDM's defiance campaign.

A number of foreign journalists are detained briefly and their cameras confiscated. They and local journalists were ordered away from a schools protest in East London.909

30 August 1989

Sandy Smith, a photographer, is detained under the emergency regulations.910

Ken Owen, Business Day editor, is refused permission by Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee to publish a statement delivered in Stockholm in June by ANC leader Oliver Tambo. Police announced they would be investigating the route by which the newspaper had received a copy of Tambo's statement.911

31 August 1989

Two foreign television crews are arrested and their tapes seized at Wits University when police dispersed a meeting they were covering.912

Twelve journalists are arrested while protesting against the emergency media regulations outside the offices of the Argus in Cape Town.913

1 September 1989

Patrick Mtalo, photographer from the Natal Mercury, has his film confiscated during a demonstration against the Labour Relations Act at the University of Natal.914

2 September 1989

52 journalists and camera crews are arrested while covering a planned march to Parliament in Cape Town. The arrested, who were released after the protesters were dispersed, included representatives of CBS, NBC, ABC, Norwegian Broadcasting, Tokyo Broadcasting, Yoimuri Shimbun, Visnews, WTN, Austrian TV, the Weekly Mail, the Cape Times, the SABC, SAPA, and Radio 702. The Visnews/BBC office in Cape Town was raided and 63 video tapes were confiscated.915

3 September 1989

Journalists are ordered to leave the scene of a protest against beach segregation in Durban. Film was confiscated from five photographers.916

Two tv crews are arrested at a workers' meeting in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. Journalists were warned not to photograph the police or their vans.917

4 September 1989

Cameraman Rapitse Montsho, a freelance photographer and two others were arrested outside a church where a "free and fair elections" rally that was banned was turned into a church service instead of protest.918

5 September 1989

12 journalists are arrested while taking part in a press freedom demonstration by the SASJ.919

Obed Bapela, journalist from Learn and Teach, is detained under emergency regulations.920

6 September 1989

General elections and mass protest action. Many journalists ignore the emergency restrictions and reports on the events, including extensive violence in Cape Town. More than 74 journalists are arrested as a result.921

22 September 1989

Anton Harber, Weekly Mail co-editor, and former journalist Jo Ann Bekker, are charged for allegedly contravening the emergency regulations by reporting on conditions of detainees.922

21 November 1989

The New African is faced with four charges in relation to articles published between June and August under the Prisons Act, Internal Security Act and emergency regulations.923

December 1989

Four security police officers killed in the Motherwell bomb. The attack is attributed to the ANC. In June 1996 three other security police officers are found guilty of the Motherwell murders by a Port Elizabeth court.

Attacks such as these "served a double purpose of propaganda as well as silencing apartheid's own operatives who were threatening to disclose security police misdeeds."924

4 December 1989

Charges against Sowetan editor Aggrey Klaaste are withdrawn.925

12 December 1989

Veliswa Mhlawuli, Grassroots journalist, is convicted of harbouring or conceal ing members of the ANC between 1985 and 1988.926

1990

"Pro-ANC youths reportedly detained the Inkatha Freedom Party newspaper's [Ilanga] delivery vans in townships outside Durban and threatened drivers on several occasion."927

Harms Commission.

January 1990

Journalist Keri Harvey is sentenced to 30 days' imprisonment in Port Elizabeth for refusing to disclose the names of her sources for an article she had written on illegal abortion.928

12 January 1990

Max du Preez, editor of Vrye Weekblad, and Jacques Pauw, reporter, appear in court in Johannesburg to hand over evidence of alleged police force hit squads. They were subpoenaed under section 205.929

20 January 1990

Under the Criminal Procedure Act, General Neethling sues Vrye Weekblad and the Weekly Mail for a total of R1,5 million for reports in which former police captain Dirk Coetzee claimed that Neethling has supplied him with poison to be used on anti-apartheid activists. Mr Justice Johan Kriegler dismissed the claim, saying that he believed Coetzee. DP leader Zach de Beer said: "The fact that the court found in favour of a relatively small newspaper, which is certainly not popular in government circles, and against a prominent general of the police force must encourage any person or any party which is dedicated to human rights." Raymond Louw, chairman of the Campaign for Open Media and publisher of the Southern Africa Report, said that the government should throw open the whole investigation into police death squads; he suggested that the government use Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act - "which they have used against journalists" - to extract information from the police.930

21 January 1990

Prof John Dugard of Wits University says that the press, together with the legal profession, are the major watchdogs of the judiciary and should not be afraid to speak out more freely against judgments they considered inappropriate.931

27 January 1990

A photographer and a reporter are attacked by right-wingers while covering an anti-apartheid demonstration at Boksburg lake.932

1 February 1990

Three British reporters touring with the rebel English cricket team are accused of inciting township violence by police in Bloemfontein.

2 February 1990

De Klerk announces his reforms.933

Relaxation of regulations about allowing reporters into "unrest" areas.934

Vrye Weekblad journalist Charles Leonard is among four people injured when police used dogs, batons and teargas to disperse crowds celebrating the unbanning of the ANC, PAC, and SACP among others.935

3 February 1990

Repeal of the 1989 Media Emergency Regulations.936

Marius van der Walt, photographer for the Volksblad, is thrown off a fire escape, kicked and assaulted with batons, pick handles and sjamboks when he attempted to take pictures of AWB members in the Orange Free State. He suffered concussion, a broken nose and other injuries in the attack.937

5 February 1990

Tyson and other newspaper people meet De Klerk at Tuynhuis.938

Police chase journalists away from the scene of violent clashes in Tembisa, citing emergency regulations.939

Alexander Joe, photographer for AFP, is injured when a stone was thrown through his car window while he was driving through Tembisa.940

Gareth Furby, ITN journalist, and Paul Weaver, Today newspaper journalist, are ordered out of the country for filing "distorted" reports and for "emotionally laden and reckless" reporting, respectively.941

Entry visas are denied to three journalists from the French Communist party newspaper, L'Humanite.942

8 February 1990

Police use teargas to stop a cavalcade of minibus taxis from carrying hundreds of protesters from Alexandra to Wanderers Stadium. They also removed a number of local and foreign photographers and television cameramen, including a CBS television crew. They later claimed that the journalists had been transporting protesters.943

19 February 1990

De Klerk lifts some of the emergency media regulations. Those on visual material remained in force.944

23 March 1990

Sithembele Khala, MWASA secretary general, is detained.945

2 April 1990

A policeman in Mbali sprays teargas into the face of CBS sound technician Themba Hlatshwayo after Hlatshwayo refused to leave the area.946

4 April 1990

Giselle Raubenhimer, journalist at the Daily Dispatch, is detained for 24 hours at a demonstration by the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union in East London.947

5 April 1990

20 local and foreign journalists are detained briefly when 50 squatters were arrested when they failed to disperse during a march on Parliament.948

7 April 1990

Journalists Sipho Khumalo, Vusi Msani and a visiting Dutch journalist, are fired at by KwaZulu police while covering a story in KwaMakhuta.949

12 April 1990

Horatio Motjuwadi, sports editor for the Sowetan and former official of MWASA, is detained under section 29 of the Internal Security Act.950

23 June 1990

Threats are made against journalists from the Weekly Mail and City Press during an anti-sanctions march by Inkatha supporters.951

July 1990

The July issue of Femina is banned for containing an article on child abuse. After an appeal, the banning was lifted.952

4 July 1990

"A bomb exploded at the Afrikaans anti-apartheid newspaper's (Vrye Weekblad] offices at about 1:00 a.m. A caller told a local radio station that the Afrikaans Resistance Movement was responsible. A spokesman for the organisation later called to deny involvement."953 Max du Preez, the paper's editor, receives a threatening phone call the same day.954

5 July 1990

Sam Mabe, the assistant editor of the Sowetan was killed in his car in Soweto by two unidentified gunmen. He was an advocate of press freedom, active in the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and once vice president of the Media Workers' Association of South Africa.955

27 July 1990

Michael Opperskalski, West German journalist, is denied an entry visa.956

3 August 1990

Brigadier General Leon Mellett, the Law and Order Ministry spokesman, serve a notice of intent to sue the Vrye Weekblad because of its claims that he had misled the media."957

24 August 1990

Reporters are barred from areas of unrest under a regulation of the Declaration of Unrest Areas, which authorises police to clear an area of any presence that constitutes a "threat to the peace". The Declaration of Unrest Areas is a 1986 decree which had not been applied until this year.

The decree appears to serve as a replacement for restrictions imposed on journalists under the state of emergency, which was lifted in June.

