There are no slow newsdays in Sunday journalism: every week represents a fresh attack on public boredom with the tools of shock-horror literature in a hurry. At least, that’s one half of the picture: the other is a pipe-sucking, reflective review of the week by donnish leader-page writers. Oddly, it’s the dons who drive the whole process, having matured out of muckraking to a lofty view of the world.
So when a couple of policemen pitched up with a warrant to search for and retrieve some dirty pictures from the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, Rapport, editor Tim du Plessis knew he had an instant front-page lead and a theme for an editorial on press integrity and independence. Rapport had got hold of the pictures apparently amongst schoolkids who were circulating the pornography quite freely. The warrant was brought by one Advocate Dirk Prinsloo renowned for his assocation with Advocate Czanne Prinsloo, nicknamed ‘Advokaat Barbie’ and though the newspaper had undertaken not to publish the pictures on grounds of taste, it was not about to surrender them under duress.
The moment, in November 2002, was a symbolic one. Pornography amongst the volk, crime in the land, murder on the farms, ethnic rebellion and politics by deal-making, have created a complex new milieu for Afrikaans journalism in the first years of the 21st century. The New Nats have thrown in their lot with the ANC, a right wing plot to overthrow the government has erupted with a bombing campaign in Soweto, and Afrikaners everywhere are wondering where they belong in Mbeki’s South Africa.
And a new factor has entered the situation: black Afrikaners. Those who sell ad-space in Afrikaans newspapers are saying for the first time that a small but significant number of potential readers are black Africans, and it is time to reel them in. The 2001 AMPS survey uncovered the remarkable fact that in addition to 49 percent white and 42 percent coloured Afrikaners, there are some nine percent blacks (and a sprinkling of Indians). This is up from one percent blacks who declared themselves as Afrikaners in 1994seemingly, the political changes in the intervening years have made them more comfortable about admitting to their true home language.
If language equals identity, as the marketers keenly contend, these ware swart (true black) Afrikaners belong in the same media fold as their white compatriots and sometime oppressors. Race matters less than mother tongue. If anything, the new swartgevaar (black danger) takes the form of a threat to Eurocentric culture which will have to give way, at least partly, to Afrocentrism. But this is less danger than opportunity an opportunity for Afrikaans media to grow and change. The process is already under way, not just to satisfy the nine-percenters but as a token that the White Tribe of Africa truly belongs here.
In a word, the Afrikaans press shows all the signs typical of emergent media in other parts of the developing world: a striving to build the nation, a search for new markets amongst the previously illiterate, and pressure to transform business and government for the sake of social development. None of this, however, means that ethnic selfhood is to be abandoned.
Traditional Afrikanerdom is making way for the new Afrikaners: a white bourgeoisie embracing global liberal capitalism, an aspirant coloured, Indian and black middle class, and a working class group, even including the bittereinder mineworkers who are prepared to make common cause with black unionists. The Bureau of Market Research at the University of Stellenbosch estimates that in the year 2000, Afrikaans speakers were responsible for 32 percent of the cash household expenditure in SA, while making up only 14.6 percent of the total population.
The figures translate into what specialists in media gap analysis call an open niche: the place where a clearly identifiable segment of the consumer market has unfulfilled potential, and hence a gap to fill with expendable income. In the midst of this flux, editors like Tim du Plessis face unheralded opportunities that are the product of a developing economy and new democracy.
The new game is a tough game. Faced with the warrant from Dirk Prinsloo, Du Plessis turned the cops away and Rapport fended off the warrant with a court action of its own. “One can only speculate about the reasons for his [Prinsloo’s] obsession with this photographic material,” said Rapport’s editorial. “No newspaper which is worth its salt will simply hand over the information or documents that were given to it in good trust. This is a fundamental principle of the free press.”
So it goes in the pungent corridors of press power. The public has been saved from pornography, and its right to know defended. It’s the stuff of high-minded journalism everywhere, but what makes it noteworthy is that it has taken nearly a century from the birth of the first Afrikaans newspapers for the flagship to fly this liberal banner. In the past, defence of State rights, not public rights, was the orthodox line for nationalist editors.
The best illustration and one that points up the differences between the modern Afrikaans editor and his predecessors was the case of Die Burger’s editor, Piet Cilli, who dared to cross Hendrik Verwoerd over the issues of direct coloured representation in Parliament. Both men were formidable debaters but Cilli’s pen was no match for the ideological obsession of Verwoerd, who believed that separating the races at every level was necessary for grand apartheid. Cilli found himself censured by the party caucus and he retreated into an acquiescence from which his reputation never fully recovered.
Public praise-singing for the party combined with private doubt and cynicism over the impracticability of apartheid became the hallmark of verligte (enlightened) Afrikaans journalists. That is, until a new generation of scribes hit the dirt trail. Up-and-coming journalists of the eighties included the likes of Max du Preez and Tim du Plessis, whose broader South African idealism began to break the mould of volksjournalistiek. The former chose to go it alone by launching the radical-tinged Vrye Weekblad. This represented a revolution in expos reporting and a departure towards a new kind of brutally frank commentary on all things political and cultural, but it was finally bankrupted by litigation.
