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A journalist to the last dropMax du Preez is the epitome of South Africa’s often rebellious pioneer journalists and publishers – a publish-and-be-damned crusader for the truth in the mould of Thomas Pringle, John Fairbairn, Andre du Toit, John Tengo Jabavu, Christoffel Brand, Jim Bailey, Johnny Issel, Percy Qoboza and numerous others, one may say.
Love him or hate him, Du Preez has become something of a media icon – part of the proud heritage of those who have championed free speech in a country where that has more often than not been threatened by the authorities of the day.
And yet, with his latest book, Opinion Pieces by South African Thought Leaders, he is turning his back on South Africa’s media because they “are not doing the job”.
Many South Africans have become accustomed to Du Preez’s blunt, in-your-face style of political commentary – it is always uncompromisingly off-centre.
They will not be surprised by his outspoken style, both in the book and in conversations around it – an outspokenness that is bound to tread heavily on many a sensitive toe. For Du Preez is not averse to speaking his mind on anything from President Jacob Zuma to the major media houses, business to black intellectuals, and everything in between.
This outspoken, forthright style and his penchant for run-ins with controversy in the past have earned him the nickname “Mad Max” among some of his colleagues.
Just a few days after we meet in his warehouse-like office in a back alley off Cape Town’s vibrant Long Street, Du Preez does it again. This time he is “in trouble” with the ruling African National Congress for allegedly referring on Facebook to the party as... well, something to do with their mothers.
He denies it; and when the ANC wants him to apologise, he asks whether the party has “gone completely mad”.
The reference, Du Preez explained after the incident, came about when an old friend in the ANC called the party “maaifoedies” after the Dalai Lama had been denied entry into South Africa for the 80th birthday celebration of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. In explaining the etymology of this old Malay-Portuguese word used at the Cape, Du Preez remarked on Facebook that its original meaning was the same as the American swearword referring to ‘mothers’. These days, however, the word is quite acceptable in decent company.
But back to the new book and Du Preez’s thinking around it, both of which could earn him the title of “maaifoedie” among ANC President Zuma, media houses and others.
Launched by Penguin Books to coincide with Cape Town’s recent Open Book Festival, the book is his brainchild and is edited by him. He also wrote the first chapter.
Opinion Pieces by South African Thought Leaders is a collection of critical reflections on various aspects of contemporary South Africa by a number of leading voices, who are experts in their areas of commentary. Its fundamental aim is to adrenalise the big South African debate, and is the first in a series of such books.
But why a book?
“The point I want to make is that our debates, our conversation, our discourses in South Africa are so pathetic at present. We are all just shouting at each other; and the person who shouts the loudest dominates the agenda, and we all know who that is,” Du Preez says with a twinkle in the eye.
“Julius (Malema, of the ANC Youth League) shouted so much that he became the mightiest, most important person in South Africa, determining the agenda as to what we should be talking about. We have to be talking about other, more important things, but the media are not doing that for us. They are addicted to Malema. If he croaks, he is on the front page.
“And he knows (that) the louder and more radical he shouts, the more he makes it onto the front pages. That is the new political temperature. Now he can even say with impunity that white people are criminals – something that nobody would have dared do even at the height of apartheid. It was unthinkable,” he adds.
“We therefore have to try through books – this is the first of a series – to raise the discourse to a more civilised level. Because the media are not going to help us.”
Strange words to be coming from this multiple award-winning journalist who, in the 1980s, after a successful career in the mainstream media, founded and edited the alternative Vrye Weekblad newspaper. At the time, it was the only Afrikaans-language newspaper to actively oppose apartheid.
For his efforts, Du Preez received death threats, saw his offices bombed, received a six-month jail sentence for quoting a banned person, and was ex-communicated by his own parents.
These days, however, he makes his living mostly from books – 11 titles in 10 years. Apart from Opinion Pieces, he recently finished a new book on Nelson Mandela called The Rough Guide to Mandela, part of the popular Rough Guide series.
“Writing books has become my primary function. I write about our political history,” Du Preez says.
But he has not lost faith in journalism altogether – far from it. In Opinion Pieces, most of the people he invited to contribute chapters are journalists and not academics.
“I wanted the book to be accessible, while most academics whom I know are unable to write accessibly. They write to impress their colleagues,” Du Preez says in his typical forthright manner. “I like the way journalists write: plain and accessible for everyday people.”
For him, journalism is also about ethics, the truth and principle.
And while he is every bit the old-fashioned journalist when it comes to values and purpose, he is surprisingly progressive when it comes to newfangled electronic media
versus print.
While Du Preez laments the state of journalism in South Africa and the absence of the big debate, he says these days he gets his daily dose of news from social media such as Twitter, the radio and on his iPad. He will not miss never having to pick up another printed newspaper, he has been heard to say.