2 September 1990

Two bombs exploded outside the offices of Beeld in Doornfontien, Johannesburg, wrecking a car and shattering windows. Responsibility was claimed by the right-wing organisation Orde Boerevolk.958

4 September 1990

Police arrest WTN sound recorder Brian Greene and charge him with resisting arrest and violating the "unrest regulations" when the WTN team was ordered to leave Vosloorus on the East Rand.959

25 September 1990

The Rand Supreme Court prohibits the Financial Mail from publishing an article about Sage Holdings based on tapped phone conversations and an Allied Bank document so secret it had not been seen by the Allied Board.960

8 October 1990

Evidence is given in a defamation and damages suit by Lieutenant General Lothar Neethling, Chief Deputy Commissioner of Police, against the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad. Neethling is suing over articles which reported evidence given by self-confessed hit-squad members alleging the provision of "knock-out drops" to aid police in abductions.961

9 October 1990

AP bureau chief Barry Renfrew is subpoenaed to hand over photographs showing a man accused of being an Inkatha spy being murdered on a train platform.962

12 October 1990

Linden Burns, Business Day journalist, is subpoenaed to appear in court in connection with his account of alleged police partiality during township unrest in August 1990.963

17 October 1990

The Argus group publishes over a million supplements to back up a series of matriculation exam refresher courses, linked to a similar television series.964

25 October 1990

Max du Preez, editor of Vrye Weekblad, is sentenced to four months in jail or a large fine in relation to a story published in the paper alleging that the Soviet Studies department at the University of Stellenbosch is a front for the National Intelligence Service. The paper's publisher was also fined.

28 October 1990

Journalists are threatened by some marchers when 30 000 Inkatha supporters marched on John Vorster Square police headquarters to protest against alleged police harassment.965

November 1990

Vrye Weekblad received back its R30 000 deposit with interest, following an undertaking in the Pretoria Minute that consideration would be given to the repeal of newspaper registration.966

3 November 1990

Kevin Carter, photographer, is attacked by a group of PAC youths after taking pictures of the youths attacking a woman staffing a Red Cross station during the funeral of PAC President Zeph Mothopeng. Alf Khumalo, photographer, is threatened when taking pictures of a police van during the Mothopeng funeral.967

21 November 1990

A City Press reporter is barred from covering a memorial service in Mamelodi by youths who objected to a previous report of his on an entirely different issue.968

23 January 1991

A reporter is punched in the face by a member of the crowd during a demonstration by 150 members of the Azania National Youth Unity against Western military intervention in the Gulf.969

February 1991

Lindilo Siminolo, a journalist with Radio Ciskei, is suspended from his job in Bisho by order of Brigadier Oupo Gqozo. Siminolo apparently offended Gqozo by asking him to comment on the death of Charles Sebe, brother of the former president, who had been killed by the homeland's police force.970

8 February 1991

Charges are dropped against Anton Harber, editor of the Weekly Mail. He had refused to reveal which of his reporters had attended a press conference held by COSATU.971

18 February 1991

The editor of the Conservative party newspaper Die Patriot, is served with a section 205 subpoena after refusing to reveal to police the source of his information for an article alleging that a key witness in the trial of Winnie Mandela had been kidnapped by members of the government's intelligence services.972

March 1991

Andries Beyers, General Secretary of the Conservative Party, is sentenced to 14 days in jail for refusing to give sources for an article in his party newspaper Die Patriot. The story said that police "removed" a key witness in the Winnie Mandela case.973

5 March 1991

Patrick Laurence, journalist for the Star and correspondent for the London Guardian, is sentenced to 10 days in jail for refusing to reveal sources for an article about Winnie Mandela. He was released on bail.974

6 March 1991

Journalists demonstrating against Laurence's sentence are beaten by police.

30 were arrested and interrogated at Durban police station.975

22 March 1991

Richard Steyn, editor of the Star, is charged with libel for two articles deemed defamatory to the judiciary. He was later acquitted.976

3 April 1991

Mputhumi Mafani, Radio Ciskei's leading presenter, is arrested in the homeland, held for three days under Section 26 of the Ciskeian National Security Act, and released without being charged.977

4 April 1991

The Weekly Mail is charged with publishing false information about the police after a report about violence in Alexandra appeared in the paper.978

6 April 1991

Thladi Khumolo, freelance photographer, is beaten by AWB demonstrators and his equipment smashed, in Krugersdorp. Graham Williams, photographer, has his film grabbed by an AWB official. Mathatha Tsedu is threatened with a club before he was forced to flee.979

16 April 1991

Notes, documents and recordings belonging to Ivor Powell and Charles Leonard, reporters at the Star, are confiscated by police. They were conducting inquiries about a former member of the security services, Nico Basson.980

27 April 1991

Police confiscate a tape from Martin Williams, deputy editor of the Natal Witness, containing a confession by a policeman claiming he had been a member of the police intelligence unit for 10 years and was involved in the assassination of Chief Maphumulo.981

29 April 1991

Police make a complete search of the offices of journalists Lakela Kaunda and S'bu Mngadi in an attempt to force them to reveal information about a series of interviews they had carried out following a "sensitive trial" in Natal.982

30 April 1991

Muhammad Rafiq Rahan, managing editor of the Natal Post, is allowed to benefit from a general amnesty declared on April 30 after a 20 -day hunger strike. He had been sentenced to 15 years in jail for sabotage and held on Robben Island. During his hunger strike, he was taken to a hospital and kept tied to his bed.983

17 May 1991

A reporter and photographer from the Star are forced off the road while driving, by AWB members in Ventersdorp. A rifle was pointed at them and permission to take pictures of AWB members and the AWB office was refused.984

mid-1991

New African is refunded its R20 000 deposit with interest.985

2 July 1991

Nicola Cunningham-Brown of the Daily News is ordered under section 205 to reveal her sources for a report on AWB activities in Natal.986

31 July 1991

Internal Security and Intimidation Amendment Act 138 of 1991: promulgated on 31 July 1991 after an ultimatum by the ANC.987

"Under the amended Act it was no longer an offence to propagate the ideology of communism. Other deleted powers involved ...the banning of publications (for their communist inclinations), punitive registration fees for newspapers... and the prohibition on quoting as a result of listing.

Retained powers were, however, considerable... All constituted forms of censorship."988

"The Internal Security Act has been drastically amended but it remains a potent weapon in the hands of the state, as was shown by the numbers of detentions in the early 1990s... The civil rights credentials of any state that requires a 'Security Act' in peacetime must be suspect... Security legislation should be abolished as it represents too much of a temptation to future governments to control freedom of expression and information."989

August 1991

Bongani Mavuso of the Indicator is briefly detained after covering a demonstration of homeless people calling for police protection.990

5 October 1991

Three journalists are among 16 arrested in Mmabatho following a demonstration calling for the release of 147 political prisoners held in the region. The journalists were released after questioning.991

31 October 1991

Two Daily Dispatch reporters lay charges of assault against Brigadier Oupa Gqozo's bodyguards following an incident outside the SABC studios after Gqozo refused to answer questions about the state of emergency on Ciskei.992

1 November 1991

A Star journalist in Soweto is threatened with death by eight armed young men if he were to ignore a call to strike against VAT.993

26 November 1991

Three Danish journalists, Jesper Hjorth, deputy editor of Daily Bladet, Bjarke Larsen of Berlingske Tidende and tv reporter Niels Frid-Nielson, are arrested in Mafikeng, Bophuthatswana, as they finish interviewing political prisoners on a hunger strike in the hospital. They were released after an hour of questioning.994

5 December 1991

Khabu Mkhize, from the Natal Witness, receives telephone threats in Richmond after publication of a report on the violent atmosphere of the town.995

1992

Nelson Mandela gives an address to the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers in Prague in which he criticises the agreements between the NPU and the authorities. He said: "...mainstream newspapers, despite their power, continued to support shameful special agreements with the South African Police, the South African Defence Force and the South African Department of Prisons - a regime of self-censorship that protected the Pretoria government against revelations of its worst excesses."996

11 January 1992

Peter Magubane, Time photographer, is banned by the AWB from attending a meeting at Ventersdorp. The reason given was that the presence of a black journalist could cause a disturbance.997

February 1992

John Carlin of the London Independent, who had helped John Drury, BBC television producer, with his investigation, receives several threatening phone calls and a visit from two "computer technicians" who were turned away by his domestic worker. The same "technicians" managed to enter the home of freelance journalist Brenda Goldblatt, John Drury's assistant, and copy the contents of her computer's hard drive which contained confidential information about the inquiry.998

6 February 1992

Flying back from Johannesburg, John Drury is arrested by customs officials at London's Heathrow airport due to an anonymous phone call alleging that he had drugs in his suitcase; which turned out to be true. He maintained, however, that the drugs must have been put there by the South African security forces. Drury had just completed an inquiry into the involvement of the South African security forces in the political violence of many parts of the country.999

15 February 1992

A City Press photographer receives death threats while covering the funeral of gangster Steven Nkobinde. The Nkobinde family took away the photographer's film.1000

March 1992

Muhammad Rafiq Rohan returns to Robben Island as deputy editor of South in a staged masquerade in which he spent a night on the island for asking questions which caused "pain and suffering". With him is Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok who is "sentenced" for "upsetting the media". SAPA reports: "The whole spirit of change could be summed up in the photograph taken of both prisoners - Rohan and Vlok - in prison garb with their arms on each other's shoulders."1001

1 March 1992

Willie Mashau, freelance journalist and contributor to the Star, is threatened with death by Brigadier Gabriel Ramushwana, strongman of Venda.

