THERE is still no definite explanation, political or financial, for the demise of the Rand Daily Mail forty years ago. But on 14 June 1985 the Weekly Mail (WM) was launched by redundant journalists. It was to uphold the legacy of RDM editor Laurence Gandar of dissenting liberalism and crusading social protest: the paper had famously exposed the dire state of prisons and Muldergate, and attempted to report from the African townships.

South Africa was no stranger to an alternative press that stretched back to the late 1930s. The Guardian had been published under a string of names and been banned under three of them between 1937 and 1963. But it pushed a communist line. By the 1980s South Africa was experiencing both its darkest and its finest hour: state-sponsored lawlessness confronted by determined resistance. The WM not only contributed to the latter, but represented part of a new broad-based culture that was to promote a new country.

Its co-founders, Anton Harber and Irwin Manoim, showed political and technical insight. The WM was a weekly supported by members not subscribers, a move to avoid problems around registration as a newspaper; although as it happened this was granted. These subscribers had a right to elect a board member, but this proved impractical. And, initially, desktop publishing was used together with the printing press of the Springs Advertiser.

The immediate forerunners were titles like Work in Progress, SASPU National and Saamstaan. The WM was staffed by young and optimistic people, some of them volunteers from university campuses. The influence of the South African Students Press Union was crucial. Its political stance was anti-apartheid, social democratic, and full of hope. Indeed, to read the WM on Fridays felt like a personal subversive statement aimed at the apartheid regime: it was the only newspaper systematically to expose state lawlessness.

The first issue covered South Africa’s covert support for Renamo in Mozambique, detention without trial, forced removal, the bus boycott, the PEBCO Three and general unrest. Later, vigilantes, strikes, police repression and ANC activities featured. The WM broke down the news walls that afflicted mainstream media, challenging the legitimacy of the regime and promoting extra-parliamentary opposition politics. It also did this through coverage of the arts and running a feature entitled ‘Apartheid barometer’, which monitored repression such as detentions and book banning.

Life for journalists became even more difficult in July 1985 with the declaration of a partial state of emergency designed to impose a tighter government grip on information flows, especially about insurgency and counter measures. Reporters were vulnerable and their informants disappeared into hiding. As Glenn Moss put it, the government feared a competent media and was angling for self-censorship. Harber was more direct: he described the government as a sjambokracy and wrote that its enforcers had taken off their balaclavas.

On the day the full emergency of June 1986 was declared, the WM had already gone to press but the following Friday’s front page (20 June 1986) led with a story headlined ‘Rule of the big stick’ illustrated by police outside Khotso House, Johannesburg. Half the 28 pages contained blacked out copy including a cartoon, one thousand names of detainees, letters and a story about a lack of violence. Editorial warnings abounded. The police seized this issue but some copies eluded them. Later, names and details of prison conditions were published.

When the Natal Supreme Court set aside some emergency media regulations as beyond the intentions of the Public Safety Act, they were simply reframed. Poorly worded regulations provided loopholes of opportunity for creativity and much mockery was employed: publishing the phone numbers of government ministers, for instance. As early as 6 June 1986 a picture of Nelson Mandela was published, permissible because it had appeared in a government publication. Yet by January 1987 blank space indicating censorship was forbidden; although in August and September that year an article by Thami Mkhwanazi about his imprisonment on Robben Island was published. And in early 1988 warnings about forced closure were received. Much effort at the WM was expended on surprisingly successful legal dancing on egg shells.

New Nation was closed from March to June 1988 under the emergency, followed by South, although P.W. Botha claimed the government supported a free press. It failed to show how New Nation stoked ‘violent revolution’. WM published articles that would have been printed in New Nation, but this was soon proscribed. Then it was suspended for the month of November 1988 despite intense business and international lobbying. As the WM itself put it, it was ‘stoffeled’ (by Christoffel Botha, minister of home affairs) and Harber called on his colleagues to become journalistic streetfighters.

The suspension was officially justified with a claim that the WM was a threat to public safety. In fact, good journalism, investigative skill and irreverence were the threat, indicating the extreme weakness of the State. As a letter writer asked with tongue in cheek: how many white South Africans does it take to change a light bulb? The answer was none as they want to keep you in the dark.

Much of the WM’s reportage was later vindicated by the Truth Commission. Apartheid, and the granite-faced men who ran it, could not survive truth, so repression was essential. The WM made good use of humour and satire to counter the grim realities of South Africa in the eighties. An early example was Anton Harber’s December 1985 report on a banned peace run at Zoo Lake, Johannesburg. But some contributions were more slapstick: the column by Thomas Equinus, a mixture of social commentary and horse racing tips written by the theologian Jeff Zerbst; the thoughts of Krisjan Lemmer; and ‘Letters from a Linksfield Liberal’ were self-mocking parodies designed to raise the morale of the anti-apartheid opposition. 

The WM suffered from increasingly irrational government behaviour such as charges in 1989 related to reports on detainees based on information released in parliament. Nor was it immune from criticism from radical quarters, choosing to carry Shell adverts and taking a principled line on Salman Rushdie. But in spite of its independence, for instance its critical coverage of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, it was broadly supportive of the liberation movement. In this sense it was not just part of the legacy of Gandar but also Tony Heard, editor of the Cape Times.

Not only did the WM contribute to the development of investigative journalism, such as the Inkathagate revelations, but it shaped a shift in culture that played a significant role in creating a new post-apartheid dispensation. Just five years before it first appeared, the Steyn Commission recommended that the country’s press should reflect the ‘national interest’; that of a white minority government. The first ever commercial left-wing newspaper, and one whose influence was disproportionate to its resources, the title survives as the Mail & Guardian.

It was ahead of its time, was subsequently mainstreamed and now shows barely a trace of its characteristics of the eighties. But in its heyday, it set standards for a democratic South Africa against the lies of repressive reform that seem eerily contemporary at an international scale.