of life
Dying from cancer, Ameen Akhalwaya reflects on a life of pain and gain as a newsman
`How are you?” “Up and down – long spells of feeling fine and then sudden pain and discomfort for a couple of hours – I’ve got cancer.”
A pregnant silence on the other end of the line. Then: “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I don’t know what to say …”
Don’t say anything. I understand. I too have never been able to handle pain nor death, which is why when it happens to someone I know, I try to make light of it by making a witty remark which I always end up regretting, or which is why I probably never pursued my medical studies with any vigour in Ireland.
Ah, Ireland. St Patrick’s beautiful Erin of a hundred thousand welcomes and a million smiles, of bars in which to drown in a dozen pints and 40 shades of green protest songs for your sorrows caused by the English, of a thousand churches to confess your human weaknesses, the land of Yeats, Wilde, Shaw, O’Casey, Behan, Collins, the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners and a cacophony of showbands, the emerald garden of wit and wisdom and wildly illogical logic.
Now that I have a terminal illness, the Irish saying, “the longer you live, the sooner you’re going to die”, makes perfect sense.
My hardworking parents – my father left school in standard five and mother after the second grade – had sent me to Dublin in 1964 to join an uncle who was studying medicine there. If you had brains, that is, if you could afford to stay in school and pass matric, you had a choice: become a doctor or a shopkeeper.
Shopkeeping was not going to be a viable option, since the National Party’s Group Areas Act was designed partially, in the words of a Cabinet minister, to “get the Indians’ backsides off their shop counters and get them to work”.
With apartheid ensuring that only a limited number of blacks would be allowed into “white” universities, studying medicine abroad was a good option. After all, said the elders, once you’re a doctor you could practice anywhere in the world and make a helluva lot of money.
Anywhere in the world became a real option, given the traumatic insecurity caused by the Nats, who wanted Indians to be “repatriated” to India, or to their new “ancestral” group areas such as Lenasia and Nelindia.
I’d wanted to become a lawyer, but my grandparents couldn’t understand how anyone could lie in court on behalf of thieves and murderers. So medicine it was to be. Having discovered the beauty of Irish literature and wit, and England swinging across the water with The Beatles, the Stones, the Animals and Jimi Hendrix, it was going to be bloody hard.
How could anyone get lost in physics and anatomy when it was so much more fun to take the overnight Friday slow boat to Liverpool and hike to Manchester to watch Irishmen Tony Dunne, Shay Brennan and George Best (he was from Belfast but could be forgiven that mistake) at Old Trafford?
Or to hike to Old Trafford to watch Calypso cricket kings Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Wesley Hall and Charlie Griffiths bash the boring English. Or The Greatest, Muhammad Ali, beat great white hope Henry Cooper and then apologise, to applause from the English, as he couldn’t stand the sight of blood.
Oh Ireland, I loved you and Carmel and Bernie and Sheila and Margaret and the priest up the road who rued the fact that, as a sinner entangled with ambitious girls, I was destined for a scorcher in hell.
But the fact that things were happening at home could not be ignored. Louise and Kader Asmal of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement ensured it. Nelson Mandela and his Rivonia colleagues were jailed. I attended a demo, and 12 years later, a police officer told an uncle of mine that a photo of me at the demo was in my file at John Vorster Square police station.
I remembered as a kid how I was angered as I watched my beloved suburb of Sophiatown – Kofiefie, that heady mix of Can Themba’s House of Truth, of intellectuals pitting wits in shebeens, of Trevor Huddlestone’s swimming pool, of kwela and jazz and qawali and Indian film songs in competition for an ear – being bulldozed, terror reflected in the eyes of its residents.
I remembered my parents – who demanded of their children that they be honest – being hauled before a magistrate for contravening the Group Areas Act (living in the neighbouring poor white suburb of Newlands and refusing to move to Lenasia) and told: “Accused number one, guilty. Thirty pounds or 30 days. Accused number two, guilty. Thirty pounds or 30 days.”
They paid up and later moved to Lenasia. Within a year, my father, a good-natured human being whose passion for sport rubbed off on me, was dead. A heart attack felled him at 42. It signalled a short period of agnosticism – or certainly doubt about God. How could God the Merciful, the God of Love, allow communities to be destroyed, families to be broken in this way, poor humans being treated like rats because of their skin colour?
Then I was told by a visiting professor from Pakistan that I could get entry into medical school in Karachi, which would be far cheaper than Dublin. So off I went. My timing was bad. I arrived a couple of weeks after colleges had opened, so I was asked to wait another year. I contracted typhoid and returned home seven months later.
