The Chapter we Wrote: The City Press Story

By Len Kalane

In The Chapter We Wrote, Len Kalane, former editor of the newspaper, tells not only the story of City Press, but also a tale of the stories and events that shaped contemporary South Africa. Kalane traces the birth of City Press in the 1950s and the early days of the newspaper, along with its iconic sister publication, Drum magazine. He details the role that Naspers, who bought the paper in the 1980s, and the erstwhile apartheid communication machinery played behind the scenes in an attempt to reconcile two constituencies – Afrikaner and black nationalist – and to move South Africa out of its political conundrum and towards a negotiated, peaceful settlement.
The book is in memory of author and journalist Percy Qoboza, and also incorporates a selection of his columns. It brings vividly to life the newsrooms of an iconic South African brand, and will be useful to students, academics and the interested lay reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Release date: Jun 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781868428915

Len Kalane

LEN KALANE is a former City Press editor, and was executive director at RCP Media, incorporating Rapport-City Press. He joined City Press in 1983, from the Sowetan. Kalane started his journalism career at The World and Post newspapers, both banned by the South African apartheid government in 1977 and 1982 respectively. Kalane also helped found Kaya FM, one of the first post-democracy privately-owned radio stations in South Africa, and was on the MNet board of directors until 2001. He has also served as an executive in Telkom and has launched various media companies. He is currently a media consultant.

Book preview

Author’s Note

THIS BOOK IS in memory of author and legendary editor Percy Qoboza. The story is woven around City Press, but it is actually a tale, told from a journalistic perspective, of our contemporary history, and the stories and events that shaped South Africa. In the same breath, it also traces the birth of City Press in the 1950s and the early days of this great newspaper, along with its iconic sister publication, Drum magazine.

It is about the role that giant Afrikaner media group Naspers and the erstwhile apartheid communication machinery played behind the scenes in an attempt to normalise our society, to reconcile the two constituencies – Afrikaner and black nationalists – and to move South Africa out of its political conundrum and towards a negotiated, peaceful settlement. This is an endeavour on the part of Naspers that has not been widely publicised.

First, let’s get this one out of the way: Yes, Naspers supported apartheid. Yes, Naspers prospered during apartheid, as did most whites and other corporates at the time.

Then something extraordinary happened. Naspers bought into the black press: the Afrikaner media group entered the English-language media by buying City Press, Drum and True Love, which were considered at the time to be leading anti-apartheid ‘black voices’.

It was a masterstroke rich in irony as the black and Afrikaner newsrooms were brought closer together in the midst of a rather toxic apartheid environment. In 1984, apartheid was on its way out and Naspers, like the FW de Klerk administration that released Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 after he served 27 years of a life sentence, did well to read the signs ahead of time – the writing was on the wall. This book puts it all into context.

The Chapter We Wrote is also about the laying of the groundwork by Afrikaners and others to engage with the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African community across the races, especially after some Naspers editors dumped apartheid, and some sections of the Afrikaans-language press began to move away from the ruling National Party (NP) and its segregation policies.

The acquisition of City Press and Drum raised eyebrows, and many were suspicious about the real motive behind the Naspers buyout. This book is an attempt to contextualise our history, because the City Press story cannot be disentwined from Naspers and the ravages of apartheid.

Today, it seems as though some sections of our society are hell-bent on reracialising the country instead of harmonising the narrative of our economic and political landscape, thereby reversing the early gains and the aspirations of the forebears of our democracy toward a fully united, nonracial country.

This book also seeks to take a brief glimpse at the men who brought us apartheid, from DF Malan to HF Verwoerd; from the obstinacy of PW Botha to the political acumen of De Klerk; from the rise of the ANC to the fall of apartheid; from the intellectual prowess and determination of OR Tambo to the giant steps made by Mandela’s reconciliation success; and from the erudite Thabo Mbeki and his unfinished reconstruction project to the folly and fallibility of Jacob Zuma and his own goals and the hope and optimism of the Cyril Ramaphosa presidency.

Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko paid the ultimate price. These political personalities, and many others, played various and divergent roles.

This is the story of the big men and women, and of the small but gallant men and women who flourished or perished side by side. It is about you and me, and the lessons we have learnt and must learn.

Racism is still palpable and hate speech is pervasive. This continues to polarise and ravage our society. Inequality and poverty are still part of the equation; crime and corruption are rampant and out of control. We need more nation-builders. There is a lot of anger out there.

The book also salutes City Press’s unsung heroes, who were there from day one: the energetic and resourceful deputy editor ZB Molefe; journalists Mandla Ndlazi and the indomitable Desmond Blow; editor Phillip Selwyn-Smith; and photojournalist Mike Mzileni. Except for Ndlazi, they all stayed on at City Press until they retired. Also there from day one until retirement were the support staff: Cathy Robinson, who worked in the accounts department; Bea Ward, admin manager in the sales department; and Tema Gxoyiya, who joined a year later as a graphic artist.

This book would not have been written if I hadn’t had a rather casual conversation with Khulu Sibiya and Connie Molusi, both former colleagues. They thought I had some interesting and valuable insights that I needed to share, and I was inspired.

Another former colleague, Sandile Memela, amplified this challenge and, after indulging in and surviving a heavy bout of whisky intake one evening, in the spirit of the hard-drinking journalistic culture of the 1950s, you could say I would never be the same again. I haven’t looked back. It’s true that there is a book in all of us. To Khulu and Connie, I say, ‘Always be careful of what you wish for.’

I also met the amiable Leonie Klootwyk, the Media24 librarian at City Press’s headquarters in Auckland Park, Johannesburg. She was keen to help, and gave me unfettered access to the newspaper’s archives. That was very sweet of her, and testament to her calm, easy and soothing personality. I thank her a million times. Baie dankie sussie! I enjoyed the rooibos tea. I also thank my cousin Ronnie Carlinsky, who helped out with the Afrikaans translations.

My thanks to the team at Jonathan Ball Publishers who believed in the project, in particular to Ester Levinrad for putting it all together, to Heather Chowles and Laila Steele, who did the initial editing, and to Alfred LeMaitre, for the final editing. I also thank Media24 CEO Esmaré Weideman for championing this project.

This book is also dedicated to all my former colleagues at City Press, as well as those at Drum and True Love magazines. I thank Mike Mzileni for his incredible memory, knowledge and wisdom. He is a walking City Press and Drum magazine encyclopaedia. He has been part of the revolution.

Of course, we also need to thank the progenitor, Jim Bailey.

Len Kalane

Former editor, City Press

Chapter One

Leap of Faith

THE LIFT DOORS opened to deliver Percy Qoboza onto the carpeted ground floor.

He emerged, brow glistening. He walked straight across the swanky hotel lobby to where I was. In his usual melodramatic manner, hands gesticulating, he signalled that we should leave at once.

He had made his way down, I think he said, from the 17th floor of the pristine, five-star Landdrost Hotel in Plein Street, Johannesburg, where, he told me, ‘Lang Dawid’ de Villiers, the managing director of Nasionale Pers, had a permanent suite reserved for his exclusive use.

Thirty years ago, the Landdrost Hotel was the citadel of Afrikanerdom in Johannesburg. The Johannesburg CBD is now run-down and the glorious Landdrost is no more. Then, Johannesburg was still Johannesburg – the model African city of gold. Maboneng, Egoli, Jozi, Mgipa, Mshishi, TJ.

In its heyday, women would come to town dressed to the nines. These cherries would strut along the tidy city pavements dressed in the fashionable and perfectly fitted pleated skirts called goreys, which would accentuate their curves. They would match these skirts with Sports and Country blouses, which would elicit a gentle catcall and a whistle from an admiring streetwise tsotsi leaning against a streetlight as she passed by. Our man would then melodically break into song: ‘Turn around, turn around. I want to see your figure, never mind your face …’

The cherrie would pretend to be uninterested in the romantic overture, and would respond: ‘Nxa, suka wena [No, move away]’. If the guy persisted, the flame of love could well be ignited and sometimes even lead to marriage.

