Читать книгу Tell Me Your Story - Ruda Landman - Страница 7

Anton Harber is one of South Africa’s most respected figures in journalism. Having worked on the Rand Daily Mail, he was part of the team that started the Weekly Mail (later the Mail & Guardian) and its first editor. After fourteen years as head of the Department of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, he went back to the newsroom as editor in chief of news at the broadcaster eNCA. That would last only sixteen months before he returned to Wits. We spoke in Johannesburg in March 2016, just after his appointment at eNCA.

Ruda: Anton, you studied at Wits in the 1980s. There was a very strong anti-apartheid movement at the university. How did that shape you? The 1980s was a rough time.

Anton: It was a rough time. I arrived at Wits in 1976, so it was a momentous year. I came from a liberal background, a liberal family, and at Wits I was introduced to a more radical politics. I got involved in NUSAS [National Union of South African Students] and student politics at the time and learned, I suppose, a new language – the language of the radical politics of the time. That was a major influence on my work and my journalism thereafter.

Ruda: Did you get to know a side of South Africa that you hadn’t been aware of?

Anton: Oh yes. Because even though I grew up in a liberal family, our politics was within quite a narrow, I suppose white, framework.

Ruda: Apartheid worked?

Anton: Not quite, but . . .

Ruda: I mean in the sense that it kept us apart.

Anton: Yes, in that sense it absolutely did. At Wits I suppose one was introduced to a wider range of politics and a range of people one didn’t meet in a closeted apartheid society.

Ruda: And then you started working with the Rand Daily Mail. Tell us a little bit about that? That was a famous newspaper which has faded into history. It had a very specific place and role in the country in the 1980s, right?

Anton: It did. It was the leading liberal voice, and for someone like myself, it was the place to be as a journalist, as a political writer. It was the place that I think gave the most space and freedom to its political writers. But it was at a troubled time, because the paper was in the last years of its life and it was under pressure and in decline, and so it was a difficult time as well.

Ruda: Did you report from Parliament?

Anton: No, I wasn’t a parliamentary correspondent. I was the political reporter, and in fact my main work was around extra-parliamentary politics.

Ruda: Such as?

Anton: Well, then it was the launch of the UDF [United Democratic Front] . . . and the rebellion that was growing in the early 1980s in the townships and around the tricameral parliament17 . . . so a lot of what I experienced at that time was a tug of war between the demands for coverage of white politics, because many of one’s readers were white, and the fact that politics was bursting out into the street in an extra-parliamentary way.

Ruda: And that was a big change moment for South Africa, hmm?

Anton: It was a huge moment. It was the beginning of the whole process. Well, I don’t know what the beginning is, but although we didn’t realise it so much at the time, the critical transition was starting.

Ruda: And after working with the Rand Daily Mail, you put your own money into starting a new paper.

Anton: Yes, mainly because we had no choice if we wanted to be journalists. The paper we worked for closed. We were unemployed. We were probably unemployable, so we had this crazy idea of taking the payouts we got when we were retrenched to put into a new publication. I think we had no idea that it would still exist thirty years later and would grow to what it has become . . . When I look back at the proposals we wrote at the time, they were quite modest and not so ambitious.

Ruda: But that was a huge step. It meant starting a business and launching a new journalistic enterprise. How does one build that bridge? I always think of Indiana Jones stepping into the void . . . (gestures, leaning forward) It’s only when you shift your weight that the bridge appears.

Anton: That’s right.

Ruda: What are the mechanics of doing that?

Anton: Well, the first requirement of doing something as foolish as trying to start a newspaper is not knowing what you’re doing. Because if you knew what you were doing, you would never do it. I remember, in fact, that we met with Dennis Becket, who had started a magazine, and he said, “Look, the only good advice I can give you is you’re crazy. Don’t do it.” And we laughed him off, but he was right. We were crazy, because we knew nothing about distribution or printing or running a business.

Ruda: (Nods) The business side . . .

Anton: The publishing side. We knew a little bit of journalism. (He shrugs self-deprecatingly.) We were very young. But we knew nothing about that side. And we had to learn it very, very quickly. And we had to teach ourselves very, very quickly.

Ruda: What were the biggest hurdles that you fell over?

Anton: Sjoe. We fell over many, because politics at the time meant that we couldn’t find a printer. People were not eager to print . . .

Ruda: . . . what was seen as subversive?

Anton: Yes. What was seen as alternative at best, and subversive at worst. And the Rand Daily Mail had just closed. We were looking at a small publication, and small printers were nervous and scared. But in fact I went back to my alma mater, where I had started – the Springs Advertiser. They became our printers, and for many early years until we grew too big they were stalwarts in that they stood by us and withstood the pressure and printed our paper through the difficult years.

