Listening to the silent majority

[62]

Yet, I considered this experience in Crossroads a matter of public interest. Therefore, I wrote an article about it and sent it to The Citizen. They didn't bother to let me know they weren't interested. Next, I sent it to Business Day. Soon, an editor phoned me in Hillbrow and I went down town to their office. A number of adjustments were suggested, weakening my story, but I went along in order to get it into print. In the

[p. 80]

end, I took the material home and rewrote the piece from a to z. Once more, I was asked to come into the office and further modifications were made. Finally, I was told the article was approved and would be printed later in the week. The seven days went by without anything happening. I waited another week, but there was nothing. Finally I telephoned and was informed that editor Ken Owen had seen the piece and had killed it.^45.

Journalists and editors in South Africa shout from the rooftops that the government is placing restrictions on them, and therefore, the freedom of the press is suppressed and curtailed. But who in the government forbade Business Day to publish the story of the black bishops at the Cape, who opposed Desmond Tutu's foreign-funded junkets to promote disinvestment from South Africa? It was the editors themselves who lacked the courage and journalistic decency to print a perfectly well-documented story on blacks at the Cape saying that Tutu was not crusading in their name all over the globe. One editor even openly acknowledged ‘What would we do if Tutu sued us? He could sue us into bankruptcy, because he can get all the funds he needs from overseas.’ Why is everybody afraid of Tutu in South Africa? Who gave this traveling prelate the mandate to speak in foreign lands in the name of ‘all’ South African blacks? He does not have such a mandate. Nor does the Reverend Frank Chikane, Alan Boesak or Beyers Naudé. At the time of this writing the quartet was again stirring up trouble in America. Is it wisdom or is it fear that places travel documents into the hands of these gentlemen, that have together done more harm to South Africa, than all the anti-Pretoria outbursts in the rest of Africa together?

45. When South African journalists complain about governmental restrictions on journalism, I ask myself, ‘Where have they been?’ They should come and have a closer look at what happens in Holland - one area I am familiar with - where it is much the same