How the Apartheid Government Set Out to Write Off People’s Plights and Suppress the News
by Alex Daigle
Meghan Leonard’s post discussing the communications of political prisoners is a testament to how difficult it was for dissenters and protesters to have their voice heard in apartheid society. Political prisoners were not only victims of an anti- freedom of speech government, but were even detained in the first place for writing dissenting works against the government. The apartheid government did its best to suppress the voices of millions of peoples.
During our time in Cape Town, our class has listened to several stories of black or mixed-race writers who wrote about their experiences during apartheid, but were unable to publish their writings due to public censorship by the apartheid government. Lauded writer James Matthews described his experience during the apartheid era to our class. Matthews had witnessed the poverty, oppression, and exploitation of non-white people of South Africa and how deeply people’s mentalities were negatively affected. Therefore, he aimed to expose the injustice and negative impact that the apartheid era government had on the country and its peoples. His book Cry Rage, which was published in 1972, was the first poetry collection to be banned by the apartheid government. Two years later, Black Voices Shout!, another of his poetry collections, was published and then banned by the South African government.
James Matthews, source: http://www.v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/images/matthews_jd_bench.jpg
The government subsequently detained him as a political prisoner for several months in 1976 due to his protest poetry. However, he continued to write poetry behind bars, which he carefully hid and smuggled out of the prison by way of his family members who visited. He was continuously repressed and struck down by the government, yet he persisted for the fight for equality that he believed in.
Stories such as that of Matthews lead to the question of “how could journalists and media outlets function ethically under such a repressive government?” Are media outlets even fully functioning if they cannot print the whole truth? The aim of my discussion here is to describe how South African media outlets were suppressed and restricted by the apartheid government.
President P.W. Botha, who served as the president of South Africa from 1978-1989, also served to support and maintain the system of apartheid. Botha enacted restrictions on the South African media “which aimed first at blotting out public awareness of the mass, semi-insurrectionary resistance which characterized South Africa in1984-85, by banning reports on events” (“Restrictions on the Media”).
Despite these restrictions, some journalists persisted in finding loopholes in the restrictions in order to report on the events occurring in South Africa. The government reacted by further restricting journalists’ allowances on reports. If the government did not approve of paper content, it suspended the papers that published it. In 1988, the South African government even began requiring journalists to register with the government. Predictably, the government withheld registration from the journalists who did not conform to the restricted apartheid journalism requirements.
All journalists were restricted under the apartheid regime, but black journalists were restricted even further because of their race. Mojalefa Moseki described his decision to pursue a career in journalism as a “death wish” due to his race. He further described it as a “dangerous field.” He attended secretive meetings with other black journalists. Moseki also described his career during apartheid as frustrating because it was hard to fully report on decent stories and events. Most of his sources were black community leaders who were imprisoned or serving house arrest orders, which specified that they not be allowed to make comments to the press. Obtaining and publishing news stories was incredibly complicated and difficult.
Under an oppressive government, nobody is truly free and neither is the press. By repressing media outlets and journalists like James Matthews, the government attempts to silence people who wish to change the country for the better. Such a government thinks that by repressing the media, it can prevent protest movements. Without a free, democratic press, the public cannot easily or fully obtain accurate information. Many people remain uninformed under such a regime and, therefore, remain deaf and blind to some of the injustices that occur in their country. The media can be a powerful vehicle for change; but, it can only be helpful if it pushes against the restrictions of an oppressive government in order to inform citizens in a truthful, ethical way. It is by way of persistent media outlets and persistent writers like Mojalefa Moseki, James Matthews, and other political prisoners that a people can stay informed and change their country for the better.
In closing, I challenge you to consider the questions I posed earlier:
- How can journalists and media outlets function ethically under a repressive government?
- Are media outlets even fully functioning if they cannot print the whole truth?
References:
http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/james-david-matthews
http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/restrictions-media
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03064228808534487?journalCode=rioc20#preview