Ruda: Tell us something about that feeling of . . . not a band of brothers, but a band of brothers and sisters at the Weekly Mail.

Anton: The camaraderie was extraordinary, because we were under pressure. We sometimes had no money, but nobody ever hesitated to come to work because their pay was late or didn’t come. We had to do everything. We had to fill the newspaper as journalists, we had to produce the news­paper. We then would go and get a few hours’ sleep, come back and wrap it for subscriptions, and then get a few more hours’ sleep and then go out on deliveries. So we worked seven days a week, twenty hours a day, and that binds you into a very tight-knit group of people who can and have to depend on each other.

Ruda: What did you learn in the process, apart from the practical stuff?

Anton: I obviously learned an enormous amount of publishing very quickly. Looking back on it, it was very difficult at the time. But it was a fantastic time, because we were our own owners and editors. Editors are always fighting with their owners – with their shareholders. The greatest luxury is to be an owner-editor. Nobody could tell us what to do. If we decided to take crazy risks, we could do it. And because we didn’t have lots of money and resources and investment, we could take risks. And so there was that thrill of being able to push the boundaries and do things that others wouldn’t do.

Ruda: And what was the purpose, the driving, unifying ideal?

Anton: The driving ideal was that we were passionate about our journalism, we were passionate about a particular kind of journalism. It was an activist journalism.

Ruda: What do you mean?

Anton: Well, we had strong points of view. We certainly weren’t neutral. We nailed our flag to particular masts, saying this is what we believe, this is what we will say as best we can under the legal restrictions at the time. We were committed journalists. So we were very proud of our independence, but we had no trouble saying we believe and stand for certain things and we want to see the downfall of apartheid. And we developed a journalism that tried to deal with those contradictions.

Ruda: You started training young journalists at that time. Why did you feel the need? Weren’t there enough people coming through? Or were they not what you wanted?

Anton: At the time we felt that many of those coming from the university really were not what we wanted. The university was a very academic institution and we found that people who came from it could give us a very good critique of the media, but couldn’t write an intro. And we had no time for that, because we were under-resourced and had too few people and you had to get down and produce. But it was a couple of things. The one was that we were a bunch of white lefties and we were conscious that if this publication was to have a life and grow, it couldn’t remain a white voice. So there was a long-term view that we were to be more diverse. But also, frankly, it was a way of getting support for the newspaper. There were many funders who said: “We would like to support your newspaper, but we can’t give money to a commercial venture. And so we will give you money for training.” That served our purposes and we could go out and recruit young black reporters, train them and get paid to do that.

Ruda: Bliss.

Anton: Yes.

Ruda: What is the one thing that a young journalist needs to learn? Maybe two or three things?

Anton: Sjoe.

Ruda: (Smiles) I’ll give you a little bit more leeway . . .

Anton: Look, you have to start with the fundamentals of learning to construct a story and to verify a story. You have to start with that. But a lot of what we had to develop and learn were ways of finding and telling stories that people didn’t want to tell, and that the [state of] emergency restrictions were there to stop us from telling. So it was always about how can we tell the story, knowing it was in the grey areas of the law and it was risky, and you had to constantly find ways to disguise the story and get people to read between the lines, and to use the language in a way that people would know what’s going on, but often you couldn’t be explicit because of the censorship of the time.

Ruda: That’s a different skill from what is needed in more ordinary times, right?

Anton: Completely different, which is why when that period ended and everything fell away overnight – all the restrictions fell away overnight in 1990 – we were caught like deer in the headlights. We said, “Oh my gosh, now we have to relearn our journalism.” That transition from being activist journalists to being journalists in a democracy was maybe the most difficult time, because we had to relearn everything we did, and of course it was a time of enormous financial difficulty and pressure as well.

Ruda: When you say “relearn” . . . expand a little?

Anton: In a democracy one has to learn a new respect for the law, while we had grown up in a journalism that had no respect for the law. So all our discussion had been about how to get around the law. How can I get something into print that others don’t want you to print? So those were fantastic skills, but you need a different set of skills in a democracy. And for the media that change came overnight. We woke up one day and there were no restrictions on what we could do. Not even the normal restrictions in a democracy, because they all fell away and it took a while for new rules to develop. So we had a period of a couple of years of unbelievable freedom, where you could get away with anything.

Ruda: Can you remember a moment when you felt, “We are stretching ourselves, we are using this freedom. This is amazing”?

