Listening to the silent majority

[p. V]

This book is dedicated primarily to all black South Africans I have met during the past three years who made me listen and enabled me to learn.

Secondly, I dedicate this report to Lt-Genl H de Villefort du Toit and Mr Wim Pretorius of Satour in Amsterdam, both of whom supported my efforts to understand current South African reality with their genuine friendship and constant stimulation.

Thirdly, this book is dedicated to my close friends, the late Mrs Cecile van Lennep-Roosmale Nepveu, widow of the wartime Netherlands envoy to Pretoria, and actors Peter van de Wouw and Edwin van Wijk. Their combined encouragement resulted in my decision to come and see South Africa for myself.

WILLEM OLTMANS

Hillbrow, RSA

June 10, 1989

[p. VII]

Willem Oltmans reporting from Crossroads, the Cape
(Photo: Tim Pike)

Willem Oltmans (64), a Hollander based in New York, has been a journalist for the past 37 years. He has written for United Press, and most major Dutch publications as well as many international media. He filmed documentaries for Nos Dutch Television and other electronic media. Several dozens of his books have been published in the United States, Japan, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, the Soviet Union and other countries.

He first visited South Africa in 1986 and has since made six reporting trips of several months. In 1989 he prepared the manuscript for this book in four months. His previous book was published early in 1989 and dealt with racism in the United States today: Apartheid USA 1988, Perskor, Johannesburg. Listening to the silent majority is about those blacks who are not funded from overseas to make revolutionary noises and who's opinions are never heard.

[p. IX]

Foreword

These random notes on conversations with black South Africans were all recorded between April and June, 1989. Therefore, by the time this book appears, they can offer only a snapshot of what those blacks were saying and thinking in the months prior to the watershed election of September 6, 1989.

After reporting over the past three years from South Africa, I must paraphrase Alexander Solzhenitsyn, as quoted in TIME, and say: ‘I became ashamed of journalists and journalism’. Quite appropriately, the Russian writer has elsewhere described the American press as ‘operating in cycles of fashion’. It became as fashionable to slander him as it became popular to portray South Africa as a hell for blacks run by Ku Klux Klanners. The worst part is that not only the foreign media, but South African ones as well, seem to fall into this trap.

Anyone who has worked for three years in black townships, and has listened carefully to what blacks there are saying, can testify to the fact that the great majority of them in this country are opposed to sanctions, do not support Archbishop Tutu and are often desperate that nobody is able, willing and available to hear them or publicise their views. It has been said that only 40% of blacks support the ANC, and that three-quarters of those favour Nelson Mandela as their leader. If those figures are correct, this means that 60 to 70 percent of the total looks toward different leadership and more moderate solutions to the problems of the country. But what, exactly, is this ‘silent majority’ thinking and saying? To find the answers to that was the purpose behind my gathering these notes.

The press tells the world that the ANC, the UDF, certain unions and some few travelling clergymen are the sole representative voices of black South Africa. Even South African media have fallen largely into line with this lopsided view of reality. For example, immediately after the bombshell meeting in July 1989 between President PW Botha and Nelson Mandela, almost all of the South African daily print media graced their front pages with the opinions of Archbishop Tutu and the Reverend Frank Chikane on the encounter. But the South African press (The Citizen included) could learn much from the New York Times, which after the historic tete-á-tete presented its readers with an entire page of

[p. X]

comments from people like Philip Nhlapo of the National Forum for Black Leaders; Moeketsi Shai, director of the Black Management Forum; Tom Boya, president of UMSA; Willie Ramoshaba, president of the black Achievers Foundation; Ephraim Tshabalala, president of the Sofasonke Party; Samuel Kolisang, president of the VRRP; Sam Mkhwanazi, the mayor of Soweto; Archbishop Shadrack Mhambi of the Western Cape Council of Churches; Archbishop Gladstone Dlelembe of the (multiracial) Ekhuphumleni Church of Zion; John Gogotya of FIDA; mayor Matilda Mothlaping of Kwa Thema; Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of Inkatha and many other black leaders and writers, journalists, churchmen, businessmen and community leaders. But, the South African press seemed to possess the telephone numbers of only the foreign-funded noisemakers, those self-appointed crusaders for equality and ‘justice-for-all’ in South Africa.

Until 1986, when I first arrived here, I had been inclined to accept Bishop Tutu and company as fully representative spokesmen for black South Africa. But, in 1988, I ventured with my West German colleague, Michael Stroh, into Crossroads near Cape Town. The bishops there told us in camera that Archbishop Tutu had not only never set foot in Crossroads, but that he had flatly refused to meet its residents and listen to their pleas on behalf of the unemployed and disadvantaged in their midst. They wanted him to halt his overseas pro-sanctions campaigns. Our film of this event subsequently disappeared from the files of Sunrise Productions in Pretoria, and I had to take the matter as far as the Supreme Court in my attempts to discover what had happened to it; but our material appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth. In addition, the offices of the clergymen who had disapproved of and disagreed with Bishop Tutu and his acolytes were completely demolished together with contents, files, documents and possessions. There has been no explanation by the authorities, including the Minister for Constitutional Development and Planning, Mr Chris-Heunis. The latter was asked in writing to explain this, but did not.

Of course, the clergymen of the Western Cape Council of Churches are not funded by troublemakers from overseas and thus do not have adequate funds to defend themselves against unlawful action of this kind. But why has not a single foreign or South African journalist attempted to uncover what happened to the offices of the Western Cape Council of Churches in Crossroads? This, among other reasons, is why I

[p. XI]

am ashamed of fellow journalists and the way they conduct our profession. And why has no-one come to the aid of these respected black township leaders from the Cape? Whose power has made these machinations possible? These men do not reside, as Bishop Tutu does, in Bishopscourt, one of white South Africa's most affluent areas. They live, work and spread the Gospel among the impoverished and the disadvantaged in the townships. Why should they have been thus terrorised? Why was their office razed from the face of the earth?

