We would learn only about Thomas Pringle’s SA Commercial Advertiser as the first privately owned English publication in 1824 and the other publications that came after it. A huge amount of the curriculum would be spent on the rise of the Afrikaans press, with scant references to African publications of the mid-1800s such as Umshumayeli, iSigidimi SamaXhosa, and others that were later to be identified with the rise of African nationalism—the political current that has dominated our political life for much of the past 100 years. Many of us scribes preparing to enter the profession in the early to mid-1990s, when official apartheid was ending and democratic rule was beginning, never fully appreciated the immense contribution by black journalism’s founding fathers to the struggle for many of the civic and human rights we are constitutionally guaranteed today.
At a time when celebrated English-speaking “liberals” in the Cape and Natal were speaking with forked tongues about racial equality, it fell on black editors and founders of black newspapers such as John Tengo Jabavu, who established Imvo Zabantsundu in 1884, to speak up for full equal rights for all that was promised by liberalism. Fortunately, historians, researchers and commentators such as lawyer Tembeka Ngqukaitobi, in his seminal book –The Land Is Ours –and academic Bongani Ngqulunga–most recently in hisUlubambe Lingashoni! – A history of Ilanga lase Natal– have documented the role played by black lawyers, editors and other professionals of yesteryear in cultivating the democratic tradition that is now the basis of our constitutional arrangement.
The late South African scholar and historian, Soweto-born Ntongela Masilela, saw this generation as the pioneers of what he called African modernity. They were succeeded by many other generations that used journalism, among other professions and trades, to advance the cause of Africans in SA under the yoke of English colonialism, Afrikaner nationalist domination, and, eventually, outright apartheid. The journalism schools were also not great at teaching us about the black journalism of post-1960, the era of violent repression by the state.
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There would be a mention, here and there, of the Rand Daily Mail and the Daily Dispatch’s Donald Wood’s relationship with Steve Biko as examples of newsmen and women taking a stand against apartheid. But there was hardly any mention of The World, The Post and others that had to pay a heavy price for seeking to provide voices to the voiceless. No mention of the countless journalists who were detained, tortured, banned, and convicted for using their pens for the liberation struggle.
Fortunately for some of us, lived experience had taught us the value of such news publications. It may have been named after a township that was far from many of us, but the newspaper had come to be an authoritative voice on the black condition – from Langa Township in Cape Town to Musina in Limpopo. The “soccer bible”, it was nicknamed as such because the newspaper had no match when it came to daily soccer news in the 1980s and 1990s, but make no mistake, Sowetan was also up there with the best in the business when it came to general news and politics.
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