South Africa’s Golden Age of Journalism

Reflecting on the September 19th death of 83-year-old Allister Sparks, political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi wrote that fearless journalists like Sparks contributed to the defeat of apartheid. “Theirs,” said the struggle veteran, “was a golden age of journalism which coincided with one of the darkest periods in our history.”  

For me, a young reporter in Johannesburg from 1974 to 1977, I think Matshiqi has it right. It took extraordinary courage for editors like Sparks, Larry Gandar and Ray Louw before him, Percy Qoboza, Donald Woods, George Palmer and others to defend their reporters and publish authoritative, accurate news. These editors knew the risks of confronting a repressive vindictive government and yet they persevered.

Much posthumous praise has justifiably been accorded Sparks whose final column was written not long before his death.  His was a remarkable 60-year career as a reporter and editor, from the advent of apartheid to the arrival of democracy and 20 years beyond.

 I first met Sparks at the time of the Soweto uprising when I regularly visited the SAAN building to read the wires and get first hand reports from reporters who had just returned from Soweto and other townships. At that time Sparks was the editor of the Sunday Express, the sister publication of the Rand Daily Mail, which Sparks edited from 1977 to 1981.

It was the Mail’s team of black reporters that provided the bulk of the paper’s coverage of Soweto and the police response. With roadblocks keeping whites out of black areas, without the eyewitness reports of Mail and other reporters who lived in Soweto the full horror of the events might never have been known. Those reporters indeed warrant the nation’s admiration. They personify Mashiqi’s golden age of journalism.

Not surprisingly these correspondents bore the full brunt of official retaliation. In the days following Soweto 14 black reporters, four of them from the Mail, were arrested and held without charge. One was confined in solitary confinement for 365 days.

Among the detained were the Mail’s star photographer Peter Magubane, Gabu Tugwana, Willie Nkosi and Nat Serache. Magubane’s dramatic images were seen worldwide, photos that made him South Africa’s most acclaimed photographer. Serache had been a staple on the BBC’s Focus on Africa program, speaking by phone most evenings about developments in black areas. In exile Serache was an ANC operative and later under President Nelson Mandela a top diplomat in Botswana.

Stanley Uys was another authoritative South African voice on the BBC, which was a principal source of news about what was going on. The SABC, of course, could not be relied upon as its reporting was thin and followed the government line. Television wasn’t a factor as it had only recently arrived and the SABC was the only channel.

In his 2016 autobiography, The Sword and the Pen, Sparks wrote that the September 12, 1977 death in police custody of black activist Stephan Biko was his first big challenge as an editor. Tipped off by a pathologist that the black consciousness leader had died not from a hunger strike as officially stated but from blows to the body, Mail reporter Helen Zille and others went to work and revealed the horrific story of how Biko had died. More unrest and detentions followed. Black newspapers including Qoboza’s World were shut down.

Biko had been banned shortly after Soweto. In East London his friend and Daily Dispatch editor Donald Woods was incensed. His editorials hammered away at the evils of apartheid, leading to Woods himself being banned. He used his time under house arrest to write Biko’s biography, a manuscript he took with him when disguised as an Anglican priest he escaped into Lesotho in October 1978. The book, Biko, was a best seller and led to David Attenborough adapting it into the prize-winning film Cry Freedom.  During 12 years of exile Woods gave 400 speeches and interviews (including to this reporter) educating people to the horrors of apartheid. 

In 1978 Rand Daily Mail reporters working under Sparks uncovered the secret Department of Information campaign in which public money was used to establish the pro-government Citizen newspaper. The ensuing scandal led to John Vorster’s resignation as prime minister in September that same year.

Sparks of course was fired from the Mail in 1981 as its owners wanted to soften its anti-government line and attract more white readers. It was a failed strategy and the Rand Daily Mail was closed in 1985. Thus began the period that RDM On-Line editor Ray Hartley calls apartheid’s cold winter.

But winter turned to spring when Mandela was set free and apartheid ended. That SA’s constitution enshrines media freedom is a tribute to brave reporters and courageous editors like Sparks, Woods and Qoboza who verified that freely reported news and information is powerful.  They proved that the pen is mightier than the sword. #

Washington commentator Barry D. Wood was a writer at the Financial Mail from 1974 to 1976 and Johannesburg correspondent for NBC News in 1976 and 1977. He reported from inside Soweto on the first day of the June 16^th uprising.  