Across from the Landdrost stood the Putco bus terminal, which facilitated the transportation of many thousands of passengers each day from places such as Sophiatown and Alexandra through the CBD. The terminal was clean, and law and order was maintained. However, the occasional gunshot would ring out – this was Noord Street, after all – and the increasing urbanisation of the townships meant a degree of criminality was bound to flourish.

The Landdrost has been transformed into a low-grade apartment block (Landrost Mansions) that houses lower-income inner-city tenants. It has suffered the same fate as most apartment blocks in the pulsating Hillbrow flatlands, which was once Johannesburg’s own Manhattan-style, round-the-clock live-and-play magnet, with attractive, psychedelic neon lights that were always illuminated.

Today, the old Landdrost is surrounded by mass of human activity and noise brought to you courtesy of the Noord Taxi Rank, which usurped the Putco terminal and where scores of vehicles arrive and depart for all corners of the country, generating a momentous cacophony. The kwaito, gospel, maskandi and house music that blares from the taxis competes for attention with screeching tyres and drivers’ ceaseless hooting, a jarring racket that is guaranteed to drive any casual and uninitiated visitor to the precinct utterly crazy.

The pavements are cluttered by street hawkers, who sell everything from underwear and vetkoek to fruit. It’s a shoddy, smelly mess, and on a hot summer day it’s impossible not to catch a whiff of the pervasive and repulsive odour. Although it will be hard, our once bright and clean Johannesburg city centre can be reclaimed and rebuilt into something we can once again be proud of.

Yes indeed, the glitter in the city of gold is no more, the shine having moved further north to the affluent Sandton, South Africa’s new commercial hub – regarded as the richest square mile in Africa. Urban decay in downtown Johannesburg caused many corporate offices to move from the Johannesburg CBD to Sandton in the 1990s.

On the afternoon I was with Qoboza at the Landdrost, a Wednesday in the autumn of 1984, he must have downed something very strong up there on the 17th floor when he heard the news.

We had taken a few strides towards our car, when, wincing under the weight of the information, the words poured out: ‘We have been sold – lock, stock and barrel. City Press, Drum and True Love now belong to Nasionale Pers.’ It hit me like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky; there had been no warning, and the implications were obvious and huge.

Jim Bailey, the publisher, had always played his cards close to his chest. No one had had an inkling that City Press, Drum and True Love were about to be sold to what would later be known as Naspers – the name changed from Nasionale Pers as the Afrikaans-language media company began to drift away from the ruling National Party (NP).

We were unsure about how the news would be received. The staff at City Press and Drum had diverse political views, and most held strongly to those views. Others were known political activists. As a newspaper, City Press itself was ferociously anti-apartheid and fiercely subversive in its editorial tone.

I also wasn’t too sure how Qoboza felt about all of this. Driving back to the office, he was still deep in thought when I broke the awkward silence: ‘What is your take … are we staying?’

He appeared uncertain as he answered in a low tone: ‘I guess so.’

Clearly, there was a lot to think about.

Qoboza, the associate editor, had been at City Press for barely a year. The editor was Phillip Selwyn-Smith, whose position was thought of as ‘paradoxical as he was a white man in a predominantly black newspaper that had definitely nailed its colours to the anti-apartheid mast’, as Mandy de Waal wrote in Daily Maverick on the occasion of City Press’s 30th birthday in 2012.

Qoboza, whom we fondly called PQ, would be appointed as editor in 1986, a day after the launch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which would go on to shape both the South African labour front and alliance politics with the African National Congress (ANC).

The new owners knew his buy-in would be crucial, because the transaction was so sensitive and had implications on many fronts, chiefly political. A staff walkout led by the high-profile and influential Qoboza would have been disastrous, hence the rendezvous at the Landdrost Hotel to sensitise and gauge attitudes.