I was working for a Canadian insurance company in Johannesburg. Around 1971, white South African cricket had become almost totally isolated internationally. The white media cried about the injustice. It was a tragedy, they said, that greats such as Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock and Mike Procter were barred from international cricket.
Well yes, but what about the tragedy that we weren’t allowed to play at school level with our white counterparts? I was a damn good opening batsman, scoring 178 not out on my league debut in Johannesburg and being selected for Transvaal High Schools (coloured and Indian).
The white media kept referring to the South African (white) schools team that toured England in 1963 as being the finest to leave our shores. How did they know? Were we given the opportunity? Not by any stretch of the imagination could I be one- tenth as good as Richards, but, like others, all I wanted was an opportunity to prove what I could do.
So, when the South African Cricket Board of Control decided to stage its provincial fixtures over three days, I went to the Rand Daily Mail to ask why, if it supported non-racialism, it didn’t cover such matches. I met sports editor Trevor Bisseker and he said he didn’t have anyone to cover the matches, so I volunteered.
The Mail was the only paper people in my community admired, because of the fierce anti-apartheid stance taken by editor Laurence Gandar and later Raymond Louw who, with his abrasiveness, motivated me to take the Nats head on.
But I yearned for freedom. My beloved wife Farida and I moved to England, where I joined the insurance company’s UK head office in lovely Stevenage. We had a fabulous time, travelling all over Britain and watching sports without worrying about the politics.
Things were intensifying at home. I heard about the Black Consciousness movement led by Steve Biko. What he and his comrades such as Saths Cooper were saying terrified and excited me, because they were saying a lot of things I didn’t have the courage to say openly at home.
I wrote to Bisseker and he invited me to join the Rand Daily Mail. Who, me? A lightie from Kofiefie and Fordsburg writing for the great Rand Daily Mail? Thank you, Trevor, for getting me on board the greatest journey of Farida’s and my – and later our children’s – lives.
I’ve written before about the privilege of working for the Rand Daily Mail, and superb journalists, and seeing my byline alongside such legends as Bob Hitchcock, Marshall Lee and Lin Menge, a brilliant writer who admitted openly to being prejudiced – she hated humans equally but loved animals equally.
On my second day at the Mail, I wrote a story about developments against# apartheid in sport. It appeared under the byline of “staff reporters”. I’d also tracked developments among the country’s rival cricket bodies and was the only reporter present when they decided to merge in defiance of Nat government policy.
That Sunday evening, the Mail called in a white reporter to check my story, which appeared as the lead next morning under a joint byline, with mine second. Later, a sub-editor told me: “It’s okay to have your byline on other front-page stories, but we don’t want kaffir and coolie bylines on the front-page lead.”
It took three years before my solo byline appeared on a lead story. It took me less than six months on the Mail to decide that Biko and his BC comrades might be right about white liberals, but as an ardent non- racialist, I was not sure where black advancement and pride stopped and racism began. Black colleagues argued that we could be supporters of the African National Congress or Pan Africanist Congress, and when these organisations were unbanned one day, we could choose between them.
Joe Thloloe, president of the Union of Black Journalists, and Zwelakhe Sisulu, a cadet reporter on the Mail, persuaded me to join the union. White colleagues were shocked that I’d opted for black exclusivity.
I’ve also argued before that while the Rand Daily Mail had performed brilliantly against the Nats’ apartheid, its white bosses have firmly refused to concede that racism was alive within it. In late 1977, I was awarded a scholarship to study media in the United States. Before leaving, I asked one of my bosses to spell out my future at the Mail. I’d worked as news reporter, sports reporter, sub-editor and acting night news editor.
“Well you see, we want to promote you on merit when you come back,” he said. “We wanted you to experience all aspects of journalism so that your promotion won’t be token.”
Ye#s, that’s what I’d been fighting for. On my return, I couldn’t get an appointment to see him. Legend had it that it would take days just to get an appointment to see his secretary. I put in my resignation. The day before my departure a month later, he agreed to see me.
“Our figures show,” he said, “that our Indian and coloured readership is down. We’d like you to cover Indian and coloured civic affairs.”
“But,” I protested, “Indians and coloureds don’t give a damn about these puppet bodies, and, in any case, I was employed to write about all aspects of South African life, not just ethnic issues.”
“Sorry,” he said, “but it’s your fault. You moved around so much from department to department that you haven’t gained enough experience in any of them.”
There it was, proof beyond doubt for me that the Great White Liberal spoke with forked tongue. I joined Percy Qoboza’s Post Transvaal, successor to the banned The World, as a sub-editor, but I yearned for the adrenalin of the Mail.
