Comment
Anton Harber
When government closed The Weekly Mail for a month in 1988, the distinguished British ambassador, Sir Robin Renwick, arrived carrying a bank bag stuffed with money. With his Savile Row suit and Tory accent, he was clearly uncomfortable handling something as crude as cash. "Use it well," he said, "I want no receipts, no thanks, no mention of this at all." This was her majesty's government's way of helping us through a difficult month, he said. On the other hand, he used a conspicuous cheque to order a subscription for 10 Downing Street. It would be of assistance, he explained, if Pik Botha (then foreign affairs minister) could be told that Mrs Thatcher received this paper every week, and would not be pleased if she failed to receive it. On the first day of the closure, I received a call from a US senator. "I am about to go into the senate and propose a resolution that we give you support to ensure you survive," he said. "What are your costs for the month?"
I tell these stories to highlight the way the international community rallied around during the 1980s to keep alive as much press freedom as they could in this country. They recognised press freedom as a litmus test, a freedom that could help protect other freedoms, one that could give hope and succour to many who lacked other freedoms. We would not have survived without such support. On receiving a warning of state action, we could phone one or two people in London, such as the veteran South African activists David Astor and Anthony Sampson, and within hours we would get copies of protest letters sent to government from every Fleet Street editor. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists in New York would sweep into action and mobilise a network of international reaction. They didn't care what we wrote, they never questioned whether we deserved closure, they just rallied around when the call was made.
South African business made its own intervention. One day we were summoned to a grand old building in the city centre to meet a major business leader who was concerned that closure of our paper would add impetus to calls for sanctions. He kept calling our paper the Financial Mail. We didn't correct him for fear he would realise we were just a rag-tag bunch of lefties, but he rallied support for a letter signed by eight top businessmen to then president PW Botha, which was crucial in staying his hand.
This week the authorities in Zimbabwe closed that country's biggest daily, the independent and outspoken Daily News. The paper declined to register under the new media laws, they challenged the law in court and were told they could not do so unless they first complied with the law and registered. Meanwhile, armed police closed them down. Registration of journalists is familiar to South Africans, who fought against repeated attempts to introduce it in the apartheid era. It was blocked because journalists and employers stood together in resisting what would have been a death knell for dissident voices; if one paper had agreed, the edifice would have been broken, and those who resisted would, like the Daily News in Harare, have been isolated. Zimbabwe's other papers decided together to register under protest then challenge the law. The Daily News made a lone stand not to do so. But their tactics are not the issue. Their survival is.
It is not a coincidence that as Zimbabwe's democratic institutions have come under attack the country has seen inflation rise to about 450%, unemployment to 70%, and shortages of food and other essentials have worsened. These things seldom happen when democratic institutions are strong because those responsible for them are called to account. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen made the point that you do not get famine in a democracy of which a free press is an essential ingredient. You can predict that the more Zimbabwe's democratic institutions come under attack, so the risk rises of shortages turning to famine. Reading international coverage of Zimbabwe this week I noted that most articles in the major global papers quoted condemnations of the attack on press freedom from the US state department, the British foreign secretary, the Commonwealth secretariat and international media freedom organisations. SA's government was conspicuous by its absence, probably because its response was so wishywashy it did not merit repetition. But South Africans who care about these things particularly journalists should not let this stand as our response. Our government has chosen the path of diplomacy so quiet no one, least of all Zimbabweans, can hear it.
Pass me the megaphone.
Harber is the Caxton professor of journalism, Wits University, and was founder of The Weekly Mail (now Mail & Guardian).
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