Mashau had just written a report on a two-day strike in Venda and said his home had been searched and his telephone tapped.

8 March 1992

A bomb attack damages an SABC television transmitter at Port Elizabeth.

16 March 1992

Joao Silvo of the Star, cameraman Geoff Chiltern, and sound engineer Dinkie Mkhize of Visnews, are injured when a grenade exploded near their vehicle in Meadowlands, Soweto.1002

17 March 1992

Sindile Nkongana, commentator on Radio Transkei, finds his car wrecked. He had received death threats after talking on the radio about a guerrilla fighter of the PAC who had been killed.1003

21 March 1992

Rosalie Telelo, a trainee journalist with the Weekly Mail, is assaulted while covering an Inkatha demonstration in Johannesburg.1004

22 March 1992

Ken Owen in the Sunday Times: "...the anti-apartheid movement, intolerant of dissent, totalitarian in outlook and violent in method, became the mirror image of the apartheid state... the instruments of terrorism were used to control populations, for and against."1005

28 March 1992

Martin Creamer, editor of Engineering News, receives death threats by telephone from the management of a leading electronics company.1006

April 1992

Steve Matthewson of the Natal Mercury is attacked while covering a demonstration in support of a student leader who had been banned from attending lectures. A group of students apparently surrounded him chanting "Death to Matthewson".

April 1992

Richard Shorey, Daily News photographer, is knocked over by a group of students who attempted to steal his equipment.1007

1 April 1992

Stones are thrown at Beeld reporter Gerdo Kruger and photographer Konrad du Plessis in Alexandra.1008

6 April 1992

Stones are thrown at journalist Nomsa Thembe and two colleagues from the Natal Witness as they tried to take photographs at an Inkatha rally in Imbali.1009

13 April 1992

Yunus Mohamed, photographer for South, is beaten up by two police officers at a National Party meeting in Mitchell's Plain.1010

15 April 1992

Zwelakhe Sisulu, editor of New Nation and Enoch Sithole, political correspondent, are summoned by police to reveal their sources regarding a story about police and 'taxi wars'. The complaint was withdrawn on 5 May.1011

22 April 1992

Philip Zulu, journalist from the Star, is slapped in the face by a lawyer and former judge in the Natal Supreme court because of "two cases of insulting and intolerable behaviour by the reporter".1012

5 May 1992

Hector Nkwanyana, an SABC cameraman, is fatally injured when he was run down by a minibus while filming disturbances at Wadley Stadium in Imbali township.1013

9 May 1992

Khabu Mkhize, deputy editor of Natal Witness, is assaulted by soldiers of the army's 32nd battalion in Imbali while trying to copy down their numbers. Meanwhile, freelance photographer Themba Mgobi is chased by 13 soldiers, one of whom hit him over the head while another emptied his camera.1014

9 May 1992

Scope is banned throughout the country.1015

22 May 1992

The Supreme Court finds that the action taken by the state against journalist Patrick Laurence is "irregular and invalid". He was detained after he refused to reveal his source to police in their search for a missing witness in the trial of Winnie Mandela. The court noted that the Criminal Procedure Act did not empower the authorities to use section 205 to trace witnesses. Judge van Schalkwyk said in his judgment: "It is hard to resist the conclusion...that the (authorities) were motivated by a purpose which is not authorised by section 205... it appears from a reading of the record that the primary purpose for the issue and enforcement of the subpoena had been the illegitimate purpose."1016

29 June 1992

Guy Adams of the Weekly Mail, Nic Erasmus and Nick Van Der Linde of the Citizen, and Johan Kuus of SAPA and the Sunday Times, are attacked by a gang of youths taking part in the funeral of victims of violence.1017

July 1992

Young PAC supporters threaten to necklace a foreign television crew during a football match.1018

12 July 1992

Patty Moeng, freelance photographer for the Sowetan, is shot and wounded by unknown assailants outside her Soweto home.1019

August 1992

Pat Seboko, reporter from the Sowetan, is surrounded by 300 young ANC militants and threatened with necklacing.1020

3 August 1992

Paul Taylor of the Washington Post and London Guardian, Philip Van Niekerk of the Weekly Mail and a stringer for several foreign newspapers, are shot at by four men who then stole their car. Van Niekerk suffered head injuries and Taylor was shot in the chest.1021

Paul Tilsley, from Sky News, is shot at by Inkatha supporters as his crew was filming residents at a home for migrant workers in Alexandra.1022

4 August 1992

An explosion damages the offices of the government press group National Pers, whose publications included Beeld. 1023

September 1992

Nelson Mandela gives an interview to the Star's editor in chief Richard Steyn and its political editor Shaun Johnson.1024

7 September 1992

Clyde Russel, an AFP stringer, is wounded when Ciskei police opened fire without warning on tens of thousands of ANC demonstrators, at what became known as the Bisho Massacre.1025

16 September 1992

The Nelspruit home of Gert Gerber, manager of the publishing company of the paper Die Laevelder, is set fire to, allegedly by ANC militants.1026

28 September 1992

Guy Adams, a photographer for the Weekly Mail and Joao Silva, a photographer for the Star, are subpoenaed to give evidence about a necklacing they had photographed after a funeral for victims of the Boipatong massacre.1027

14 October 1992

A grenade is thrown at the home of Mhleli Maljilo, head of Radio Ciskei, at Pakamisa. His wife was seriously injured and the building damaged.1028

16 October 1992

Weekly Mail photographer Kevin Carter is sentenced to six months in jail or a R1 000 fine for entering the Leeuwkop prison without permission. He had been investigating reports that the AWB had a weapons cache in the basement.

21 October 1992

A pig's head and the words "That's enough" in Afrikaans are written on the home of the editor of the newspaper Vislo, in Welkom, Orange Free State. At least one bullet had been fired at one of the bedrooms.1029

14 November 1992

Johannes Ngcobo, a member of the South African Press Cooperative, is assaulted at his home in Hillbrow by three men. One claimed to be a policeman and fired before running away.1030

20 November 1992

Bongani Mavuso, a reporter for Indicator, is forced to crash his car when he was shot in Soweto. Two days earlier he was threatened by Ali Khan, a member of the Lenasia South East Management Committee, which Mavuso had been investigating.1031

22 November 1992

FW de Klerk says, in the Star, that the country "dare not be forced off course by new shocks about old things".1032

1993

The Affected Organisations Act is repealed by the Abolition of Restrictions on Free Political Activity Act 206 of 1993.

