Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Australia will soon take its place as one of the pariah states of the world with the new anti-terrorism and industrial relations changes about to be thrust on an unsuspecting population.
Australia will be the South African apartheid police state of the 21st century, and having fled from South Africa in 1978 before the worst excesses of that regime were launched on an already intimidated population, I am not happy having to contemplate living the rest of my life in another police state.
Censorship of the media was so bad that Donald Woods, editor of the East London Daily Dispatch,who had supported Steve Biko up to his murder by the regime in 1977, had to flee the country for his safety and survival.
The Johannesburg newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, formed from what was left of the Standard and Diggers News after the anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, was the courageous voice of government opposition from 1948 until it was forced to close in the 1980s due to government pressure on institutions which still financially supported it. Its editors were men of great courage and integrity who saw the injustices perpetrated on 80% of the population by the ruling 20% and were horrified by it all.
I have reproduced below a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald - actually one of the few of my letters to that paper EVER to have been published; first my comments, then the letter:
22 March 1985
The following letter was written to the Sydney Morning Herald at the time the news had just come through of the imminent closure of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. This was a tragedy of immense proportions, and one of the paragraphs in the letter was one which would certainly apply to editors of newspapers in Australia 20 years later, in March 2005, when I found this letter and put it in the book! Here is that letter, which I think is one of the best letters I have ever written to newspapers, as it probably comes more from the heart than many others - and the newspaper actually published the letter!
A paper closes
SIR: It was most distressing to hear that the Johannesburg newspaper the Rand Daily Mail will be closing down in the next six weeks.
The regime in South Africa has at last realised one of its earliest goals, the silencing of one of its loudest critics.
The Mail has been a thorn in the flesh of the regime because it has never let up on its investigative journalism and social commentary of the peoples of South Africa, both black and white.
It was the Mail which broke the Information scandal several years ago which helped to rid the country of John Vorster.
Despite the most draconian anti-press and censorship laws, the Mail continued, within the strictures imposed on it, to write about man's inhumanity to man, and continued pleading with the regime to moderate its harsh race laws which have now led that poor country to the brink of the revolution which has been building up for so many years. The pressure cooker is about to explode.
It is a salutary lesson for the media of all countries. It is absolutely essential to allow a free and uncensored press to expose social and political injustice and to allow the population at large to have a say in its destiny, together with a democratic form of government.
It is a black day for Johannesburg, and for South Africa. Oppression by the regime of newspapers and news people has been a long tradition, as people such as Donald Woods of the East London Daily Despatch and Percy Qoboza of The World, among hundreds of others, can bear witness (not in South Africa, because many are banned people who may not be quoted in that country).
Let us hope that one day justice will be done and the exiles will be able to return. As Alan Paton said, ”Cry, the beloved country”.
E.J.(Mannie) De Saxe,
Military Road,
March 17 (1985) Neutral Bay.
Australian media are suddenly finding that they will be under attack with the new laws and are now, belatedly, beginning to speak out, and in the case of the Fairfax newspapers, to squeal about what will happen to them and their journalists, who, together, haven't had the guts or courage to do what the equivalent journalists did in South Africa under the apartheid regime. And, today, 25 October 2005 - a black letter day for newspapers in Australia in general - Fairfax has announced at least 55 employees are about to lose their jobs!
Just as the apartheid regime used the race issue as one of the divide and rule principles which guided the control of the country, so the Howard government is using the race card to demonise a large section of the population in Australia on the same principle.
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Australia will be the South African apartheid police state of the 21st century, and having fled from South Africa in 1978 before the worst excesses of that regime were launched on an already intimidated population, I am not happy having to contemplate living the rest of my life in another police state.
Censorship of the media was so bad that Donald Woods, editor of the East London Daily Dispatch,who had supported Steve Biko up to his murder by the regime in 1977, had to flee the country for his safety and survival.
The Johannesburg newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, formed from what was left of the Standard and Diggers News after the anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, was the courageous voice of government opposition from 1948 until it was forced to close in the 1980s due to government pressure on institutions which still financially supported it. Its editors were men of great courage and integrity who saw the injustices perpetrated on 80% of the population by the ruling 20% and were horrified by it all.
I have reproduced below a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald - actually one of the few of my letters to that paper EVER to have been published; first my comments, then the letter:
22 March 1985
The following letter was written to the Sydney Morning Herald at the time the news had just come through of the imminent closure of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. This was a tragedy of immense proportions, and one of the paragraphs in the letter was one which would certainly apply to editors of newspapers in Australia 20 years later, in March 2005, when I found this letter and put it in the book! Here is that letter, which I think is one of the best letters I have ever written to newspapers, as it probably comes more from the heart than many others - and the newspaper actually published the letter!
A paper closes
SIR: It was most distressing to hear that the Johannesburg newspaper the Rand Daily Mail will be closing down in the next six weeks.
The regime in South Africa has at last realised one of its earliest goals, the silencing of one of its loudest critics.
The Mail has been a thorn in the flesh of the regime because it has never let up on its investigative journalism and social commentary of the peoples of South Africa, both black and white.
It was the Mail which broke the Information scandal several years ago which helped to rid the country of John Vorster.
Despite the most draconian anti-press and censorship laws, the Mail continued, within the strictures imposed on it, to write about man's inhumanity to man, and continued pleading with the regime to moderate its harsh race laws which have now led that poor country to the brink of the revolution which has been building up for so many years. The pressure cooker is about to explode.
It is a salutary lesson for the media of all countries. It is absolutely essential to allow a free and uncensored press to expose social and political injustice and to allow the population at large to have a say in its destiny, together with a democratic form of government.
It is a black day for Johannesburg, and for South Africa. Oppression by the regime of newspapers and news people has been a long tradition, as people such as Donald Woods of the East London Daily Despatch and Percy Qoboza of The World, among hundreds of others, can bear witness (not in South Africa, because many are banned people who may not be quoted in that country).
Let us hope that one day justice will be done and the exiles will be able to return. As Alan Paton said, ”Cry, the beloved country”.
E.J.(Mannie) De Saxe,
Military Road,
March 17 (1985) Neutral Bay.
Australian media are suddenly finding that they will be under attack with the new laws and are now, belatedly, beginning to speak out, and in the case of the Fairfax newspapers, to squeal about what will happen to them and their journalists, who, together, haven't had the guts or courage to do what the equivalent journalists did in South Africa under the apartheid regime. And, today, 25 October 2005 - a black letter day for newspapers in Australia in general - Fairfax has announced at least 55 employees are about to lose their jobs!
Just as the apartheid regime used the race issue as one of the divide and rule principles which guided the control of the country, so the Howard government is using the race card to demonise a large section of the population in Australia on the same principle.
