Questioning Everything but the System
BERNSTEIN, PETER
Questioning Everything but the System The Press As Opposition: The Political Role of South African Newspapers By Elaine Potter Rowman and Littlefield. 228 pp. $13.75. Reviewed by Peter...
...Elaine Potter, in The Press As Opposition, agrees more with Buckley than Ginwala...
...A statement of the paper's new policy appeared shortly after Rhodes' takeover, and it left no doubt as to where the Argus stood...
...The end came in 1877 when Cecil John Rhodes put his capital behind the Cape Argus, now the cornerstone of the largest of the two newspaper chains that control all the English-language papers and most of the so-called "black press...
...Blacks, coloreds and Asians are not allowed to vote or participate in the white political system...
...In short, Potter is trying very hard to portray the press as the good guys in a story that has no good guys...
...It managed to put out only 18 issues before the British Governor General demanded to see prepublication proof sheets...
...Moreover, in presenting it, Potter regrettably burdens her prose with heavy doses of academic jargon, and her writing generally is no less turgid than that found in previous works on the subject...
...The major dailies appear in the two official languages, Afrikaans and English...
...Begun as heralds of the Afrikaner cause, they continue to concentrate basically on refining apartheid doctrine, on making it as palatable as possible for mass digestion...
...Reviewed by Peter Bernstein The world of South African newspapers has been variously described...
...It sees no oppression, misery or injustice in South African society...
...Within the next five years, the paper was banned three times...
...The Afrikaans papers are an integral part of the Nationalist apparatus: Their boards of directors are stacked with government ministers, they are owned by small shareholders who are exclusively Afrikaners, and their editors-like Hendrik Verwoerd, the former prime minister who ran Die Transvaler in the 1930s-often end up in the center of the political arena...
...These political and linguistic differences are vividly reflected in the makeup and policies of the press...
...Newspapers are one of the few things in South Africa available to everybody-the 16 million blacks, the 4 million whites, the 2 million coloreds (mulattos), the 700,000 Asians...
...The major part of the press supports the existing system in South Africa,' she writes...
...because it is a "responsible press" that believes the political game ought to be played according to given rules...
...Most were originally immigrants from Great Britain, and the vast majority oppose the Vorster regime...
...The other 90 per cent constitute the target English audience and are being wooed through price wars, cheesecake photographs and extensive coverage of sensational street crimes...
...Comprising approximately two-thirds of the white population, they rule the country through Prime Minister John Vorster's Nationalist party, in power since 1948...
...Needless to say, the oppositionist role of the Afrikaans press is open to even greater question...
...The white press, both English and Afrikaans, is part of white South Africa...
...The thesis is certainly open to argument...
...The English-language papers, practically without exception, are antagonistic to the Nationalist government...
...The issue, it said, "should never, and we trust will never be a question how White men of different nationalities should live together in the presence of barbarian tribes...
...Trying to attract black readers, Potter believes, must ultimately affect the content of the English language papers in other ways, too...
...Some observers have looked on it as the one surviving enclave of liberty and democracy in a country marked by 27 years of brutal Nationalist rule...
...But statutes and pressures are not the only forces preventing the emergence of a true opposition English-language press...
...the Afrikaans journals, she says, serve as the most powerfully organized opposition force within the government and the Nationalist party...
...The truth is, its opposition, like that of the political parties, is based on a difference of degree, not kind...
...Increasingly, she argues, they will become the spokesmen for the non-whites and, consequently, a more militant "external opposition.' Yet this scenario contains some serious problems, one of the most glaring being its reluctance to fully confront the matter of censorship in South Africa...
...The hand of government, as Potter herself demonstrates, has become heavier over the years, so that now some 25 laws impinge upon press freedom...
...He based his enthusiasm to a large degree on a front-page headline he saw during his stay-"Black Couple Quits Hotel...
...Keeping the press in bounds has been a favorite occupation of Cape Town governments from the time the first independent newspaper, the Commercial Advertiser, began printing in 1823...
...The potential is certainly there: Out of South Africa's total population of 23 million, only 3 million read newspapers-since under 10 per cent of adult blacks see a daily...
...Interestingly, though, the latest survey on the media, completed in 1968, revealed that they had nearly three times as many readers as their Afrikaans competitors, and sold four times as many copies...
...First, she claims the English and Afrikaans press have both been "forces of opposition.' While the English papers represent the interests of the voteless majority and pose "the real challenge to the Nationalist government and White South Africa...
...The reason for this, Potter believes, is that the Afrikaans papers have resisted change, refusing to accommodate the expanding tastes of even their traditional constituency, let alone appeal to newly urbanized readers...
...because it does not want to upset the nation's gold-and diamond-studded cart...
...In fact, not since the last century has a major newspaper spoken for the black African with any force or persuasion...
...Along with newspapers in many other parts of the world, it can be critical of particular government policies...
...Frene Ginwala, the author of a report for the United Nations Unit on Apartheid, reached a very different conclusion...
...Afrikaans is the language of the Afrikaners, the descendants of the Dutch farmers who emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope in the middle of the 17th century...
...It is unappreciated just how free the press is in South Africa," the conservative American columnist William F. Buckley Jr...
...Buckley apparently was astounded that news of this kind could appear in a white paper published in the land of apartheid...
...Moments later, she tells us that the English-language press has remained free because it does not "constitute a serious threat...
...her book contains pretty much all of the relevant information about South Africa's press today...
...Under the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act, for example, newspapers are prohibited from publishing any statement by "banned" persons-and the list includes hundreds-without permission of the country's minister of justice...
...As her title suggests, she feels the nation's journalists have been able to step into the power vacuum created by the absence of genuine social and political opposition...
...Nonetheless, she has done her homework...
...Unlike other South African institutions, she contends, the press has not been wholly coopted by the doctrine of white supremacy...
...wrote from Durban after a visit last year...
...The story was about a foreigner who, when refused a drink because he was black, proceeded to stalk out with his wife...
...But poor as this may be for upping circulation, she maintains, in fulfilling their role the Afrikaans papers have nevertheless become what amounts to an "internal opposition.' The English-language press, financed by "big-business English capital" and concerned with profits rather than "sublime nationalism," has meanwhile been changing rapidly in an effort to expand its circulation...
...The remaining whites are English-speaking...
...The English-language papers do not object to white domination of the black majority...
...That Potter fails to face up to this severely weakens the argument she is trying to make, and in the final two chapters of her study she simply hems and haws...
...they only wish it could be done with less brutality and obvious cruelty...
...In addition, the press is subject to indirect pressures from a watchdog commission of inquiry and an officially authorized code of conduct...
...Yet in no way can it be said to amount to an opposition waiting for the appropriate opening to wipe out the scourge of apartheid...
...Written almost 100 years ago, that announcement shows more clearly than most succeeding explanations, including Potter's, why the English-language press has remained "freer than any other individual or institution in the society to oppose the Nationalist Government...
...Virtually every South African is proficient in both, with many blacks fluent as well in such native tongues as Zulu, Tswana and Xhosa...
...Similarly, the provisions of the Defense Act are so extensive that most newspapers check with the authorities before printing anything even tenuously related to national security...
...Potter tends to forget that the English owners, although they may oppose the current administration, still closely identify with the white economic and social structure, and like the Afrikaners have a vested interest in perpetuating it...
...The study also suggested that the gap would widen over the years...
...Thus, when a golfer in Port Elizabeth saw a pair of trousers followed by a tie flutter down from a jet trainer flying overhead, the newspapers cautiously sought Defense Department clearance before publishing the story...
Vol. 58 • September 1975 • No. 19
