Foreign correspondents and journalists often clash with authority over their writing activities, particularly when working in foreign countries where the basic tenets of Democracy are sometimes conveniently forgotten or are severely lacking.
When I worked in Africa after the Second World War years, this truism was no exception to me and my media colleagues when we had to describe certain events or analyse serious political blunders of national or international importance.
During these years I spent on the world’s biggest continent, I was employed for a time as the news editor to my newspaper group’s influential Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. This particular daily publication was the most outspoken of all South African newspapers against the tenets of the South African Government’s then racial segregation Apartheid policies.
The Mail, as it was commonly known, was first launched in 1902 with the highly respected writer, Edgar Wallace, as its first editor. During the politically rumbustious years of the 1950s, it became a powerhouse of criticism against Apartheid under the editorship of Laurence Gandar and was continually in the sights of South Africa’s feared secret police, let alone in those of a clutch of Government informers.
My tenure on the paper was around the time of the Sharpeville massacre and the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd and when the South African Pre-Independence Government took every step — but failed — to gag the Mail’s news columns.
The Government’s harsh attitude towards my newspaper’s anti-Apartheid stance can possibly best be summed up by the fact that two of its leading journalists were later jailed for the words they wrote against the country’s enforced racial separation.
When I was directly involved with the Mail’s news of the day some 60-odd years ago, we had on our reporting staff a young journalist known as ‘Oosie’ Oosthuizen. One day, he was found dead in mysterious circumstances.
Suicide was the initial thought in the minds of those who knew him as a bottle of sleeping pills was found on his person. But, on inspection, the bottle reportedly contained the full complement of pills, indicating that his passing was due to something else and possibly more sinister.
Although the police were involved, the cause of Oosthuizen’s passing was never publicly disclosed, leading everyone to suspect a real mystery with possible murder in mind. Initially, there was some irrefutable evidence that he was covertly connected with South Africa’s security people, having previously been a police reporter on an opposing pro-Government newspaper.
As far as I am aware, no suspect was ever identified, and the mystery was never fully solved. The Mail’s management did, however, employ an investigator and it also found that Oosthuizen was indeed a secret police plant engaged to report on the Mail’s anti-Apartheid activities and hard-hitting news stories and special articles.
The search for the truth behind Oosthuizen’s untimely death also revealed a spy in the editorial offices of the Mail’s sister newspaper, The Sunday Times.
Apparently a partly trained intelligence officer and journalist from England who had previously worked in Casablanca, this fellow had palled up with South Africa’s security people and had got himself a spying job on the Sunday paper.
As one can imagine, the offices of the Mail and Sunday Times were abuzz with stories of intrigue and concern as to what was likely to happen next. We did not, however have to wait long for an answer.