January 1993

Joe Louw, a journalist, is detained briefly.1033

10 January 1993

S'bu Mngadi, Durban Bureau Chief for City Press was repeatedly harassed and threatened by members of an alleged protection racket syndicate led by KwaZulu sergeant Siphiwe Mvuyane. One member attempted to hit Mngadi over the head with a bottle; he was also threatened with a gun. Later, his tyres were slashed.1034

18 January 1993

Xoliswa Swarts and Zoliswa Sigabi, both from Radio Ciskei, are suspended for broadcasting ANC and Transkei government criticisms of comments made by Brigadier Oupa Gqozo.1035

27 January 1993

15 members of the PAC forcibly enter and occupy the Umtata offices of the Daily Dispatch, shutting down operations for six days for what the PAC said was a news blackout on their activities.1036

1 February 1993

Four photographers, Joao Silva from the Star, Herbert Mabuza from the Sunday Times, Nick van der Linde from the Citizen, and Steve Hilton-Barber from the Saturday Star, are attacked by a mob during a violent taxi protest against traffic authorities in Johannesburg. Silva was hit in the head with a brick, Mabuza was shot in the arm, van der Linde was kicked, beaten and robbed and Hilton-Barber was hit on the head with a tear gas canister.1037

3 February 1993

David Hendriks, a driver with the Daily Dispatch, is briefly abducted by two gunmen from APLA while delivering papers in the Transkei. They then ordered him to ignite a bundle of newspapers. As he fled, they fired two shots at him and ignited the newspapers and van.1038

16 February 1993

Jacques Pauw and Peta Thornycroft are accused by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of colluding with the NIS to prove that Inkatha was smuggling weapons from Mozambique into South Africa.1039

15 March 1993

The offices of the Star and M-Net are searched for documents pertaining to corruption in the Department of Transport.1040

24 March 1993

A group of student protesters marching through Johannesburg verbally threaten and physically harass several journalists.1041

The files of Jacques Pauw, reporter for the Star, are searched by police who were apparently looking for documents relating to the auditor-general's findings concerning corruption in the Department of Transport.1042

28 March 1993

A Sunday Times delivery van is ambushed, shot at and targeted with a grenade while travelling between Durban and East London. The driver escaped uninjured.1043

April 1993

Ken Owen of the Sunday Times and Konrad du Plessis of Beeld are reported to be on the hit-list found in the home of Chris Hani's murderer.1044

10 April 1993

Assassination of Chris Hani.1045

12 April 1993

Reuters photographer Juda Ngwenya and other journalists are caught in the crossfire between police and the crowd, following the assassination of Chris Hani. Youths stoned the vehicle of a Reuters television crew and shot at journalists who attempted to film a burning car.1046

14 April 1993

Lee Edwards, BBC soundman and Glen Middleton, BBC cameraman, are shot and wounded when police opened fire on a crowd of marchers outside the Protea Police Station in Soweto.1047

14 April 1993

George Galanakis and Mkhululi Bolo, both of the Daily Dispatch, are stoned during a rally at the South African embassy in Umtata.1048

22 April 1993

Fred de Lange, Bureau Chief for the Citizen, and his wife Ilse, are attacked by Piet "Skiet" Rudolph, head of the right-wing Orde Boerevolk, in the Citizen's offices, after de Lange wrote an article connecting the arrest of Clive Derby-Lewis with Hani's assassination. Rudolph also verbally threatened and harassed Citizen administrative clerk Nans Gericke.1049

23 April 1993

Calvin Thusago, a reporter for the SABC, is stabbed to death by a mob of youths as he travelled back from Sharpeville to film the desecration of black graves. He was travelling with Dudley Saunders, SABC cameraman, who was also stabbed but survived. Members of the ANC Youth League turned over suspects to police the following day.1050

26 April 1993

Sam Msibi, a cameraman for WTN, is shot five times in the chest on his way home to Katlehong. He survived.1051

30 April 1993

The transmitter of Bush Radio, a community station in Case Town, is reportedly confiscated by government officials the day before the station was to go on air as part of a national campaign to end the monopoly of the state-owned broadcasting corporation.1052

5 May 1993

John Woodroof, a reporter from the Daily News, is attacked at the funeral of KwaZulu police sergeant Siphiwe Mvuyane by members of the KwaZulu police force. Woodroof had criticised Mvuyane in several articles.1053

13 May 1993

Sowetan newspaper vendors are attacked by members of COSAS after an advertisement from the Department of Training and Education was published in the paper.1054

18 May 1993

A mortar bomb and grenades are found outside the home of Esther Waugh, the Star's political correspondent. The Star suspected it was the work of right-wing extremists.1055

25 May 1993

Sithembele Khala, the general secretary of MWASA, is detained and later released without being charged.1056

26 May 1993

Tsale Makam, a reporter from the Sowetan, is threatened by several defendants in the Boipatong massacre trial.1057

2 June 1993

Daizher Mqahba, deputy president of MWASA, is arrested.1058

10 June 1993

Mariola Biela, photographer for the Citizen, is attacked by Piet Rudolph when he left the courtroom in Pretoria where Rudolph faced charges of assaulting Citizen reporters Fred and Ilse de Lange. Biela's camera was damaged.1059

Saira Essa, reporter for M-Net, Wayne Raath and Lawrence Khumalo, also from M-Net, are held up at gunpoint in Alexandra while shooting a documentary on the right-wing element in South Africa. More than R80 000 worth of camera equipment was stolen, as well as film from previous shoots and interviews with key political leaders. Essa suspected that the hold-up was premeditated.1060

6 July 1993

Mbuzeni Zulu, photographer for the Sowetan, is held hostage by Katlehong Kwesini hostel-dwellers for more than two hours. He was accused of being an ANC spy.1061

15 July 1993

Johan de Waal, Beeld reporter, is shot and wounded by men with AK-47s while doing a story on township violence in Katlehong. He had entered the township with a police captain.1062

Numerous reporters and photographers are verbally assaulted outside the courtroom where AWB members were on trial in connection with the occupation of the World Trade Centre.1063

21 July 1993

John "Dinky" Mkhize and Bruce Sokutu, Reuter television reporters, are threatened by armed youths in Daveyton when they were investigating police reports of mutilated bodies near a Zulu hostel. Their bullet-proof vests were stolen.1064

30 July 1993

Jennifer Turner from the Citizen is assaulted by members of the AWB, who also stole her camera equipment, while taking pictures of AWB members protesting the Weekly Mail/Anti-Censorship Action Group Film Festival.

Turner was hospitalised with back injuries.1065

Dennis Goddard, cameraman for the SABC, is arrested at an AWB protest because police objected to the bright light of his camera.1066

4 August 1993

Andries Cornelissen, Beeld reporter, is sentenced to one year in prison after being subpoenaed under section 205 of the Criminal Procedures Act.

He refused to answer questions in connection with a rally in which ANC

Youth League leader Peter Mokaba allegedly said "kill the Boer, kill the farmer".1067

28 August 1993

Ponko Masiba, Imvo reporter, Phila Ngqumba of the East Cape News Agency and Mike Knott, a photographer for the Daily Dispatch, are threatened and attacked by PAC bodyguards and supporters at a PAC rally in Mdantsane township.1068

21 September 1993

Mike Procter-Simms, an SABC television reporter, is attacked by AWB members protesting an ANC meeting in Algoa Park, Port Elizabeth.1069

16 November 1993

Bronwyn Wilkinson, reporter from the Star, is shot at by snipers as she was investigating an incident of sniper fire that wounded a motorist between Phola Park and Eden Park.1070

17 November 1993

Richard Somlota, an SABC cameraman, is assaulted by taxi drivers while videotaping drivers assaulting several women near Cape Town. His equipment was stolen and his tape damaged.1071

8 January 1994

Joe Louw, a reporter with the Sunday Star, is threatened at gunpoint by right-wingers demolishing a squatter camp at Nooitgedacht. The men demanded that Louw hand over his camera and threatened to kill him when he asked if they were policemen.1072

9 January 1994

Abdul Shariff, a freelance photographer on assignment with AP, is killed in the cross-fire while covering an ANC peace initiative tour in Khatlehong.

Charles Moikanyang and Anthea Warner from the SABC were also wounded.

Shots were fired on a group led by ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa and South African Communist Party Chairman Joe Slovo, from a nearby hostel.1073

17 January 1994

Vrye Weekblad closes after it is bankrupted by legal costs.1074

18 February 1994

A cameraman for Bop-TV is arrested while attempting to film Bophuthatswana police violently dispersing a picket called by the ANC. He was released the next day without being charged.1075

24 February 1994

Lucie Hoyos, a German television reporter, is dragged from her car by youths with a gun and knives when the crew's car was robbed in Soweto.1076

27 February 1994

White journalists covering the funeral of Sabelo Phama, commander of APLA in Umtata, are threatened by PAC supporters who urged APLA soldiers to shoot them. 1077

28 February 1994

Benny Gool, photographer for the Cape Times, and freelancers John Christopher and Fanie Jason, are forced out of the Cape Town City hall by armed AWB members. The AWB said the black photographers were evicted for their own safety.1078

9 March 1994

James Brittan, ITN reporter, and a Sky News crew, are stopped at a road block in Mmabatho where youths threatened to shoot them if they did not leave the car. Brittan told the youths they were members of the press and they drove away unharmed.1079

Reporter Nan Roux and an SABC crew are assaulted by youths outside of Mmabatho. The car was stoned after the youths failed to pull Roux out of the car.1080

10 March 1994

Phineas Biphopo, SABC radio correspondent, is stopped by Bophuthatswana police on the Mmabatho airport road, severely beaten and told he would be shot if he was seen on the roads again. He had been assaulted at the same spot the previous night by youths who had blocked the road with stones and burning tyres.1081

