Pale Native: Memoirs of a renegade afrikaner
by Max du Preez
(Zebra)
istory is nothing if not ironic, all notions of it repeating itself as farce after initial tragedy aside. A brilliant Afrikaner dissident journalist under apartheid (harassed, intimidated and on a number of hit lists), Max du Preez found himself “too hot” to handle – and “too white” – under the new dispensation. As one reads his often very funny, always magnificently written, autobiography, one might extrapolate from it three distinct sections in his life so far: an evolving political consciousness rooted in a journalist’s commitment to truth in reporting; courageous commitment to democracy amid the cruel tragedy of apartheid’s last few decades; stoical honesty in post-apartheid’s farcical dash towards journalistic mediocrity posing as “patriotism”.
Du Preez’s life mirrors in some ways the evolution of Afrikaner liberal-radical dissent from the 1970s onward. By the mid-to-late 1980s a considerable minority of Afrikaners had realised that apartheid was doomed to fail, and was probably wrong. There was no clear consensus on what might replace it, however, but the writing was on the wall: it had been in newspaper reports and articles by Du Preez for quite some time. With humility and honesty, Du Preez admits that his political consciousness had evolved over time and through his career as a journalist. What comes through in the earlier parts of this book most strongly is the sense in which his interest in accuracy in reporting and desire to get all sides of a story led him down paths that made him a “radi- cal” in the eyes of the apartheid establishment and a pain in the neck (Du Preez and his colleagues at the Vrye Weekblad would have used a different body part I’m sure) to his editors.
His work as a foreign correspondent in Namibia highlights his concern for getting all sides of a story. Unlike many South African journalists there during the late 1970s, he did not parrot the official line of the South African occupiers; he made contacts with internal parties of all ideological persuasions, building up close relationships with the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance and with South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo). The result was reports that highlighted the polit- ical complexity of the independence struggle. Ironically, Du Preez had been moved to Namibia following his work covering the 1976 student uprisings and his work as a parliamentary correspondent in Cape Town, where he had ruffled Nationalist feathers.
On his return to South Africa, Du Preez produced critical work that irritated big business — and his editors. As the anti-apartheid struggle deepened he continued his journalism while working together with progressive white politicians like Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert. He was present at the famous Dakar meeting of Afrikaner notables with the African National Congress. Perhaps the most significant moment in his life, for South African journalism history at least, was the founding in 1998 of the independent and highly critical newspaper the Vrye Weekblad.
His recollections of this period are both funny and deadly serious. On one hand we see a crowd of highly opinionated, creative journalists (often hard-drinking too) producing a paper almost anarchically amid constant state harassment that veered from the hilarious to the sinister (the security branch getting their comeuppance in a pub when they tried to “recruit” journalists; court cases; bannings of issues; bombing of the foyer; death threats). At the same time some of the “stories” they produced made history. The confessions of Dirk Coetzee proving that the beliefs in a state-run death squad were true have become the basis for further investigations, generated commissions of inquiry and have now become part of the public record through testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Being a small paper publishing views that most of its potential audience found unpalatable, outrageous or just plain skandalig, Vrye Weekblad could not last. After it ceased in 1994, Du Preez moved more solidly into television, and into the news and documentary section of the old SABC TV dinosaur, now the “new” SABC. Producing a brilliant series on the TRC hearings, Du Preez helped develop what is now SABC3’s Special Assignment. Infighting at the SABC described with razor-sharp precision, led to Du Preez’s contract not being renewed. In the new era, however, Du Preez’s credentials as an anti-apartheid journalist have been eclipsed by his being a “pale male” – as he puts it a “pale native”. He works now as a freelancer. Du Preez is stoical about it: no hints of self-pity or regret. To many it is South African journalism’s loss.
What makes this important book truly delightful is Du Preez’s brilliant character observations and his complete refusal to pull punches and be PC. He can be savagely funny about journalists he has known and liked or disliked – particularly those disliked! Yet there are moments of deep sadness at the loss of good people and good friends he knew, notably Anton Lubofski, a Swapo activist who was assassinated, and the horror that he and his colleagues often uncovered.
This is perhaps one of the best written and engaging autobiographical accounts of South African journalism in the apartheid and early post-apartheid era. It deserves wide readership, could even be part of a journalism training course, and will certainly generate the same “love him, hate him” response that has marked Du Preez’s career.