Anton: That period when we first were free was a very difficult period, because we knew we had to remake the newspaper. We thought we were ahead of the game. We thought we were closer to the zeitgeist and the rest of the media were out on the edges. We’re now at the centre of the politics. We’re no longer the alternative at the fringe. They’re now at the fringe. And we in fact started a daily newspaper. We said we can use our position to move into this market with a daily newspaper. But we were wrong. It was a terrible mistake. Because what we realised is that everyone quickly moved. All the big newspapers then quickly moved into what we considered our space.

Ruda: So suddenly you weren’t special.

Anton: Suddenly we weren’t special. Suddenly we were head-to-head with much bigger, more powerful newspapers that controlled all the printing and all the distribution. And the funding that had got us through the first five years of censorship disappeared, which is why many of our sister newspapers disappeared in that time.

Ruda: Like Vrye Weekblad, the Afrikaans anti-apartheid newspaper?

Anton: (Nods) Fortunately, we were the sole survivors. We survived, partly, by selling the newspaper to the Guardian of London. In a sense they saved us, but we lost our position as owners-editors. So I knew that we had to see through the transition, but there would be a time to move on. Time moved on, and I moved into the management of radio in Kagiso Media.

Ruda: How is that different?

Anton: Actually, radio is the most simple, easy medium. First, I love that. It didn’t have the complexities of print. It’s really an easy medium and it’s not complicated. It’s cheap to do and, frankly, you do a half-decent job and you can make lots of money, which was not the case in print. Not by then. But actually, quite frankly, I got bored. I had a few radio stations under me which were running well, and really it was a bit of a bore. I suppose that’s because I wasn’t made for a sort of pure management job. And then the vice chancellor at Wits called and he said, “We want to start a journalism department. Would you consider applying?” And at first I said no, because I hadn’t ever thought of doing that, and after a while I said, “Well, actually, it would be quite a nice thing to do.”

Ruda: And having talked about the problems with young journalists coming out of universities, how have you tried to make Wits different?

Anton: Very good question. My vision from the start was that we would do only graduate training; we would only take people who already had a degree.

Ruda: Why?

Anton: Because I think you should have something to say before you learn how to say it. So it was partly recognition that the demands of modern journalism mean that you should have a solid basis in the kind of training you get from a good humanities degree, or the equivalent. I mean, we had all sorts of people – with science degrees, commerce degrees – that’s great. That’s what you want. You want people who have the analytical thinking, the curiosity, the skills.

Ruda: And who know something about the world.

Anton: Exactly. And then you can teach them how to tell it to the world. We developed a programme which was focused on the practical. The philosophy I came with was that students would produce media from day one. They would not sit in the classroom. There was obviously classroom time, and there was work to be done in the classroom, but they would produce media under adult supervision, and that was how they would learn the craft. So I think we certainly tried to find a different balance between the practice and the theory, and it was part of a worldwide shift to what is called a hospital-school approach.

Ruda: Where you work on the job.

Anton: Where you work on the job and you learn on the job. So I saw that trend happen around the world and I thought we could be part of that.

Ruda: You have also written books – like Diepsloot, about the political and social dynamics of a Johannesburg township.

Anton: Yes, one of the things the university gave me was space to start writing again. I wrote columns, I wrote books and I contributed to a number of books. And that was me getting back to what I think my roots were.

Ruda: That’s a journalist’s dream, to be able to do the longer version.

Anton: Correct. To be able to take one topic, research it really thoroughly, and spend time thinking it through and writing it. And I love that, and I was about to go back to spend a year off on another project of that sort, and really looking forward to it, when I got a phone call to say, “Why don’t you come to eNCA?” And again, at first I said, “Don’t be silly, why would I do that?”

Ruda: (Laughs) And then, why did you?

Anton: Why did I? Because I couldn’t resist the temptation of being back in the newsroom. Once you’ve been in news, you never lose it – that passion for the big story. And when you’re not there, you’re sitting and thinking, “A big story is breaking and I could do it so much better than these bums that are doing it now!” And eNCA is at a particular place . . . It was an opportunity to learn a lot, because my television experience has been limited. And so I’m always open to doing something that’s challenging and exciting, and so they won me over.

Ruda: And what do you want to bring to that space, to that new environment?

Anton: Look, my passion is for good journalism. Good journalism that brings forth the ideas, the events, the people that are often ignored. You know, it’s easy to cover the big, noisy voices in our society. Finding the stuff that people don’t want you to talk about, the voices that are on the fringe of our society – that’s important. Finding a full range of South African voices is where my passion is, I think. My book really takes that on in a particular place.

Ruda: You spent a year researching Diepsloot. How did that change you as a person? What did you learn that you didn’t know?

Anton: Well, it took me into a world I didn’t know. I’d never been to Diepsloot. Obviously I have never lived in an informal settlement.

Ruda: How much time did you spend there?