Qoboza was part of a hand-picked delegation invited to the Landdrost ahead of the announcement. Drum editor Stan Motjuwadi and True Love editor Barney Cohen were also there. A walkout by Motjuwadi would have been equally disastrous.

Qoboza, whom we fondly called PQ. (City Press Archives)

I was sworn to secrecy, as I had no business being there in the first place – I was simply Qoboza’s chaperone. He had asked me to accompany him so that I could do the driving. Although he was 19 years older than me, we had a special relationship and he was fond of taking me along on sensitive missions. At the time, I was City Press’s deputy news editor and I had his ear.

As staff, we took our cue from Qoboza and Motjuwadi. There was some relief when, after the news of the buyout was made public, no walkout took place. We were now officially employees of Naspers, a known supporter at the time of the NP.

Some saw this as political suicide for Qoboza and Motjuwadi, who had amassed formidable struggle credentials over the years.

At the time, Naspers and its stable of Afrikaans-language newspapers and magazines were key in driving apartheid and the NP’s white-minority voter base at the expense of the disenfranchised black majority.

Apartheid architects such as HF Verwoerd and DF Malan had served as editors of Afrikaans publications, and even PW Botha sat on Naspers’s board for ten years from 1966. It has since been revealed that the NP also held 74 000 shares in Naspers in 1984, so the fortunes of the ruling party and Naspers were cosily intertwined over a considerable period of time.

In 1984, the country was on fire. Resistance to the NP’s racial and segregationist apartheid policies had gone into overdrive. Emotions were running high in the townships, and some people, especially staff members who were part of the township community, probably felt conflicted by the Naspers deal .

Everybody was caught by surprise. The staff took the news with what could, at best, be described as a perfunctory nod or, at worst, apathy. People were probably reticent to express their thoughts and feelings. There was little visible emotion or internal distress, and only some external detractors seemed to have had something to say.

The sale to Naspers pointed sharply to one thing: Jim Bailey had once again run himself into a sticky financial situation and couldn’t keep things afloat. This time around, to his credit, he didn’t just arbitrarily shut the paper down and dump everything – as he had done previously – but had the sense to save jobs and careers by selling to Naspers, whose offer was worth millions.

Percy Qoboza had an exuberant and colourful personality, quite the opposite of the dour archetype of the newspaper editor. He had ‘struggle politics’ credentials and a good anti-apartheid track record. He was suave and had the necessary wherewithal to know how to play the game in any given situation.

Stan Motjuwadi, on the other hand, had a more reserved nature. Often cutting a lone figure, he was introverted, with a placid manner – a wise, serious and observing thinker beavering in the background. What he lacked in flamboyance, he made up for with the raw power of his pen and writing talent. Motjuwadi was a storyteller, and exposé journalism was one of his main preoccupations, whereas Qoboza was more adept at writing incisive commentary.

They were both cut from the same block of wood in some respects: Motjuwadi would polish off his daily bottle of whisky, while Qoboza would down copious amounts of gin and tonic; neither man drove, and so both had to be chauffeured to work and back; and they were both household names in black journalism.

Stan Motjuwadi, Drum editor. (City Press Archives)

Heavy drinking was a legacy of the 1950s newsroom culture, where it seemed that the prerequisite for acceptance into big-time journalism was to indulge in regular bouts of senseless alcohol consumption.

Lewis Nkosi, a celebrated writer and one of Bailey’s early recruits, recalled in one of his articles how he was received at Drum magazine on his first day at work in the late 1950s. He said he was being introduced to Can Themba that morning, and Casey Motsisi sardonically remarked, ‘Jim’s new find from Durban’. Nkosi said that, while he shook hands with Themba, Drum’s associate editor looked him up and down doubtfully, then enquired, ‘Does he drink?’ Nkosi wrote: ‘A Drum man took sex and alcohol in his stride, or was supposed to, and stayed in the front line of danger so long as there was danger to be endured.’