10 March 1994

Mark Chisholm, Paul Arubicek and Frank Kgolane of Reuters TV are stopped by Bophuthatswana police, forced out of their car, and beaten with batons and whips. They were then ordered to leave. The police accused them of littering the streets with stones.1082

James Brittan, Mark Austin, Andy Rex and Nicodemus Mphahlele of ITN News are pulled from their car by a group of right-wing militants outside the University of Bophuthatswana. Their bullet-proof vests and video cameras were taken. Brittan and Austin were marched across a field at gunpoint and a gun was held to Brittan's head.1083

11 March 1994

An AFP news team is surrounded and ordered to leave upon arriving at Mmabatho's air base by right-wing militants. The same day an SABC aerial camera crew was surrounded by heavily armed khaki-clad right-wingers when they landed at the base to refuel.1084

John Battersby, correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and Paul Taylor from the Washington Post are assaulted by members of the AWB three times in the same day.1085

Sandile Nchunu and Brian Green of WTN are beaten with whips by Bophuthatswana police in Mafikeng and ordered top leave the area.1086

18 April 1994

Ken Oosterbroek, photographer for the Star, is killed when he and several other journalists were caught in the crossfire while covering a battle between the National Peacekeeping Force and pro-Inkatha hostel dwellers in Thokoza township. Juda Ngwenya, Reuters correspondent, and Greg Marinovich, a free-lance reporter on assignment for Newsweek, were also caught in the crossfire.1087

28 April 1994

Michael Allen, an African-American reporter with the New York Daily News was kicked and beaten by AWB members while covering an anti-election rally the AWB was holding in Rustenberg. The police did not come to his aid.1088

25 September 1994

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Minister of Home Affairs and president of the IFP, interrupts a live studio broadcast of an interview with Prince Sifiso Zulu, spokesperson for Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini. Buthelezi and his bodyguards burst into the studio in Durban and an on-camera scuffle ensued.

A gun was drawn, though it was not clear to whom it belonged.

7 May 1996

"Privileged South Africans under apartheid lived less under a regime of ignorance than of carefully calculated avoidance. It is ironic that, in an otherwise excellent editorial in 1996 urging privileged South Africans to avoid self-serving claims of innocence through ignorance, a major Johannesburg newspaper nevertheless ended by urging apartheid's privileged to say: 'Forgive us, for we knew what they did' (emphasis added). In this final slide from the acknowledgement (we) to the evasion (they), the editorialist highlights the manifold ways in which apartheid's beneficiaries still dissociate their current privilege from their atrocious past."1089

Footnotes

1 Tyson:389

2 Each law mentioned in this chronology is dealt with in detail in the FXI's paper "Legislation which restricted the press during the apartheid years", which is part of this submission.

3 Refer to FXI Legislation Paper

4 Merrett:12-13

5 Copy of agreement in South African Press Council collection, box 72, file 4.b.1, Wits Historical Papers

6 Tyson:391

7 Refer to FXI Legislation Paper

8 Heard:160

9 Heard:105

10 Refer to FXI Legislation Paper

11 Heard:160

12 Hachten and Giffard:51

13 Heard:37-38

14 Hachten and Giffard:52

15 Merrett:12

16 Tyson:215

17 Hachten and Giffard:53

18 Tyson:216

19 Refer to FXI Legislation Paper

20 Hachten and Giffard:54

21 See FXI Legislation Paper

22 Merrett:23

23 Merrett:24

24 Merrett:37

25 Burns:91

26 Merrett:35

27 Merrett:25

28 Hachten and Giffard:55

29 Hachten and Giffard:54-55

30 Heard:68

31 Tyson:28-29

32 Heard:78

33 Tyson:59

34 Hachten and Giffard:56

35 Hachten and Giffard:56

36 Tyson:60

37 Burns:121

38 in Tyson:59

39 Merrett

40 Heard:79

41 See FXI Legislation Paper

42 in Asmal et al:90

43 in Tyson:53

44 Merrett:27

45 Hachten and Giffard:56

46 Heard:87

47 Heard:87

48 Tyson:31

49 See FXI Legal Paper

50 Hachten and Giffard:56

51 Asmal et al:128

52 Emdon:64

53 Mervis:410

54 Mervis:456

55 Tyson:375-376

56 Potter:155

57 Merrett:60

58 Asmal et al:96

59 Tyson:72

60 Merrett:42

61 Merrett:66

62 Tyson:75

63 Heard:3-10

64 Heard:11

65 Heard:86-87

66 Heard:88

67 Sowetan 21.3.96

68 Hachten and Giffard:58-59

69 Tyson:79

70 Hachten and Giffard:58

71 Merrett:44-45

72 Merrett:45

73 Sowetan 21.3.96

74 Merrett:55

75 Merrett:43-44

76 Hachten and Giffard:59

77 Merrett:45

78 Potter:118

79 Potter:118

80 Merrett:64

81 Merrett:57

82 Hachten and Giffard:60

83 Emdon:115

84 SAMNG progress report in SAAN collection, Wits Historical manuscripts

85 SAMNG progress report in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Manuscripts

86 Merrett:65

87 SAMNG progress report in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Manuscripts

88 Merrett:64

89 Merrett:57-58

90 Burns:111

91 in Heard:160

92 Merrett:64

93 Emdon:116

94 Hachten and Giffard:64

95 in Emdon:116

96 Tyson:219

97 Merrett:67

98 Emdon:159

99 Heard:161

100 Heard:160

101 Tyson:92

102 Merrett:50

103 Merrett:51

104 Heard:185

105 Merrett p69

106 Tyson:68

107 Merrett:50

108 Merrett p65

109 Merrett p52

110 Merrett p68

111 Merrett p50

112 Asmal et al:91

113 Tomaselli et al:47-48, 52

114 Merrett:54

115 Race Relations Survey:66

116 Merrett:65

117 Mervis:401-403

118 Clive Emdon in discussion, May 1997.

119 Tyson:92, 98

120 Merrett:64

121 Asmal et al:54

122 Merrett:51

123 Asmal et al:35

124 Tomaselli et al:48

125 Tomaselli et al:49

126 Race Relations Survey 1964:48

127 Race Relations Survey 1964:47

128 Emdon:117

129 Merrett:67

130 Heard:120

131 Potter:133

132 Heard:136

133 Merrett:65

134 Potter:141-142

135 Race Relations Survey 1964:50

136 Race Relations Survey 1964:52

137 Asmal et al:91-92

138 Race Relations Survey 1965:45

139 Merrett:53

140 Race Relations Survey 1965:43

141 Merrett:47

142 Stuart(1986):257-261

143 Krüger:4

144 Tomaselli et al:71

145 Potter:124

146 Tomaselli:79

147 Heard:120

148 Race Relations Survey 1966:67

149 Race Relations Survey 1966:69

150 Race Relations Survey 1966:72

151 Race Relations Survey 1966:73

152 Race Relations Survey 1966:72

153 Merrett:53

154 Heard:134

155 Heard:137

156 Asmal et al:90

157 Merrett:67

158 Race Relations Survey 1967:49

159 Burns:124-125

160 Burns:128

161 Suzman in Tyson:409

162 copy of agreement in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Manuscripts