Anton: I went to Diepsloot every day for about nine months. I went and I just hung out there. I went to meetings there. I interviewed people. I went drinking there. I was just there every day. I chose not to go and live there. There were times that I thought, should I come and live here? Then I thought, no, my perspective can only be an outsider trying to understand the place and I shouldn’t try to pretend it can be any other perspective – it can’t be the perspective of somebody who lives there. So you can imagine it was quite difficult going into that situation every day and then going home to suburbia and a very different family life, day after day. It actually takes quite an emotional toll.

Ruda: And do you understand something about South Africa that you didn’t before?

Anton: Without any doubt – and in ways that were completely unexpected for me. One of the things I had to learn, to try to understand and then explain in Diepsloot, was how cities work. I realised that I needed to understand what the city was doing and not doing, and what the blockages were to the city building more houses or building more schools or whatever it was that needed to be done. So I had to read and learn a lot about how cities work. And then I had to read an enormous amount about informal settlements around the world. And what’s immediately striking is that you read about them in Zambia or Ethiopia or Latin America or India . . . in fact they’re all very similar, and the problem they present to cities is very similar. And that was a real eye-opener. So oddly enough, my first response was to learn sympathy for the city. Because I came to understand how enormously difficult it is to deal with informal settlements on the scale we have them. And the kind of dinner-party conversation that the state was not . . .

Ruda: Was useless . . .

Anton: (Nods) . . . was useless, wasn’t delivering anything – it just wasn’t true. They weren’t delivering enough, but the realisation was that they could never deliver enough because the pace of demand was outstripping what they could possibly do. And it really struck home for me that here I was, a politically aware, engaged journalist, and I had no sense of the challenges facing cities like Johannesburg and how impossible they are.

Ruda: On a more personal note, you’ve been married to Harriet for how long? Twenty-five years?

Anton: Longer. More than thirty.

Ruda: What keeps it going? What made you fall in love? Tell me that first.

Anton: We met at university and we were together for some years before we got married. What made us fall in love? We . . . I mean . . . It was an unlikely connection, I think, because we were very different . . .

Ruda: How is she different from you?

Anton: I was a hard political activist, and she was a much softer, more rounded, different kind of person, and hopefully she’s taught me a bit of that. She’s taught me a tolerance for thinking differently that I don’t think I had when I was young. We got married because our lawyer told us we better get married.

Ruda: (Surprised) Why? What did it have to do with him?

Anton: Well, it was because I had been subpoenaed as a journalist to answer questions – to identify somebody I knew I couldn’t. So the lawyer said, “If that’s your attitude, the likelihood is you’re going to jail. So it’s quite a good idea to be married.”

Ruda: Because Harriet needed to qualify as a visitor.

Anton: Yes, as a visitor, and have the access that one needed. So on short notice we decided to get married. We also thought that giving a Jewish mother short notice would stymie her capacity to do the whole wedding. (His eyes crinkle up.) We were wrong. But in between us sending out invitations and getting married, the person I couldn’t name left the country.

Ruda: So the reason fell away?

Anton: The reason fell away but we went ahead and got married, and we’re still married some thirty years later, so it was maybe the best legal advice I ever had. It was maybe the only legal advice I ever followed.

Ruda: What keeps your marriage going?

Anton: We’re both in media – she’s a television producer. We have worked together, but we found that’s not a good idea. So we’ve led quite parallel but separate lives, both in media. And I suppose we’ve always had the understanding that when one is working very hard, the other one is more available. So we’ve managed it that way, because we’ve both had pretty busy, full lives.

Ruda: And the kids? You have two children, right?

Anton: Two children, ten years apart, which is a crazy thing to do. I would always advise against it.

Ruda: Was it a decision? Or did it just happen like that?

Anton: We had one kid, and I kept wanting another kid until, well, one day I said, “I’m having another kid. You can choose who it’s with!” It took ten years to get to that and we had another kid, and, of course, ten years apart is crazy. But in the end it’s great.

Ruda: How did your kids change you?

Anton: Children are what keep a marriage going, I think, under difficult times. I think they’re very often the glue.

Ruda: A shared project.

Anton: Exactly. So I think that is a critical factor.

Ruda: And how did parenting change you? Being a dad?

Anton: Having children is quite humbling, because when you’re first a parent, you think, “Here’s this thing I can mould in my image, who is going to listen to me and I can teach him . . .”

Ruda: He will hang on to every word.

Anton: Exactly. I can teach him to be a great chess player in the way I always wanted to be, you know. And of course you learn pretty quickly that they shape you more than you shape them. That’s the most striking lesson one learns, I think. You try to nudge them in a direction, but your influence doesn’t last.