A Weak Economy and Disconnect Between People and Finance

WASHINGTON:  There they sat on October 9 interviewing each other, the famous writer who exposed Wall Street’s excesses, and the elegant French woman who leads the international agency set up to is assure financial stability. Big Short author Michael Lewis and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde agreed  that eight years after the financial crisis progress has been made but more work is required to avert future catastrophe.

Lewis, who worked at Solomon Brothers before an illustrious career in journalism and books, told the audience at IMF headquarters, “the toxic relationship between the financial sector and the public has not been addressed.”  Financial instruments, he said, remain too complex, salaries are still excessive.  The problem began, he continued, when banks became trading entities and downgraded the services they provide to customers.  Likewise, said Lewis, well-intentioned efforts to safeguard the public went astray—regulations became burdensome, complicated and poorly communicated.

The encounter between Lagarde and Lewis culminated six days of discussions by financial policy makers and a separate gathering of several hundred bankers.  The mood was somber.

David Stockton, a former Federal Reserve official who prepares economic forecasts at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, gloomily observed that the U.S. economy is mired at two percent growth in a three percent world economy. He said “we’re a driverless car stuck in the slow lane.” IMF economists also have repeatedly downgraded their forecasts.

What went wrong? Why is the recovery from the great recession of 2008 so slow?

One economist with an answer was Mohamed El-Erian who invented the term “new normal” at the Pimco investment firm in 2009.  El-Erian argued that the magnitude of the financial crisis was so severe that recovery would be slow and of long duration. “The advanced economies,” he said, “had bet the farm on the wrong growth model.”

Carmen Reinhart, now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, argued that because the great recession was triggered by a financial crisis recovery would inevitably be very sluggish. Reinhart said that on average it takes about seven and a half years for the average advanced economy to regain its previous peak of output.  By that standard Reinhart believes the U.S. recovery is on track and further advanced than Japan or Europe.

The really pessimistic group is the bankers. European bankers were particularly gloomy saying it is impossible to make money when interest rates are at zero. There’s too much regulation, they complained, and they don’t like revealing detailed financial data to regulators, fearing it could fall into the hands of rivals.

Andreas Treichl of Erste Bank in Vienna worried about potential disrupters, financial versions of Uber or Airbnb. Uncertainty reigns concerning London’s role as a financial center in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Share prices of European banks languish near historic lows and the continent’s biggest bank, Deutsche, groans beneath the weight of a huge fine from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Banks are on their back foot, laying off thousands of workers as they seek a new business model. The best and brightest university grads no longer flock to New York and London. Finance, as chronicled by Michael Lewis, is no longer the elixir of quick riches.

Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary, observed the somber mood at the Washington meetings. “The specter of secular stagnation and inadequate economic growth,” he said, ”and ascendant populism and global disintegration…led to widespread apprehension.”

El-Erian was even equally pessimistic.  He said central banks have lost their edge in an era of low and negative interest rates and that a low growth economy can’t endure. “The new normal is coming to an end,” he said, “the reason is simple: it has lasted for so long that it is now breeding the causes of its own destruction.”

But to end on a bright note, officials from emerging market economies say they no longer worry about the impact of Federal Reserve moves to normalize interest rates. “The Fed has communicated its intentions very clearly,” said South African ReserveBank chief  Lesetja Kgangyago.  “Our reserves are bigger,” he said, and there is unlikely to be a repeat of the 2013 “temper tantrum” when equity markets temporarily tanked when the Fed indicated that quantitative easing would be scaled back.

 Barry D. Wood has been covering global financial meetings for over three decades.  

Wilderness at the Doorstep: People and Bears Between Hancock and Paw Paw

In the early 1900s Theodore Roosevelt and his friend John Muir liked to say that wilderness saves the human spirit. That being the case, we in Washington, D.C. are lucky to have wilderness so close at hand.

I arrived in Hancock, MD where I-70 veers north into PA at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. Leaving the car in the town lot adjacent to the C & O Canal ($5 per day, M-Sa), within 30 minutes I was on the

Western Maryland rail trail and immersed in a different world.

My destination was Bill’s Place in Little Orleans, 15-miles towards Cumberland. For three quarters of that distance the riding is easy as the Rails to Trails Conservancy put down a smooth black top surface where rail tracks once were.  The last few miles on the towpath were also easy as there hadn’t been rain for several days.

Towpath near Little Orleans

Bill’s Place is well known to aficionados of this remotest section of the towpath between Cumberland and Georgetown. That may be because it is the only place for food and drink for the 31-miles between Paw Paw tunnel and Hancock.  Bill passed away four years ago but his son Jack carries on.  Several times during my three-day ride I heard passing riders yell back that they were headed to Bill’s for burgers and beer.

