Elliot Josephs talks to Rehana Rossouw about his struggle to launch a satirical magazine
A CAPE Town author and artist is bringing a legal claim for damages against the Argus, owned by Independent Newspapers, after it refused to print his satirical magazine.
Elliot Josephs, who describes himself as an “artist- cum-entrepreneur”, says his right to freedom of expression was infringed upon by the Independent group. He says he will not rest until he is compensated.
Josephs raised R25 000 to publish his magazine titled Hei Voetsek! and was planning to sell it at the Grahamstown festival in July.
After getting quotes from several printers, he contracted The Argus to print his magazine. He says they were willing to charge him a mere R11 000 for 10 000 copies of the 48-page magazine, a price which is well below the market rate.
“We agreed on a print date and they were extremely co-operative at first. They suggested I use a format similar to their Sunday magazine, and I went along and laid it out in that format,” he says.
“But when I took the final artwork to The Argus, I was told they could not print my magazine because they found certain articles offensive.” Josephs claims Robin Brown, head of The Argus works department, pinpointed a specific reason for not wanting to print the magazine.
Brown allegedly told him that his article on Cape Town’s Olympic bid led to the decision against printing Hei Voetsek!.
Headlined “Olympic fever in a town that’s out to lunch”, the article suggests that Olympic bid company chief executive Chris Ball is a lunatic to believe the bid would succeed in Cape Town.
Josephs, who constantly refers to Ball in the article as “the man with Balls”, wrote the following: “Do I hear you wondering if some lunatic named Ball escaped from Valkenburg and is playing an April fools joke? Ball! A very apt name. Maybe one should use his head for one … The man Ball leads the pack. Can you see the promotion slogans? Don’t get Balled about, show some Balls. Support the Bid! Keep the Ball rolling and stop balling about. Cape Town, a city with Balls … The Bid is not Balls.”
Josephs then sets about “interviewing” Cape Town “opinion-makers”, a prostitute, a fleamarket entrepreneur and a vagrant, on whether they believe the bid will benefit the city.
The article is accompanied by an illustration of male genitalia perched on top of Table Mountain.
“It’s satire, it’s not serious journalism and I told The Argus that. But Brown told me they did not want to `get people’s backs up’. He said The Argus was working with people I’m ridiculing,” Josephs says.
He argues that Argus general manager Les Williams told him the company’s legal experts advised them against printing the magazine. “My defence was the magazine was clearly satirical. It ridicules a lot more than just the Olympic bid. The Argus placed no conditions on me when they agreed to print Hei Voetsek!. Although there was no written contract, they clearly breached our agreement,” Josephs says.
However, Williams says he can no longer remember the detailed reasons for the refusal to print, but the decision, he says, is based on legal advice sought from the company’s lawyers.
“As a commercial operation, obviously we wanted to do the printing job, but we also have to face the reality that if the editor of the magazine was sued, we would be facing a lawsuit as well,” Williams says.
“I remember that there were quite a few offensive articles in the magazine, but I can’t remember specifically which ones led to our decision not to print. I believe we did the right thing.”
Williams says he has not yet received notice from Josephs’s attorneys that a lawsuit is pending.
But Josephs says he contacted a lawyer and an advocate who believe he can sue The Argus for damages.
He is attempting to raise funds for his legal defence and believes he will shortly have all the money he needs.
“I was, and still am completely freaked out. I believed I had freedom of expression in the new South Africa and did not deem it necessary to censor myself, but found that censorship is still very much alive and not only well, but thriving.
“What I really can’t understand is why I was a victim of second-hand censorship. The Argus decided to muzzle me on behalf of another party, the Olympic bid. I was quite willing to contact Ball, show him my article and ask if he would sue if I printed, but Williams was adamant that The Argus would not publish my critique of the bid.
`There are people who are publishing the most horrendous pornography that degrades women, and they have the right to continue business. It seems I don’t enjoy those same rights and I can only conclude that a black man is not allowed to play the white man’s publishing game.”
After The Argus refused his business, Josephs attempted to find another printer and discovered what he calls “a conservative, monopolistic, white boys’ club. “I found out that all the big printing operations in Cape Town are either owned by the Argus Group or Naspers [Nasionale Pers], and they were all refusing to print my magazine. I went from one company to another and discovered quite an awesome monopoly,” he says.
Die Burger, Paarl Post and CTP Web Printers all declined to print Hei Voetsek and Josephs took his business to smaller, black-owned printing companies.
“I found the black printers most willing and would have loved to have gone to them first, but none of them could match The Argus’s quote because they don’t have the same equipment,” Josephs said.
He had to settle for 6 000 copies at R11 000 and missed the deadline for the Grahamstown festival, which he believed was the “ripest market” for a satirical magazine published in Cape vernacular.
With a payment to his backers looming on July 25, Josephs took to Cape Town’s streets to flog his magazine. He found a tiny, but receptive, audience at Greenmarket Square.
“I had terrible flu but I had to drag myself into the city every day to sell my magazine. One of my favourite spots is right outside The Argus’s Newspaper House. As soon as I sell all the copies, I’m going back there with a picket to explain to the public how I was censored by The Argus.”
Josephs has missed his first payment to his backers and has had to freeze his plans to publish a second issue of Hei Voetsek! and another publication he was planning to launch called Skorro Koro.
“It’s been pretty demotivating. I had a business plan drawn up by a financial whizzkid which showed I could make money from this venture, but The Argus killed it before it even got off the ground properly.
“I now regard myself as the first black casualty of Cape Town’s Olympic bid. But I can assure everyone, this black boy is not going to disappear quietly from the scene. I’m here to stay and I’m determined to have my say.”