163 Asmal et al:52

164 Potter:127

165 Section 11A in Burns:137

166 in Tyson:220

167 Merrett:67

168 Mervis:394

169 Emdon:94

170 Asmal et al:160

171 in Tyson:220

172 Merrett:47

173 Potter:125-126

174 Tomaselli et al:71

175 Potter:156

176 Race Relations Survey 1969

177 Race Relations Survey 1969

178 Race Relations Survey 1969

179 Kahanowitz and Manoim

180 Heard:156-157

181 Heard:120-121

182 Heard:130

183 Heard:157

184 Mervis:404

185 Emdon:162 .

186 Emdon:162

187 Heard:161

188 Heard:161

189 Burns:131

190 Race Relations Survey 1971:83

191 See FXI Legislation Paper

192 Hachten and Giffard:66

193 Race Relations Survey 1971:90

194 Index on Censorship 1972, 1:86

195 Race Relations Survey 1972:83

196 Heard:81

197 Heard:137

198 Index on Censorship 1972, 2:94

199 Index on Censorship 1972, 2:94

200 Heard:166-167

201 Tyson:121

202 Tyson:174-175

203 Race Relations Survey 1972:79

204 Mervis:410

205 Hachten and Giffard:66

206 Heard:133

207 Merrett:54

208 Emdon:201

209 Tomaselli et al:53

210 Index on Censorship 1973 3:vii-viii

211 Index on Censorship 1973 3:viii

212 Hachten and Giffard:66-68

213 Hachten and Giffard:67

214 Hachten and Giffard:68

215 Merrett:62

216 Heard:137

217 Mervis:410

218 Merrett:84

219 Kahanowitz and Manoim

220 See FXI Legal Paper

221 Wellman in Tyson:280

222 Emdon:201

223 Emdon:163

224 Hachten and Giffard:69

225 Hachten and Giffard: 70

226 Hachten and Giffard:71

227 Index on Censorship 1975 1:89

228 Hachten and Giffard:71

229 Emdon:164

230 Stuart(1986):149

231 Tyson:355

232 in Hansard, Friday 11 March 1977

233 Tyson:177

234 Index on Censorship 1975 2:91

235 Heard:153

236 Index on Censorship 1975 2:91

237 in Heard:138

238 in Heard:136

239 Tyson:175-176

240 Krüger:19

241 Kahanowitz and Manoim

242 Merrett:99

243 Tyson:176

244 Index on Censorship 1975 4:77

245 Tyson:176-177

246 Tyson:177

247 Tyson:177

248 Tyson:177

249 Heard:137

250 Tyson:178

251 Tyson:178

252 Tyson:178

253 Mervis:434-437

254 Heard: 153

255 Index on Censorship 1976 2:86

256 Hachten and Giffard:71

257 Index on Censorship 1976 2:86

258 Heard:152

259 Index on Censorship 1976 2:86

260 Krüger:13

261 Asmal et al:90

262 Tyson:75

263 Heard:182

264 copy of speech in State Archives Pretoria

265 Index on Censorship 1976 4:84

266 See FXI document "Soweto Uprising of June 1976" for analysis of coverage in English Language Newspapers

267 Emdon:62-63

268 Tyson:103-104

269 Emdon:68-69

270 Tyson:114

271 Tyson:240

272 Tyson:122

273 Emdon:71

274 Emdon:71

275 in Tyson:126

276 in Emdon:165

277 Merrett:84

278 State Archives Pretoria guide to Cillie Commission

279 undated document in Cillie Commission collection, State Archives Pretoria, K345, file 2/2/1/8 vol 2

280 Cillie Commission collection, State Archives Pretoria

281 Hachten and Giffard:72

282 Index on Censorship 1976 4:84

283 Index on Censorship 1976 4:84

284 Tyson:145

285 Emdon:154

286 copy in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Manuscripts

287 Emdon:69

288 Index on Censorship 1977 1:63

289 Emdon:102

290 Heard:139

291 Tyson:378

292 in Tyson:379

293 Tyson:146

294 Index on Censorship 1977 1:63

295 Tyson:127

296 Heard:185-186

297 Index on Censorship 1977 2:69

298 Tyson:139

299 letters and memoranda in K345, vol,121 State Archives Pretoria

300 Index on Censorship 1977 2:69

301 Index on Censorship 1977 2:69

302 Index on Censorship 1977 2:69

303 Emdon:7

304 Emdon:95

305 Tomaselli et al:48

306 Tomaselli et al:51

307 Tomaselli:80

308 Kahanowitz and Manoim

309 Asmal et al:97

310 Tyson:130

311 Hachten and Giffard:72

312 Index on Censorship 1977 4:72

313 Hachten and Giffard:72

314 Emdon:166

315 Index on Censorship 1977 5:70

316 Emdon:69

317 in K345.vol121, file2/2/5 State Archives Pretoria

318 Index on Censorship 1977 6:67

319 Index on Censorship 1977 6:67

320 Heard:175

321 Heard:178-183 .

322 Index on Censorship 1977 6:67

323 Krüger:22

324 Emdon:76

325in Heard:154-155

326 Tyson:157

327 Tyson:132

328 See FXI document ""English Language Newspaper Coverage Surrounding the Death in Detention of Bantu Stephen Biko"

329 Joe Latakgomo in Tyson:164

330 Joe Latakgomo in Tyson:164

331 Asmal et al:96-97

332 Tyson:159

333 Index on Censorship, January/February 1978 1

334 Examples of organisations banned but not mentioned below: the Soweto

Students Representative Council, the South African Students Organisation, the South African Students Movement, the Medupe Writers Association, the Christian Institute of Southern Africa, and the Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of the African People of South Africa.

335 Index on Censorship 1978 1:70 and 2:62

336 Merrett:87

337 in Tomaselli et al:53

338 Merrett:87

339 Emdon:79

340 Index on Censorship 1978 1:70 and 2:62

341 Index on Censorship 1978 1:70 and 2:62

342 Index on Censorship 1978 1:70 and 2:62

343 Index on Censorship 1978 2:62

344 Index on Censorship 1978 2:62

345 Burns:106-107

346 Index on Censorship 1978 2:62

347 Tyson:260

348 Levy's report in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

349 Tyson:19

350 Detailed report in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

351 Asmal et al:170

352 Emdon:201

353 Tyson:320

354 Tomaselli:75

355 Asmal et al:97

356 Mervyn Rees in Tyson:239

357 Tyson:222-223

358 Tomaselli et al:51

359 Index on Censorship 1978 3:67

360 Heard:155

361 Heard:186

362 Index on Censorship 1978 3:67

363 correspondence in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

364 Index on Censorship 1978 4:69

365 Index on Censorship 1978 4:69

366 Heard:154

367 in Heard:157

368 Index on Censorship 1978 4:70

369 Emdon:80

370 in Heard:155

371 Index on Censorship 1978 5:70

372 Emdon:98

373 Index on Censorship 1978 6:65

374 Emdon:79-80

375 Tomaselli et al:51

376 Emdon:80

377 Heard:145

378 Tyson:239

379 Emdon:1

380 Index on Censorship 1979 3:70

381 Index on Censorship 1979 2:68

382 Index on Censorship 1979 3:70

383 Heard:152

384 Heard:247

385 Index on Censorship 1979 2:69

386 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

387 Index on Censorship 1979 3:70

388 Merrett:93

389 Index on Censorship 1979 3:70

390 letter from Isizwe-Sechaba publishers of the Nation to subscribers, in B Pogrund collection, Wits Historical Papers

391 Index on Censorship 1979 4:68

392 Heard:141

393 in Heard:144

394 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

395 Star 11.4.1979

396 Index on Censorship 1979 4:68

397 Index on Censorship 1979 4:68

398 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

399 from 1982 summary of decisions taken by the SADF-NPU Liaison Committee, in South African Press Council collection, box 72, file 4.1.b, Wits

Historical Papers

400 Krüger:20

401 Emdon:109

402 Krüger:20

403 Index on Censorship 1979 6:69

404 Merrett:103

405 Burns:118

406 Tyson:408-409

407 SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

408 SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

409 SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

410 SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

411 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

412 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

413 Index on Censorship 1979 6:69

414 Emdon in IDASA:44 and 52

415 Tyson:295-306

416 Heard:170-171

417 Heard:161-162

418 Tyson:327

419 Tyson

420 Tyson:316

421 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

422 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

423 SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

424 Index on Censorship 1980 3:67

425 letter in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

426 letter in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

427 Hachten and Giffard:91

428 Index on Censorship 1980 #4 p74

429 Tomaselli et al:73

430 telex in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

431 Index on Censorship 1980 5:67

432 Index on Censorship 1980 5:66

433 Index on Censorship 1980 5:67

434 SAAN collection in Wits Historical Papers

435 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

436 SAAN collection in Wits Historical Papers

437 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

438 SAAN collection in Wits Historical Papers

439 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

440 from 1982 summary of decisions taken by the SADF-NPU Liaison Committee, in South African Press Council collection, box 72, file 4.1.b, Wits