Jack

A thru rider at Bill’s Place

Not intending to ride on in darkness, Jack had put me in touch with 80-year-old Steve Hubner, the crusty retired postmaster who runs the Little Orleans Lodge 200 yards from Bill’s.

Little Orleans Lodge

Like Jack, Steve is a piece of work, and in a positive way. The price was right ($50) and Steve is a generous host. In the morning he was up at 6 to prepare French toast, scrapple (pork scraps), sausage and bacon. Steve is a birdman and the morning visitors to his feeders were cardinals, titmice, chickadees, nuthatches and sparrows.

There is fog most mornings this time of year and Saturday was no exception, meaning there was no point in departing until it had burned off. Strolling down the hill the scene was pure country, a big change from the city I had left behind not even 24-hours earlier.

Farm between Bill’s and Little Orleans Lodge

I had learned much from Steve about the evolving misfortunes of this rural area. Decent railroad jobs in Hancock were gone, the once plentiful apple orchards were gone, leaving only recreation and bicycle touring as sources of revenue. Villages and towns along the Potomac in both Maryland and West Virginia are hollowed out, young people gone to the cities with those left behind largely dependent on public assistance.

Steve wanted me to see the Potomac from lookout peak and the stunning view made the short uphill drive worthwhile. When we arrived the valley was shrouded in fog but ten minutes later the gentle turns of the great river were on display.

      

The Potomac from lookout peak

The two and a half-hour ride to Paw Paw was idyllic, perfect weather and a warming sun that by noon made a jacket unnecessary. It was a serene world of singing birds and large and small turtles taking the sun atop the logs that litter the canal. Wary of intruders as I approached, one by one the turtles plopped into water that had been a green slime so smooth and thick it looked like a floor to be walked on.

Occasionally I encountered hikers and other riders. Some were headed to or from Pittsburgh and those traveling east reported they had left Cumberland in the morning.

The Paw Paw tunnel is the area’s main attraction. While an impressive engineering feat for the early 19^th century, it is also a monument to folly. It took 12 years to build and bankrupted its builder and the canal company and is why the canal stopped at Cumberland far short of its intended terminus.  When the nearly mile-long tunnel finally opened in 1850 canals had lost out to the competing railroads. Canal advocates pressed on saying that train engines were not powerful enough to haul large quantities of freight. And indeed there were a few years in which the canal company actually made a profit hauling coal, grain, apples and wood to Georgetown.

The western (Cumberland) end of Paw Paw tunnel

The tunnel is narrow, dark and long. No wonder there were fist fights as boats jostled to go first. Today cyclists have to walk their bikes and need a light to make their way through.

For me the figurative light at the end of the tunnel was the Wrenwood Inn just across the Potomac in West Virginia.  I don’t think its proprietor Carol would be offended if I call her a long-time refugee from Bethesda. She operates an elegant B&B, well worth the $85 for a room with breakfast. She also offers dinner and on Saturday night that featured an artist from the Bay Area and 63-year-old Jim telling his story of riding from Pittsburgh to DC and back.

 There’s almost nothing else in Paw Paw, which like Hancock has seen its economic fortunes slip away. Coal trains and Amtrak’s Capitol Limited roar past Paw Paw but don’t even slow down.  Evidence of decline is the boarded up fruit company warehouse that used to be the village’s principal business.  Carol, who relies to cyclists for her livelihood, tells me that until the Dollar General opened a decade ago residents drove 45-minutes for groceries.

Jim packing up for the ride to Cumberland and Pittsburgh

The surprise came during my 4½-hour ride Sunday back to Hancock.  A couple miles short of Bill’s Place in the middle of nowhere there was a rustle of brush from near the river. Just then 30 yards or so ahead a large black bear emerged onto the trail. It paused briefly while I slowed to a halt and then took off running at high speed along the towpath in the opposite direction. He is the black speck in the distance in the first photograph.

Startled but not shaken, I asked Jack at Bill’s Place how fast a bear can run. He said well over 30 mph for short distances.  Jack had just come from the river fishing for bass. He said his grandson thought he had spotted a bear on the shore.

Arriving at Hancock at 3 p.m. I found my car and did the Clark Kent change out of riding gear and headed for Weaver’s restaurant where the homemade apple pie is as good as always even though the acclaimed restaurant has new owners.

In short what a tonic for the soul was a 48-hour journey into wilderness that is so close to the nation’s capital. #