Yet, he becomes slightly agitated when he talks about the current challenges faced by the media, firstly the highly controversial Protection of Information Bill which, in its present form, could serve to silence the media on important issues; and secondly, the Media Appeals Tribunal mooted by the ANC.
The bill has already been diluted considerably, Du Preez says. All that is still required, is a “public defence” clause to “allow one to say in a court of law that you made public protected information because it was in the public interest”, he adds.
He thinks such a clause will eventually be written into the bill but, as a kind of trade-off, the ANC will establish the media tribunal. “I think, however, there is no need for such a tribunal, as the media’s latest proposals for self-regulation go far enough,” he notes.
And the ANC’s frequent demand that the media and media ownership in South Africa should be transformed, Du Preez rejects as being a “populist cry, not based on reality”.
Neither does he spare a single media group his criticism. Foreign ownership of the media, as in the case of Independent Newspapers, he says, “is a problem” – with the local newspapers being “sucked dry” to “cover the parent company’s losses in Ireland”. Something will have to be done about that, he adds.
“But then, looking at the other media, there are black editors, and there is black ownership. So the call for transformation is a red herring because the opposition to the government comes mostly from black journalists. That is what angers them and then they resort to (Robert) Mugabe-like (words), saying if you are not a racist, you are the servant of racists.”
“What we can’t afford, is to carry on like the Sunday Times and the Sowetan. I think the Avusa Group is in deep trouble. What the Sunday Times recently did on three consecutive Sundays is atrocious, and equally so the front-page sex story in the Sowetan,” says Du Preez.
“I think the only problem with the current ownership of the media is that people want to use newspapers as cash cows. That is certainly also true of Nasionale Pers. All that is important is whether you can make enough money. That is why we sit with editors who have now become managers who have to make money.
“That old friction between editorial and management where the journalists say, ‘We don’t give a damn about the money, we have to bring in the news’, and management says: ‘We have to make money or we cannot exist’ – that has gone. Everybody is now just making money,” he notes.
“However, just as you become depressed about the state of our media and journalism, you see some of the best investigative journalism ever being written in this country. There is a small cream of writers who really are exceptionally good. But on average, most of the local journalists are junior, inexperienced and poorly trained.”
The contributions in Opinion Pieces cover topics such as education, poverty, the ANC, crime and violence, racism and non-racialism, among other things.
“Did you know that Neville Alexander, who wrote about non-racialism in the book, has been saying exactly the same thing since 1964? He says loudly and clearly that none of us should ever again be made to fill in our race in a form. He says we must refuse, and I agree with him,” states Du Preez.
He then turns to the ‘national question’ about identity, and says he believes that in the next book in the series, “the whole debate about whites” should be addressed.
“Whites have to rethink about seeing everything through white Western eyes, while blacks have to ask themselves whether they truly accept that white South Africans are indigenous, that we are not an Angola or a Zimbabwe, that whites have made a massive positive contribution to this country,” says Du Preez.
“They can say I am a criminal or a settler, but I am their problem. I am not something they can wish away. Here I am, sixteenth generation white African with slave and Khoi blood in my veins. What are they going to do with me?
“They should harness the white contribution for the common good instead of swearing at me and chasing me away. It is like a country having oil and the president saying that because oil is dirty, we must not have it or use it,” he adds.
This topic will probably be the theme of the next book, Du Preez says. He hopes these books will be published in e-book format as well, with free updates between editions to make it more accessible.
He laments the lack of black intellectuals being contributors – there are only two in the current edition. But, he says, that is because there are too few of them, and the few want to remain on the right side of power “just like the white intellectuals under the National Party”.
Du Preez is equally outspoken on a number of other topics such as his view that South Africa “cannot afford another five years of President Zuma”. “Perhaps”, he ventures, “it would be better to first get rid of Zuma and then later get rid of Malema.”
This brings to mind the controversy that erupted around him some years ago when he made some unflattering allegations about the alleged love life of another president, Thabo Mbeki. He digresses, and talks about other leaders such as former presidents PW Botha and FW de Klerk – making both flattering and unflattering remarks about them as well.
But then, this maaifoedie of a journalist has never been one to shirk controversy or speaking his mind – a journalist through and through.
Stef Terblanche
You have proven that your organisation is run by the 'Liberal' British Apartheid now called "Democratic', but still the same old Communist-British Capatilistic Regime ruled and controlled from Hypocritical, Bigotted Britain.
The PFP & DP were the actual instigators and perpertrators of genocide and crimes against humanity since 1800......who taught and encouraged the NP and now the ANCSACP to do so, with it's Great British Rule & Divide Imperialism Policies and practices, worldwide.
That is why you removed the facts that were here stated.