Historical Papers

441 Stuart 1986 :141

442 Burns:134

443 Emdon:80

444 Index on Censorship 1980 6:71

445 Index on Censorship 1981 1:77

446 in Asmal et al:93

447 Tyson:225

448 Emdon:128-137

449 Tyson:225

450 Hachten and Giffard:82

451 Hachten and Giffard:17

452 Tyson:226

453 Hachten and Giffard:76

454 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

455 Index on Censorship 1981 1:77

456 Stuart(1986)

457 Asmal et al:95-96

458 Heard:146

459 in Heard:148

460 Emdon:81

461 Emdon:79

462 Heard:190

463 Star 11.11.1980

464 Tomaselli et al:75

465 in Emdon in IDASA:48-49

466 Krüger:20

467 SAB 1988 (See FXI paper on journalists detained for full reference.)

468 Emdon:107

469 Index on Censorship 1981 3:78

470 Index on Censorship 1981 3:78

471 Heard:192

472 Emdon:82

473 Index on Censorship 1981 3:78

474 Tomaselli et al:49

475 Index on Censorship 1981 3:78

476 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

477 SAAN collection in Wits Historical Papers

478 Index on Censorship 1981 5:47

479 Tyson:316

480 Index on Censorship 1981 5:47

481 Index on Censorship 1981 6:110

482 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

483 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

484 Tyson:123

485 Burns:109-110

486 Index on Censorship 1982 1:46

487 Index on Censorship 1982 1:46

488 Index on Censorship 1982 2:47

489 Tomaselli et al:50

490 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

491 Emdon:10

492 Emdon:78

493 Emdon:128, 137-138

494 Hachten and Giffard:83

495 Asmal et al:92

496 in Asmal et al:93

497 in Asmal et al:93

498 from Hansard in Asmal et al"94

499 Tomaselli et al:61

500 Tomaselli et al:56

501 Emdon:167-8

502 Tyson:404

503 Hachten and Giffard:85-86

504 Heard:151

505 Tyson:288

506 in Heard:152

507 Index on Censorship 1982 4:46

508 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

509 Index on Censorship 1982 4:46

510 Index on Censorship 1982 5:36

511 Index on Censorship 1982 5:37

512 Burns:116-117

513 Index on Censorship 1982 5:36

514 Emdon:150

515 Stuart:150

516 Tomaselli et al:65

517 Burns:134

518 Emdon:149 .

519 in Merrett:193

520 Burns:83

521 Tomaselli et al

522 in SAAN collection, Wits Historical Papers

523 Tyson:366

524 Asmal et al:12

525 Index on Censorship 1983 1:46

526 Index on Censorship 1983 2:47

527 Index on Censorship 1983 2:47

528 Index on Censorship 1983 1:46

529 Index on Censorship 1983 2:47

530 Index on Censorship 1983 2:47

531 Index on Censorship 1983 2:47

532 See FXI paper on press coverage of this raid.

533 Tyson:326

534 Burns:123

535 Burns:114

536 Tomaselli et al:50

537 Index on Censorship 1983 4:43

538 Index on Censorship 1983 4:43

539 Index on Censorship 1983 4:43

540 Index on Censorship 1983 4:43

541 Index on Censorship 1983 4:43

542 Emdon:151

543 Emdon:126

544 Asmal et al:95

545 Index on Censorship 1983 5:47

546 Index on Censorship 1983 6:47

547 Index on Censorship 1983 6:47

548 Emdon:168-170

549 Index on Censorship 1983 6:47

550 Index on Censorship 1984 1:45

551 Index on Censorship 1984 1:45

552 Emdon:177

553 Tomaselli et al:76

554 Star 5.10.1983

555 Index on Censorship 1984 2:48

556 Index on Censorship 1984 2:48

557 Emdon:170-171

558 Tyson:214

559 Tyson:230

560 Asmal et al:150

561 Index on Censorship 1984 2:48

562 Index on Censorship 1984 2:48

563 Index on Censorship 1984 2:48

564 Tyson:283

565 Tomaselli et al:50

566 Stuart 1986 :150

567 Index on Censorship 1984 3:48

568 Heard:190

569 in Heard:190

570 Index on Censorship 1984 3:48

571 Index on Censorship 1984 5:46-47

572 Tomaselli et al: 50

573 Heard:158-159

574 Index on Censorship 1985 1:64

575 Asmal et al:66

576 Tomaselli et al:78

577 Index on Censorship 1985 1:64

578 in Tyson:289-291

579 Index on Censorship 1985 1:64

580 Index on Censorship 1985 1:64

581 Merrett:82

582 Heard:187-188

583 Index on Censorship 1985 2:56

584 Heard:188-189

585 Index on Censorship 1985 2:56

586 Index on Censorship 1985 2:56

587 Index on Censorship 1985 2:56

588 Index on Censorship 1985 2:56

589 Index on Censorship 1985 2:56

590 Koos Viviers, editor of the Herald in Tyson:301-305

591 Krüger:81

592 Merrett:102

593 Tyson:203-214

594 Tyson:214

595 Heard:191

596 Star 19.2.1985

597 Index on Censorship 1985 3:52 .

598 Index on Censorship 1985 4:54

599 Index on Censorship 1985 4:54

600 Tyson:298

601 Mervis:530

602 Heard:15

603 Krüger:14

604 Tomaselli et al:69

605 Index on Censorship 1985 #5 p67

606 CALS (See FXI's paper on legislation for full reference.)

607 Heard:193

608 Tyson:152

609 Krüger:133

610 Asmal et al:175

611 Index on Censorship 1986 64:1

612 Tyson:272

613 Index on Censorship 1985 5:68

614 Tyson:149-154

615 See FXI paper: "English Language Newspaper Coverage surrounding the

'third force' killings of 'The Cradock Four'".

616 in Heard:191-192

617 Tomaselli et al:57

618 Kruger:35

619 Emdon:196 This state of emergency was lifted on 7 March 1986. This was followed by further declarations on 12 June 1986, 11 June 1987, 10 June

1988 and 9 June 1989.

