/ 22 April 2008

Above fear or favour

Court reporting has long been considered a rite of passage and a training ground for young reporters. But Ronnie Morris turned it into a career -- and made it look a glamorous one. Senior advocates, articled clerks, judges, magistrates, orderlies, interpreters and even many accused and witnesses got to know the name of this passionate Capetonian.

Court reporting has long been considered a rite of passage and a training ground for young reporters. But Ronnie Morris turned it into a career — and made it look a glamorous one. Senior advocates, articled clerks, judges, magistrates, orderlies, interpreters and even many accused and witnesses got to know the name of this lanky, bespectacled, passionate Capetonian.

Morris was to court reporting what Kitz Katzen was to crime reporting.He shunned status — he was just doing his job, sitting in court and fashioning living stories from dry-as-dust court procedure. His knowledge of the law was such that his admirers and friends nicknamed him ”Judge”.

Born in District Six, Morris’s family was forcibly removed when he was young and he grew up on the Cape Flats. After school, and without any training, he bulldozed his way into the lily-white Cape Times newsroom.

With 16 years in the lower and high courts, he was one of the last of the old-school journalists — always in a suit, collar and tie; always above fear or favour; absolutely committed to the profession. And as his last editor, Business Report‘s Jabulani Sikhakhane has said, any bias was in favour of the underdog.

Morris sympathetically brought to the pages of the Cape Times the hearings of activists appearing on the apartheid-era charges of common purpose, malicious damage and illegal assembly.

But he was not a political activist who associated himself with a particular political movement. In fact, he made a deliberate effort not to be identified as a ”coloured” reporter; he wanted to be judged as a professional.

He respected and spoke well of his editors, but always spoke his mind and stood his ground.

Walking through Cape Town with him was a constant revelation: government ministers, judges, senior prosecutors and even old-order policemen would stop and greet and chat.

But this never went to his head. In addition to justice and the law, his great loves were wine, classical music and his daughters Jay, Allen and Roxanne.

Eight years ago, to general amazement, Morris quit the courts for business reporting, where he also acquitted himself with honour. He focused on agriculture — mostly the wine industry — and the plight of poor mining communities.

He would visit god-forsaken places that do not make headlines, like Kuruman, to find poor victims of asbestosis or people who had been moved from their land by mining companies without compensation. Three years ago he became Business Report‘s Cape editor.

For many years he was leader of the now-disbanded South African Union of Journalists — remaining a lone union voice in the newsroom when others moved into management.

And he took a keen interest in the careers of other black reporters, grooming and mentoring them.

Morris will not receive a presidential honour or award. But those who followed his work will remember his unrelenting commitment to justice, to professional ethics — and to the story.

Ronald Louis Morris: born August 22 1959, died April 12 2008