Three decades later, in 1985, another Durban recruit, S’bu Mngadi, who was later appointed as Durban bureau chief, related a similar experience. He wrote: ‘After freelancing for City Press for a year, I was called to the Johannesburg head office by editor Percy Qoboza and group managing director Tobie Boshoff for a job interview. PQ asked, Do you drink?’

When Mngadi confidently replied that he was a teetotaller, Qoboza was appalled. ‘You don’t drink? What type of copy should I expect from a teetotaller?’ he blurted out before storming out of the office, Mngadi remembers. It was all a joke, of course, as Qoboza later confirmed Mngadi’s appointment.

* * *

The low-key meeting between Qoboza and De Villiers at the Landdrost Hotel might have escaped national newspaper headlines, but the event would prove to be significant as we trudged towards a democratic South Africa.

By some measure, Qoboza and De Villiers appear to have been coincidentally cast to reconcile the two opposing constituencies – the Afrikaner and African or black nationalisms – and were to focus on the fundamental dichotomy. The two men were going to have to teach us to love instead of to hate, to find commonalities instead of differences. Ton Vosloo would later enter this arena when he took over from De Villiers as the managing director of Naspers.

That spirit of reconciliation would also play out on a bigger stage as ANC leader Nelson Mandela and NP leader FW de Klerk began the process that would herald a democratic South Africa in 1994. There was also the formidable team of Afrikaner Roelf Meyer and the ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa, who led negotiations towards the birth of a new South Africa and our much-vaunted Constitution.

In a public lecture delivered at Wits University in May 2016, Professor Ivor Chipkin, executive director of the Public Affairs Research Institute, reminded us of how, in 1987, historians Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido sketched the outlines of a contemporary history of the country. In their own terms, 20th-century South Africa was made in the colossal struggle between the two nationalisms.

There was something asymmetrical about this struggle, however, he said, not simply in that Afrikaner nationalism had state power at its disposal from 1948, but that it was a classical nationalism. It defined the political community based on race, language and religion. Moreover, the NP rejected the very idea of South Africa as founded in the 1910 Union of South Africa.

The peculiarity of the ANC’s nationalism stands out from this perspective, said Chipkin. He said the ANC took it as a given that the ‘people of South Africa’ referred to the residents of the Union of South Africa. The peoples thrown together in a common territory by colonial annexation and imperial war were regarded as a common people – or potentially a common people. That is, African nationalism in South Africa had been the principal force in favour of an expansive conception of the South African people.

This vision of South Africa, said Chipkin, was anything but national. Instead, it shared with other Third World movements, from Indonesia to Guatemala, a commitment to the idea of multiplicity and multinationalism grounded in a vision of social equality.

Drawing from Chipkin’s rationale, the struggle in South Africa has innately been between the Afrikaner and the English, and then between the oppressed and the oppressor, or, if you like, between the black majority and the white minority. There is no hypothesis here; it is a fact of South African history.

The NP then became the oppressor of the black majority through apartheid policies and, by extension, also the custodian of Afrikaner nationalism.

On the other hand, the oppressed black masses found political refuge in the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) or in some Black Consciousness formations that were custodians of African or black nationalism. The two nationalisms – Afrikaner and black/African – are rooted in the African soil.

Of all the European-extraction groups in Africa, the Afrikaner has probably demonstrated the most allegiance, affiliation and loyalty to Africa as defined by PAC leader Robert Sobukwe. Hence the name Afrikaner and the language Afrikaans, which has a distinguished south or southern African provenance, diverging from mainstream Dutch and derived from the name of the continent.

Although Afrikaans is said to be rooted in Dutch, some think it more closely resembles Flemish, descended from the Franco-Germanic dialects. In South Africa, it spawned a bastardised version known as Tsotsitaal, a township lingua franca spoken mostly by blacks and so-called coloureds in urban areas. Statistics place Afrikaans as South Africa’s third mother tongue, spoken by 13.5 per cent of the population, and only outstripped by isiZulu and isiXhosa. By contrast, English is the mother tongue of a little more than nine per cent of South Africans.