Martin Schneider, who had taken over as political editor of the Mail, invited me to rejoin the paper as political reporter. He undertook to give me full rein and fought for my stories to be given prominence. Then I was awarded the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
It was traditional to announce the promotion of a Nieman Fellow before his departure for Harvard. In my case, with the Sunday Times’s Tertius Myburgh and Ken Owen at the helm of the Rand Daily Mail after editor Allister Sparks was sacked, no such promotion was announced, as my union, the Media Workers’ Association of South Africa, had predicted.
On my return to the Mail, that wordsmith Rex Gibson had been appointed editor. And here came the civic issue again. No, I couldn’t write a regular column – my kind of writing wouldn’t go down well with whites in the wake of falling circulation. Civic issues were becoming big in the new apartheid dispensation being created by PW Botha. So I was appointed metropolitan editor, a new post, a fancier title for municipal reporter.
I resigned and was accused of being “too ambitious”! Being a Nieman Fellow, having been asked to speak at numerous international conferences and to contribute to top-rated foreign media, I’d over- estimated my own ability in an institution which condemned the Nats for making blacks feel inferior.
I freelanced. Harald Pakendorf invited me to write a weekly column for Die Vaderland and so did Post Natal in Durban. Not long after, Pakendorf was sent packing from Die Vaderland which, itself, didn’t survive much longer. I also freelanced as a sub- editor for the Sunday Express.
On a day when Owen said he wanted to speak to me about my taking over as chief sub- editor of the Express, Stephen Mulholland invited me to discuss the possibility of my becoming production editor of his Financial Mail.
Mulholland lectured me on the free market and asked me my views. I said I believed in a mixed economy, especially if one day we had a democratically elected government that wanted to create opportunities for blacks. He asked me for an immediate decision on his job offer. I told him that Owen wanted to see me too.
Hardly had I returned to my desk when I got a note from Mulholland saying the offer had been withdrawn. The interview with Owen was even more intriguing. He started off by rueing the faltering standard of English in the press and he was depending on “people like you” to protect his language (it was mine too).
His first requirement was that we save money. The Express, because of its brilliant exposs by the likes of Kitt Katzen and Martin Welz, was spending too much on lawyers to clear stories.
But Owen wanted a couple of assurances. One, I shouldn’t have any of my “union nonsense” at the Express. Well, only two other blacks worked for the Express – a photographer and a messenger – but if the Media Workers’ Association of South Africa went on strike, I’d have to keep my options open.
Second, he didn’t want me to spread my politics to his staff. Not knowing what my own politics were, that wouldn’t be a problem.
I must remember, he said, that the Express had a conservative, white, middle-class readership. “And don’t have any further ambitions here. This is as high as you will go.” In return, he would make me the highest paid chief sub in the history of South Africa.
I agreed on the spot to accept his offer. Unlike other white press bosses, he didn’t bullshit me about the “sky is the limit” and “you have a great future ahead of you”.
I liked his honesty and after forked tongues at the Mail, I asked for no more. Not only did he keep his promise he later also asked me to write a weekly column.
Alas, the honeymoon wasn’t going to last. Anglo-American murdered the Express and the Mail. I have no doubt the executions were in exchange for its owner, South African Associated Newspapers, getting a chunk of M-Net.
My timing was appalling. My package was based on just the two-year stint at the Express. With R17 000 instead of R80 000 in my pocket, I decided, with my marketing graduate brother Fazil and Farida, to launch The Indicator in Lenasia. Friends and family chipped in with about R30 000.
Politicians such as Mandela congratulated me for my “extraordinary bravery” in launching an anti-apartheid newspaper and, oddly enough, I’ve come to be remembered as editor of The Indicator rather than for what I thought was my most creative work wit#h the Mail.
The Indicator was my biggest mistake. I could have taken a couple of jobs as foreign correspondent and lived well off dollars and pounds. Instead, The Indicator crushed me financially. Sure it had a healthy volume of advertising, but a few advertisers wouldn’t settle their accounts, so we spent our time paying off interest on overdrafts and loans.
As the first “alternative paper of the Eighties” – The Indicator beat The Weekly Mail to the press by a couple of months – I thought we would get much support from comrades as we tried to obtain foreign funding. To my surprise, foreign funders said they’d been told – by people in the alternative press – that The Indicator was nothing more than a commercial enterprise which supported the Azanian People’s Organisation and the PAC!
We did eventually obtain some foreign funding, but it proved inadequate. With the closure of The Indicator imminent, Mandela stepped in. The ANC raised sufficient money and said the paper would be taken over by a trust of community representatives.