Details of what happened to me there will follow in this report.

While the South African press complains and agitates against government interference with its free functioning, the reality is that during my work here I have come across many journalists, both black and white, who are complete amateurs and do not do their jobs properly. One experience with Business Day is documented here. The Sowetan is another example. I have reported the ‘cold war’ between Sofasonke and the VRRP in the Vaal region in some detail here, and told Sam Mabe (of The Sowetan) about it in early June. He was virually ignorant of those events, which took place only kilometres from Johannesburg. I gave him a number at which to contact Jabulani Patose, chief aide to mayor Samuel Kolisang of Lekoa and he promised to investigate. Nothing happened. Finally, I escorted Patose bodily to Mabe's office, and they talked for 45 minutes about the events (described here) in the Vaal triangle. Again, nothing happened. Mabe telephoned mayor Kolisang a few times. Still nothing. When I asked Mabe, prior to my eventual departure on July 27, what he had done about this vitally important matter, he replied, meekly, ‘I handed it to a reporter and it is now out of my hands’. Anyone who calls this mishandling of black readers' interests ‘journalism’ doesn't know what he is talking about.

Since I had come to know both of the chief protagonists in the matter (namely Ephraim Tshabalala of Sofasonke and Samuel Kolisang of the VRRP) rather well, I suggested a meeting. One was held in the boardroom of Tshabalala Enterprises. I asked them, ‘If Jonas Savimbi can talk to President Carlos Dos Santos of Angola, then why can't you two gentlemen shake hands and resolve your dispute?’ At the time of writing, contact between them continues, and perhaps a settlement of their differences is possible. They later signed an agreement to co-operate.

During this time, I watched a report by John Bishop on the situation

[p. XII]

in the Vaal region, on SABC television's peak-viewing-hour Network programme. He and his researchers had evidently failed to do their homework. I had spent only a few weeks on the subject. Yet I could have more truthfully informed the public as to what was occurring in Johannesburg's immediate environs. Too many journalists and publications in this country consider themselves professionals, but are in fact complete amatures. This has nothing whatever to do with government restrictions on their profession. They simply do not know what active journalism means. They are uninterested, and above all, are not interested in what happens within the black community.

As Solzhenitsyn said, journalism is a ‘fashion industry’, and it aims for increased circulations, higher advertising revenues and greater profits, all the while hurling unfounded or fabricated accusations at the South African government, in an effort to cover up their own lack-lustre performance.

This applies, too, to some foreign journalists stationed in South Africa. Let me give you an example. Tony Robinson of the prominent British journal, the Financial Times, had spent five years in the country as correspondent for that well-known publication, when I met him by chance at a dinner party. I was shocked to discover that he was totally unaware of the existence of the Black Management Forum and its director, Moeketsi Shai, and also of the Black Achievers Foundation, run by Willie Ramoshaba. I therefore brought them and my colleague Robinson together over lunch at Johannesburg's Carlton Hotel.^1. Of course, Robinson was swimming in contacts with ANC, UDF and COSATU members, and the professional troublemakers of the SACC. It was the same old story. Most foreign journalists here specialise exclusively in those black organisations that have received most overseas publicity down the years - it's a crazy vicious circle, because the most loud-mouthed protesters are not the sole voices of black South Africa. For a foreign journalist working in South Africa to claim that they are, is a blatant lie. It is the fashion, yes; but is has nothing to do with reality.

What I have particularly grown to resent is the stream of South Africans who have trekked by the hundreds to Lusaka and other points north, in order to confer with the ANC leadership. I therefore challenge any of these people, including much-heralded fellow writers such as An-

1. Shai and Ramoshaba had also not previously met

[p. XIII]

dré Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and others: have any of you ever been into Sebokeng, Kwa Thema, Crossroads (or wherever) and sat listening to the genuine voices of black South Africa? They are voices which I have been able to portray here only in outline, because I have recorded hundreds of hours of conversation in total but am not able to reproduce more than a fraction of it in a book of this length. I do realise that it's THE fashion, now, to have discussions with expatriate black South Africans who have obviously lost contact with the masses at home. Why do investigators travel to Lusaka, yet remain ignorant of what 60 percent of blacks think and say about the future of the country? Why do they lend credibility to leftists and communists who are the avowed enemies of the state? More than half of the top executives of the ANC holds membership of the outlawed South African Communist Party. Moscow, Peking (Beijing) and other subversive régimes are supplying the ANC with arms and terrorist weapons to destabilise the whole of South Africa, including the townships. One has only to view the immense struggle which the peoples of Eastern Europe, Russia and China have had to wage to rid themselves of the yoke of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships, and to wrest freedom for themselves, to realise that the representatives of the communist world in Southern Africa should not be treated as if theirs was the sole party representing black South Africa. First of all, it's a demonstrable lie: secondly, it's contrary to the interests of the majority of moderates that wants the country to maintain its free market system, and watch its trade with the free world continued, increased and broadened.

Yet the South African print media - and here I include even The Citizen - continue to headline the opinions of such spokesmen as Tutu, Boesak and Chikane, while neglecting the silent majority of moderate blacks in South Africa. This omission is unforgivable, and unprofessional. It's also a violation of acceptable standards of journalism, and is not a true reflection of reality. It is a falling victim to the current worldwide journalistic fad and fashion of according to those who shout the loudest, the dubious honour of speaking in the name of the majority; while in reality, the majority remains unheard. This book is an attempt to let them be heard, and to listen to what they are trying to tell us.

WILLEM OLTMANS

Johannesburg

South Africa