Our enemies consider us one of the country's noisier newspapers. So do our friends. For three years we've failed to keep our mouths shut. Despite various requests.
This week the Minister of Home Affairs, Stoffel Botha, warned us, in a special edition of the Government Gazette, that our wailing threatens public safety. We deny the charge.
Our newspaper kicks at consciences and tears down barriers. It does not throw bombs.
In recent months, the minister has suspended one newspaper and lined up six more before the guillotine. He closed the first paper, New Nation, with minimal public outcry.
The process of closing newspapers is so lengthy, so tortuous, so little-understood, that public interest dies long before the climax of the wearying process of death by a thousand pin-pricks.
Which is why we appeal to our readers: DON'T LET US GO QUIETLY! Carry on reading us. Carry on subscribing. Make a fuss.
WAIL DAMMIT!
An international outcry meets notice to Mail
The Minister of Home Affairs' warning to the Weekly Mail this week has brought widespread condemnation and the launch of an international "Save the Press" campaign. A wide range of businessmen, editors, trade unionists, and civil rights organisations – locally and internationally – have come together to urge Minister of Home Affairs Stoffel Botha not to restrict newspapers.
"We are gearing up to fight the minister. He is not going to be able to act against us without causing a local and international outcry," the Weekly Mail's co-editors said. "So far the response has been extraordinary – businessmen, members of the legal profession, ambassadors and editors are among those who are working on ways to convince the minister that he should think again," they said.
Botha published a special gazette on Tuesday warning the Weekly Mail that it is publishing matter which, "in my opinion, is causing a threat to the safety of the public or the maintenance of public order or is causing a delay in the termination of the State of Emergency." This takes the newspaper a further step down the road towards its possible suspension.
To date, the minister has suspended one newspaper, the New Nation and gazetted warnings against six others: Weekly Mail, South, Work in Progress, Grassroots, Saamstaan and Out of Step.
The "Save the Press" campaign grew out of a meeting of about 100 influential South Africans two weeks ago. Aspects of the campaign so far are:
- United States presidential candidate Paul Simon, a "regular reader of the Weekly Mail", is to raise the issue in the US senate. He telephoned the newspaper's editors yesterday to express his concern.
- A letter from the editors of Weekly Mail, New Nation and South has been sent to hundreds of editors around the world, drawing their attention to the situation.
- An open letter to the State President, signed by writers and journalists around the world was delivered to the South African embassy in London this week. Signatories so far include former London Times editor Harold Evans, playwright Tom Stoppard, Lord McGregor of Durris, chairman of the British Press Council Louis Blom-Cooper QC, editor of the Independent Andreas Whittam-Smith, chairman of Random House publishers Bob Bernstein, and Lord Avebury, chairman of the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group. The London-based Index on Censorship group has already received more than 100 signatures for the letter, which is the first step in an ongoing international campaign to persuade the minister "to lift the ban on New Nation, and to take no further steps against the alternative or mainstream press".
- The Progressive Federal Party is to raise the issue in parliament in Cape Town.
- Editors of major local newspapers and leading businessmen are meeting in separate groups to decide what action to take.
There was swift reaction this week to the latest warning to Weekly Mail:
- Addressing a public meeting on Wednesday, former SA ambassador to London, Dennis Worrall, lambasted the government for attacking the press, accusing it of "immaturity" and political myopia. Referring specifically to Weekly Mail's warning, he said: "South Africa needs as much information as possible. South Africans are mature enough to determine their future on the basis of facts and a free flow of information."
- In an editorial, the Star said: "Today it is the 'alternative' media; tomorrow it could well be others … What is at stake is not just an abstract concept called freedom of the press, but the very right of all South Africans to know what is going on in their country".
- Newspaper editors around the country condemned the warning.
- Messages of support were received from media organisations around the world, such as the World Press Freedom Committee and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, from South African businessmen and from editors around the world.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