Casualties were not confined to the fringe. The number of Afrikaans newspapers dwindled from eight dailies in the early 1980s to three in 2002, and the three survivors, Beeld (Gauteng), Die Burger (Cape Town) and Die Volksblad (Bloemfontein) all belong to the same group: Media24, the media arm of Nasionale Pers. In the Sunday market, the only Afrikaans newspaper left out of three in the mid 1960s is Rapport (also owned by Media24).
Against this background, Du Plessis remained within the safe confines of the Nasionale Pers stable. As political editor of Beeld he emerged as a strong verligte voice and was tipped as future editor of Piet Cilli’s old paper, Die Burger. Then his career took a turn that was both inspiring and disheartening at the same time. In front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he challenged his own bosses to come clean on their complicity in the history of apartheid. So annoyed was Naspers chief Ton Vosloo that he banished Du Plessis who suddenly found himself in the role of deputy editor of the black Sunday paper, City Press.
Later in the nineties after serving as a consultant to Caxtons, he became editor-in-chief of the troubled Citizen. His attempt to recast the Citizen as an independent newsgatherer lost readers who wanted a quick scan of the day’s events, while the political repositioning of the paper as a more liberal medium offended conservatives.
Readers deserted in droves and Du Plessis seemed doomed to oblivion. But then, as Mbeki’s ‘African Century’ moved forward with Nepad, so the brand of social responsibility and press independence so long espoused by Du Plessis took on a new lease of life. He was acceptable again to the bosses who had spurned him. Actually, they needed him to pioneer the emergent marketplace, and so to the surprise of many was appointed editor of Rapport. Though the right wing fulminated about this closet socialist and long-time sycophant of the ANC, here at last was the opportunity the youngbloods of the eighties had craved: control of one of the commanding heights of the Afrikaans press.
Academic students of journalism will doubtless carry out content analyses of Rapport before and after Du Plesssis’ appointment. What is clear is that the agenda of investigative news, cultural coverage, sport and business is broadly similar to that of other Sundays but distinctively Afrikaner in its pitch and purpose: to consolidate the language, culture and institutions of Afrikaans as truly South African within the new constitutional framework.
What separates Du Plessis from the tradition of Piet Cilli (who died in 1999) is everything they once held in common: language, culture, a belief in the uniqueness of Afrikaans and the value of the press to the people. In recent commentary on the vervreemding (alienation) of the right wing, Du Plessis opines that all cultures and minorities contain those who feel estranged, but this does not mean the whole group is alienated from the society around it. If the estranged Afrikaners want minority rights merely to protect themselves against the effects of democracy, they are fooling themselves.
“How many times has it got to be said? This is outright daydreaming. The settlement was made in Kempton Park and sealed in the 1996 constitution. Not only the majority of South Africans but the whole world accepts the legitimacy thereof. The constitution works and its values are reinforced by the day.”
Clearly, the new form of national security based on tolerance is by far preferable to the grim alternative of the Wandering Afrikaner a fate that did befall some in the wake of the Boer War when many were transported into exile in places like Argentina and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The message of belonging is driven home by research showing that the majority of Afrikaners do in fact want to pursue their lives within the common society while retaining their language and cultural symbols.
Sampling by AMPS shows that some 3,94 million Afrikaners (82.3 percent of adults) are predominantly Afrikaans-speaking, and only 17.7 percent indicated they are fully bilingual in Afrikaans and English in their households. The conclusion drawn from this is that advertisers should reach the target market in their language of preference that is, support the Afrikaans media. Yet circulation figures show that sales have hardly grown since the 1980s, suggesting that the papers have reached their ceiling amongst Afrikaners and have no-one else to attract.
This is a misperception according to marketers. Tiaan Ras, consultant researcher to Naspers, maintains that flat or declining circulations amongst Afrikaans papers can be combated by ‘raising awareness’ especially amongst youth of the value of Afrikaans newspapers. “There is nothing wrong with the product, it’s just a matter of making it exciting for the youth,” says Ras.
“It seems to be a worldwide problem that the youth are not keen newspaper readers, so the solution is clear: lure them back into reading newspapers, thus creating a follow-up market for the current readership. The 80 percent exclusive readership for the three Afrikaans daily newspapers prove that the readers don’t feel comfortable reading in their second language and shows a loyalty to the Afrikaans daily newspapers. “If one looks at the AdEx figures over the past 12 months, the Media24 Afrikaans daily newspapers are the only group that increased their market share,” says Ras.
And there is something else, according to Pedro Diederichs, head of the Department of Journalism at Technikon Pretoria and a researcher into Afrikaans press history. “The exodus of young Afrikaans speakers, and thus potential readers, will certainly impact on the future growth of the Afrikaans newspaper. But here Media24 has come up with a solution in the form of online publications. Lively cyber debates, e-mail letters, features and interactive opinion polls on the plights or joys of the South African diaspora are the order of the day on Media24’s website.”
What about black readers? They are out there, the tantalising nine percenters who could effectively grow circulation. Not enough of them to launch a black Afrikaans paper, and too few, perhaps, to change the complexion of the existing press very radically. But the door is open to them at last.