Khadija Magardie
“It is said the measure of the quality of a democracy is the state of its prisons but I say it is through the diversity of its media,” says veteran journalist Anton Harber, the newly appointed head of the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Journalism.
Although in terms of diversity Harber gives South Africa the thumbs-up, he says “a lot more needs to be done”. Harber lauds what he calls exciting new work emerging, but laments that this is being undermined by journalism of “quite a low standard”.
Nipping shoddy journalism in the bud will be the mission of the feisty journalist who, together with Irwin Manoim, founded the Mail & Guardian’s predecessor, the muck-raking Weekly Mail, in 1985. As holder of the Caxton Chair of Journalism at Wits, Harber will be in the driving seat of the postgraduate Journalism and Media Studies programme, a multi-disciplinary course offering honours and MA degrees as well as a diploma.
He brings more than 20 years’ experience in a variety of media, including print, radio, television and Internet publishing, and says if the value of quality journalism to the stabilising of South Africa’s democracy is to be recognised, it has to be of the highest possible standard.
The Weekly Mail won a number of awards, including International Newspaper of the Year. M&G editor Howard Barrell says: “Anton’s and Irwin’s contribution to South African journalism has been immense. At one of the lowest moments in South African journalism after the closure of the Rand Daily Mail in 1985 they provided a space and ethos that could accommodate journalists determined to fight every inch of the way to report and debate as they saw fit. It required great courage and poise to do what they did. In Anton Harber, Wits has got someone very special.”
Harber’s tenacity earned him a place in media infamy during the 1991 “Inkathagate” scandal a Weekly Mail expos of how the apartheid police channelled state funds into a secret bank account to fund Inkatha’s anti-African National Congress rallies. A highly publicised television debate on the SABC’s Agenda programme, during which Harber harangued then police minister Adriaan Vlok over the scandal, was widely credited with having been the nail in Vlok’s political coffin the minister was demoted soon afterwards.
Harber describes the decision to join the journalism school as “a return to my real passion … I am very eager to re-engage in journalism.” His “return to hackdom” follows positions as the head of internet publishing company BIG Media and executive director of Kagiso Media.
This week he spelled out a list of plans to fine-tune a world-class launch platform for what he calls “effective, competent journalists”.
“The ideal journalist combines an undergraduate degree in an area of specialisation with professional skills and knowledge, which the postgraduate structure allows for.”
Himself a Wits alumnus Harber graduated from the university in 1980 with a BA in politics and English he says the course is a combination of training in journalistic skills and hands-on skills training.
It is a task for which Wits is uniquely placed because of its location in the heart of the country’s media, and the offering of postgraduate training for journalists would keep them refreshed on the cards is a masters degree for mid-career journalists.
Harber’s leap from pressman to professor does not, however, mean a retreat into the dusty corridors of academia. He plans to “keep one foot in the industry” through BIG Media, as well as through the International Marketing Committee, a project that markets the country’s image abroad.