The SABC offered me the job of executive editor of current affairs, which included Agenda. Like all the recruits, I knew little of the electronic media. I didn’t last a minute.#
It was the most traumatic job of my career which played itself out in the pages of various newspapers and I was helpless to defend myself. Now as I am dying, it is water under the bridge. Some of the players involved are still there, charming, lazy as ever.
I am still waiting for the promised meeting with SABC chief Zwelakhe Sisulu. What hurt me most at the SABC was that black colleagues, who knew what happened, who knew how I had been betrayed, kept silent.
That’s why I was surprised at the extent of the sweeping condemnation of white colleagues by black colleagues during a truth commission hearing. Sorry, guys, I empathise with you and know the pain you suffered, but there is also a black side to our history.
I was out of a job. Aggrey Klaaste and his manager invited me to help redesign New Nation and train journalists. Klaaste, my dear, dear friend, wanted three “wise old men” who would help guide his staff with writing, production and content. I was to be one of the three old farts.
Then the manager told me there was a problem: the union was against my being employed. What? The Media Workers’ Association of South Africa, the body I’d helped to found?
No, said the association, it’s not us, it’s the news executives. So I approached one of the executives and asked him what the problem was. No problem, he said at first, it’s the manager. “You see, we all know you’re a great wordsmith, but we want someone who can do layouts and design.”
Excuse me, I’d been doing layouts and design since 1977 on the Rand Daily Mail. I was chief sub of the Express where, admittedly, the visionary Irwin Manoim did most of the design, but from whom I learned much. And for the past eight years, I’d been designing and laying out The Indicator single-handedly.
“The problem,” the paper’s boss Nthato Motlana later explained, “is that these guys are terrified that you know more than they do and you’d come in at a level that would put a ceiling on their advancement.”
An executive at Independent Newspapers heard I was unemployed. “If only we’d known,” he said. “We were told you had landed a damn good job somewhere so we didn’t approach you. We’d love to have you with us, but there’s nothing suitable available. I’m afraid you’re too highly qualified.”
God Almighty, I have total faith in you, but do I have to keep looking out for such ironic boomerangs?
Absa head-hunted me,and then within months, Chris Ball approached me to join the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid. In the middle of this adventure, I suddenly developed stomach pains, and tests revealed I had cancer of the colon. The surgeons were pretty optimistic#, though there was an outside chance that rogue cells could lodge themselves in my liver.
And so they did – and my lungs too. Nothing much could be done. I was given from anything between a week and six months to live.
Now when people ask how I feel about death, I say I’m comfortable about it. My family’s been traumatised, but God will care for them as he did for my family after my father died.
I’m comfortable because God has given me such a richly diverse and exciting life. I have no regrets, only a few disappointments, the SABC debacle at the top of the pile.
Desmond Tutu said he was praying for me, so did our weekly domestic help. And that’s when I cried like a baby – not because I’m dying, but because of the love people from all walks of life have shown me. I got calls from strangers who’d never met me, but said they’d been touched by some article I’d written somewhere.
I’ve watched some of my greatest #sporting heroes in action – Pele, George Best, Abram “Mainline” Khoza, Gary Sobers, Sunil Gavaskar, Imran Khan, Pat McEnroe and especially The Greatest, Ali himself.
The Ali interview in 1987 was a world exclusive, widely publicised in the US. My newspaper, the Mail, pushed it into the Extra edition only, because the night news editor explained, “only blacks are interested in Ali”.
Sure, in these deflected reflections, I wonder what might have happened had I become a doctor? Made a helluva lot of money for sure, but I could not have bought the life I’ve led. I would not have met Farida and had our children and would have been away from the rest of my fantastic family, friends and colleagues.
I’ve lived and loved and prayed and confessed in places as diverse as Sophiatown, Newlands, Fordsburg and Lenasia in my native Johannesburg, in St Petersburg and Cambridge in the US, in Karachi, Dublin and London.
I’d never have worked with such amazingly talented, bitchy, cynical, witty people, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to meet the range of mankind that I did.
The highlights of my career were to work for the Rand Daily Mail, to help start the Media Workers’ Association of South Africa, The Indicator Human Rights Awards, to interview Ali, to break the story (following a conversation with the remarkable Oliver Tambo) of the unbanning of the liberation movements a year before it happened, the Hajj pilgrimage and, at his first press conference after his release, to hear Madiba single me out for my “marvellous contribution to the struggle”.
My disappointment is that I leave Cape Town. I won’t see Robben Island on my way to work each day. Madiba, Kathy, Uncle Walter, Isu, Mac, Neville and co: I visited Robben Island and marvel at your capacity to forgive and move ahead.
I can’t help but smile at God’s sense of balance: he’s given us the Western Cape – my idea of what heaven’s beauty might be like – and he’s given us the Nats to run it!