620 Krüger:5

621 Krüger:36-37

622 Krüger:38

623 Tyson:272

624 Heard:163-164

625 Krüger:133

626 Krüger:119

627 in Krüger:122

628 Krüger:128

629 Krüger:127

630 Tomaselli et al:78

631 Krüger:127

632 Tyson:135

633 Krüger:133

634 Heard:190

635 Krüger:40-41

636 in Krüger:69

637 Heard:205

638 Asmal et al:89

639 Heard:209

640 Heard: 215

641 Index on Censorship 1986 2:41

642 Tomaselli et al:69

643 Asmal et al:92

644 Tyson:314

645 Merrett:150

646 Burns:112

647 Index on Censorship 1986 3:40

648 Krüger:133

649 in Tyson:316

650 in Heard:250

651 Index on Censorship 4, 1986

652 Index on Censorship 3, 1986:30

653 Krüger:41

654 Index on Censorship 5,1986:40

655 Krüger:124

656 Krüger:127

657 Heard:166-167

658 Krüger:133

659 Index on Censorship 5, 1986:40

660 Star 20.3.1986

661 Heard:220-221

662 Index on Censorship 6, 1986:40; 5, 1987:39; 6, 1987;39

663 Index on Censorship 6, 1986:40

664 Index on Censorship 6, 1986:40

665 Krüger:14

666 in Heard:xv-xvi

667 Krüger:133

668 Index on Censorship 8, 1986:40

669 Index on Censorship 8, 1986:40

670 Index on Censorship 8, 1986:40

671 Index on Censorship 8, 1986:40

672 Index on Censorship 8, 1986:40

673 Krüger:128

674 Citizen,10.6.1986

675 Star 10.6.1986

676 Krüger:133

677 Emdon:196

678 Heard:150

679 Tyson:250

680 Krüger:116

681 Krüger:115

682 Asmal et al:60

683 Emdon:197

684 Star14.6.1986

685 Tyson:313-314

686 Merrett:116

687 Krüger:43

688 in Asmal et al:99

689 Tyson:273

690 Index on Censorship 1986 8:40

691 Tyson:317

692 Krüger:128

693 Krüger:128

694 Index on Censorship 1986 9:50

695 Index on Censorship 1986 9:50

696 Index on Censorship 1986 9:50

697 Krüger:128

698 Index on Censorship 1986 8:40

699 Index on Censorship 1986 8:50

700 Krüger:48-49

701 in Haysom and Mangan

702 Krüger:115

703 Krüger:133

704 Index on Censorship 1986 #10 p48

705 Index on Censorship 1986 #10 p98

706 Heard:219

707 Krüger:49, 51

708 Tyson:271

709 Krüger :133

710 Krüger:87

711 Index on Censorship 10, 1986:48

712 The Journalist September 1986

713 The Journalist September 1986

714 Krüger:50

715 Index on Censorship 10, 1986:48

716 Heard:151

717 Krüger:50

718 Index on Censorship 1986 10:48

719 Krüger:73

720 Index on Censorship 1987 2:39

721 in Heard:157

722 Heard:167

723 Index on Censorship 1987 2:39

724 Tyson:247

725 Tyson:249

726 Krüger:52-54

727 Bell, Dewar and Hall Attorneys, 1987

728 Tyson:274

729 Heard:149-150

730 Krüger:114

731 Tyson:398

732 Krüger:133

733 Krüger:54

734 Asmal et al:95

735 Heard:162-163

736 Index on Censorship 1987 2 and 3 :39

737 Asmal et al:61

738 in Leadership, cited in Krüger:30

739 in Tyson:412

740 Krüger:98

741 Krüger:30

742 RC 1987:2 (For full title see FXI paper on journalists detained.)

743 RC 1987:2

744 Burns:99

745 RC 1987:2

746 RC 1987:2

747 RC 1987:4

748 Krüger:56

749 Heard:191

750 RC 1987:4

751 Heard:151

752 Index on Censorship 1987 5:40

753 Krüger:59

754 Index on Censorship 1987 5:40

755 RC 1987 p5

756 Krüger:134

757 Index on Censorship 1987 5:40

758 RC 1987:5

759 RC 1987:5

760 Index on Censorship 1987 5:40

761 Heard:191

762 Krüger:57

763 Emdon in IDASA:43

764 RC 1987:6

765 RC 1987:6

766 RC 1987:6

767 RC 1987:6

768 Krüger:55

769 Index on Censorship 1987 7:39

770 RC 1987:6

771 Index on Censorship 1987 7:39

772 RC 1987:7

773 Krüger:134

774 Index on Censorship 1987 7:39

775 RC 1987:7

776 RC 1987:7

777 Krüger:128

778 Index on Censorship 1987 7:39

779 Media lawyer Lauren Jacobson in Krüger:58

780 Krüger:134

781 Krüger:134

782 Krüger:59

783 Krüger:127, 122

784 RC 1987:7

785 Krüger:59

786 Haysom and Mangan

787 RC 1987:8

788 Krüger:128

789 Index on Censorship 1987 9:38

790 RC 1987:8

791 Asmal et al:105

792 Index on Censorship 1987 9:38

793 Heard:221

794 Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Heard:xvii

795 RC 1987:8

796 SAB 1987:194

797 Krüger:61

798 SAB 1987:209

799 Krüger:61,76 114

800 Krüger:120

801 ADJ April 1989:4

802 Krüger:63

803 Krüger:91

804 Tyson:400

805 Index on Censorship 1988 2:39

806 Index on Censorship 1988 2:39

807 RC 1987:10

808 SAB 1987:274

809 Krüger:99

810 Krüger:99

811 Index on Censorship 1988 2:39

812 Krüger:128

813 Index on Censorship 1988 4:39

814 Index on Censorship 1988 3:40

815 SAB 1988

816 Krüger:64

817 Emdon:155

818 Burns:99

819 Asmal et al:90

820 Merrett:148

821 Krüger:119

822 Asmal et al:85

823 Krüger:64

824 Burns:99

825 Krüger:135

826 Tyson:334-335

827 SAB 1988:53

828 SAB 1988:65

829 Krüger:64 and 135

830 Krüger:83

831 Star 16.4.1988

832 Index on Censorship 6, 1988:39

833 Krüger:122

834 Krüger:91

835 Krüger:135

836 Krüger:93

837 SAB 1988:161

838 Krüger:135

839 Bell, Dewar and Hall Attorneys (1988)

840 Krüger:103-104

841 Index on Censorship 1988 8:48

842 Merrett:125

843 Star 22.7.1988

844 Krüger:135 .

845 Krüger:3 .

846 Tyson:337

847 Merrett:125

848 Merrett:125

849 in Asmal et al:95

850 SAB 1988:241

851 Krüger:80

852 SAB 1988 :306

853 ADJ April 1989:8

854 Merrett:125

855 Tyson:327

856 Krüger:93

857 in Krüger:126

858 in Krüger:126

859 The Free Press May 1989:31

860 Burns:99

861 Krüger:135, 91-92

862 Tyson:337

863 Krüger:83

864 Krüger:135 and 97

865 Tyson:340

866 Tyson:12

867 Krüger:130

868 Merrett:149

869 Index on Censorship 1989 3:39

870 Index on Censorship 1989 2:39

871 Index on Censorship 1989 4:39

872 Index on Censorship 1989 4:39

873 SAB 1989

874 Index on Censorship 1989 4:40

875 Tyson:340

876 Index on Censorship 1989 5:40

877 Index on Censorship 1989 5:40

878 Index on Censorship 1989 5:40

879 Merrett:149

880 Tyson:321-322

881 Index on Censorship 1989 6&7:80

882 Emdon:202

883 Index on Censorship 1989 8:40

884 Index on Censorship 1989 8:40

885 Index on Censorship 1989 8:40

886 Burns:96-99

887 Krüger:103

888 Index on Censorship 1989 9:40

889 Index on Censorship 1989 9:40

890 Index on Censorship 1989 9:40

891 Index on Censorship 1989 9:40

892 Index on Censorship 1989 9:40

893 Heard:150

894 Tyson:341

895 Merrett:149

896 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

897 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

898 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

899 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

900 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

901 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

902 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

903 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

904 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

905 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

906 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

907 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

908 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

909 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

910 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

911 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

912 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

913 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

914 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

915 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

916 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

917 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

918 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

919 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

920 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

921 Krüger:130

922 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

923 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

924 Asmal et al:101

925 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

926 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

927 Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 1990

928 Index on Censorship 1989 10:40

929 Index on Censorship 1989 10:39

930 Star 20.1.1990

931 Star 21.1.1990

932 Index on Censorship 1990 5:38

933 Tyson:341

934 Emdon in IDASA:47

935 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

936 Burns: vii

937 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

938 Tyson:341

939 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

940 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

941 Index on Censorship 1990 5:38

942 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

943 Index on Censorship 1990 5:38

944 Tyson:341

945 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

946 Index on Censorship 1990 5:38

947 Index on Censorship 1990 5:38

948 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

949 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

950 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

951 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

952 Index on Censorship 1990 5:38

953 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1990

954 Index on Censorship 1990 10:38

955 Committee for the Protection Journalists, 1990

956 Index on Censorship 1990 10:38

957 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1990

958 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

959 Index on Censorship 1990 5:39

960 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

961 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

962 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

963 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

964 Tyson:351

965 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

966 Merrett:159

967 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

968 Index on Censorship 1991 1:39

969 Index on Censorship 1991 4&5:56

970 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

971 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

972 Index on Censorship 1991 6:39

973 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:186

974 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

975 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

976 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

977 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

978 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

979 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

980 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

981 Index on Censorship 1991 8:54

982 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:185

983 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992 p185

984 Index on Censorship 1991 8:55

985 Merrett:159

986 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992 p185-86 .

987 Merrett:161

988 Merrett:161-162

989 Merrett:207-208

990 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:186

991 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:186

992 Index on Censorship 1992 1:46

993 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:186

994 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:186

995 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1992:186

996 Tyson:123

997 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:276

998 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:276

999 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:276

1000 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:276

1001 Tyson:322

1002 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:276

1003 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1004 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1005 in Asmal et al:125

1006 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1007 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1008 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1009 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1010 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1011 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:277

1012 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:278

1013 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:278

1014 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:278

1015 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:278

1016 in Tyson:18

1017 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1018 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1019 Index on Censorship 1992 10:48

1020 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1021 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1022 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1023 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1024 Tyson:21

1025 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1026 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1027 Index on Censorship 1993 2:39

1028 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1029 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:279

1030 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:280

1031 Reporters Sans Frontieres 1993:280

1032 Asmal et al:48

1033 Index on Censorship 1993 5&6:48

1034 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:84

1035 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:84

1036 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:84

1037 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:80

1038 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:88

1039 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:88

1040 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:88

1041 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:848

1042 Index on Censorship 1993 5&6:48

1043 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:88

1044 Index on Censorship 1993 7:40

1045 For details about suggestions that a disinformation campaign against

Hani contributed to his death, see FXI document on English language newspaper coverage of the event and period before.

1046 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1047 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1048 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1049 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1050 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1051 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1052 Index on Censorship 1993 7:40

1053 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:90

1054 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:89

1055 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:90

1056 Index on Censorship 1993 8&9:40

1057 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:90

1058 Index on Censorship 1993 8&9:40

1059 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:90

1060 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:90

1061 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:90

1062 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:91

1063 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:91

1064 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:91

1065 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:91

1066 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:91

1067 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:92

1068 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:93

1069 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:93

1070 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:92

1071 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:92

1072 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:43

1073 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:92

1074 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1993:94

1075 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:44

1076 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:44

1077 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:44

1078 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:45

1079 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:45

1080 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:45

1081 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:45

1082 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:45

1083 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:45

1084 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:46

1085 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:46

1086 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:46

1087 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:46

1088 Committee for the Protection of Journalists 1994:46

1089 Asmal et al:145

The O’Malley Archives

Chronology Of Some Pointers To The History Of The Media In South Africa