If Afrikaans is die taal van die land, then Tsotsitaal is die taal van die ‘ouens’ – die manne. It is the language of Sophiatown (Kofifi) – dynamic, with no fixed or formal grammatical structure, modified from time to time and from place to place, but well understood and followed by the township dwellers of Gauteng who speak it.

In his autobiography, Towards the Mountain, renowned South African author Alan Paton said, ‘Afrikaans is overwhelmingly the child of the Netherlands and, in another sense, it is also overwhelmingly the child of South Africa. It is idiomatically rich and a great deal of this richness is indigenous.’

I wrote an article in City Press on 30 May 1993 asking whether Afrikaans really was the underlying gripe behind the students’ rebellion of 16 June 1976. If so, how come Tsotsitaal, Afrikaans’s step-language, is so well received in the townships? There are striking similarities between the two languages: both are so very South African and both are undoubtedly here to stay.

A poetic and expressive language laced with much metaphor and derived mainly from Afrikaans, Tsotsitaal is spoken largely in mining towns, especially where I come from, Randfontein on the West Rand in Gauteng, where they say Tsotsitaal was daar gekook en die potte is nog daar!

In comparison with other towns in Gauteng, Randfontein and Krugersdorp (Mogale City) are predominantly Afrikaans-speaking communities. So was Sophiatown in its heyday – Ons daak nie, ons phola hier! was Sophiatown’s anti-removal war cry in Tsotsitaal. Some pockets in townships in Pretoria are also fluent in Tsotsitaal, though they speak another version there that is known as ‘Pitori taal’.

Tsotsitaal is therefore, by and large, a language that had its genesis during the urbanisation of the blacks at the turn of the 20th century, with some dialects (here and there) stolen from most ethnic groupings, but mostly Afrikaans, to engineer its uniqueness.

It is a jargon of the townships, its colourful vocabulary born out of the joys and pains of Kofifi and similar squalid black settlements of the time around the Reef. It is the language of District Six and the Malay Camps, the language of the township underworld.

Those who can’t speak Tsotsitaal fluently (or at all) are generally treated with derision, mainly by the tsotsis (mobsters) who have adopted it as their official language. It is quintessentially South African, just like boerewors. Kalkoen is another Afrikaans word used exclusively in Tsotsitaal, and used in a derogatory way. It means ‘sucker’ or ‘turkey’. In this sense, a turkey is simply a bum – one who is not ‘with it’ in the township underworld. Often, bums are also referred to as skaapies (from the Afrikaans word for sheep).

The whole country went up in flames in 1976 all because of the introduction of the Afrikaans language in black schools as a medium of instruction. Really? Granted, the racial make-up and the oppressive apartheid policies predisposed the country to some type of potential explosion, and in this instance Afrikaans, the ‘enemy’s language’, appeared to have been the trigger.

This is probably not a popularly held view, but the reality is that the Afrikaner has been on African soil for more than 360 years. Having spawned several generations since Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival in 1652, they have completely severed their umbilical cord with Europe. A large number are holders of a single internationally recognised travel document – the South African passport.

As we embrace this notion, we should not seek to discount or undermine the commitment and contribution to the African cause of other people of Caucasian origin. Indeed, the ideal Africa should have space for all of us, as Robert Sobukwe pronounced. All groups of people should be encouraged to work towards a truly non-racial, democratic South Africa, but perhaps the white community should first empathise and begin to understand and appreciate the burden the black man had to endure under the yoke of apartheid.

Black, white, Indian, coloured, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, Malay – they say the best human being is all human beings put together.

At his inauguration in 1994, Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president, said, ‘To my compatriots, I have no hesitation in saying that each one of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful land as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and mimosa trees of the bushveld.’ Mandela emphasised: ‘Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being