‘Ons fade nie, ons vokof.’ These blunt words speak the spirit of what was Vrye Weekblad – an unpretentious but outstanding rag that flipped the bird at injustice regardless of who was wielding the sjambok. In the 80s doing so ‘in good Afrikaans,’ no less, as editor-in-chief Max du Preez expresses in a farewell column announcing the publication’s looming closure on 28 March 2025.
Adieu to Ismail Lagardien’s highly intellectual but emotionally immersive pieces. Cheers to du Preez’s sometimes humurous, sometimes in-your-face stingers. No more of Herman Lategan’s jaunts between vagrants, actresses and dope smokers in both seedy and bourgeoisie enclaves of the Mother City.
It all feels a little like standing at a surrendered cant on the platform, listlessly waving off a friend you know you’ll never hear from again. At least not unless you revisit the memories of the times when his words meant something and you’d brood long and hard after the opinions he expressed. Farewells are never easy, not least the ones to the boxer you’ve never met but who looked done for until he revealed, for the first time, the suicidal rope-a-dope to an audience that saw him live to tell the story. They are even harder when one of the hounds who wrote some of your most cherished words in the publication also happens to be dispensing free writing advice in your DMs. The sort of gifted wordsmith whose prose puts both the once-upon-a-time glamorous features writer and the street hooker at your doorstep and you can’t tell the difference as they stand there, both dignified, both with big dreaming eyes and a life to get on with, no matter how flawed.
Alas! Who will sate our literary pangs when they ‘vokof?’
In the 80s, as apartheid was clearly turning into a liability but where a cheeky journalist or activist could still inexplicably disappear, du Preez and Co. were those progressive (traitorous to some) sort of whites who carried the message of a ‘New Voice for a New South Africa’ before ‘I voted “yes” in the referendum’ was even a thing. Launched in November 1988, the paper quickly found itself in the muck before it had gotten going.
As an ominous prelude of woes to come, the cost of registering the paper shot up from R10 to R40 000, courtesy of then Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee who saw the paper as a menace from its earliest editions. A month later they were sued by former president P. W. Botha, this amid being taken to court for publishing the paper illegally. The following year saw a plethora of charges related to state of emergency legislation instituted against the paper. If these were meant to hamper the editorial team’s resolve, they appear to have in fact achieved the opposite, no doubt at great embarrassment to the establishment and attracting the kind of international attention that did the government no favours.
Vrye Weekblad would go on to publish many exposés on apartheid horrors not least of which were confessions by Dirk Coetzee, a former commander of the Police Death Squad at Valkplaas. As such, Valkplaas remains synonymous with the very worst of that establishment’s barbarism and is spoken of with palpable animosity in black political circles.
Since then the paper has seen on its masthead some of the country’s finest journalists not least of which is Jacques Pauw, author of The President’s Keepers, the runaway success that delved into serious allegations of a “shadow mafia state” during Jacob Zuma’s tenure as president. That book would see not only threats of criminal charges being made against the author but against his own life. Here we must also give a shout out to Anneliese Burgess, the daring investigative journalist and co-founder of the SABC’s flagship current-affairs show Special Assignment. She brought the realities of SA’s grimmer recesses straight to our living rooms, sparing those of us who find the telenovelas that are inundating late-night viewing insufferable, more than a good enough reason to change channels.
But in one month’s time those who care about these things will be bidding farewell to yet another legion of journos who did it because it needed to be done. And it’s the right thing to do, the one that lets you sleep at night, innit? One assumes that’s probably why they came back from the dead in 2019, to resurrect a paper that was forced to close its doors because it attacked an illegitimate government that had a penchant for dispensing violence at a whim, only to pick up where they left off by reminding the new dispensation that the paper’s support of democracy did not mean it would stand by and watch the powerful treat the coffers as some personal piggy bank.
Du Preez is no stranger to being on the wrong side of the political big-men or a traitor amongst those of his clan. But he’s also no stranger to those who feel that, he, more than many gets it. In the turmoil and race-baiting that often takes up the social dialogue, du Preez has no qualms stepping out of the laager into no man’s land. To most men, this – away from the security of the collective – would seem like dangerous territory, suicidal even, the sort of place where reputations are shattered and turncoats are sniffed out. But for du Preez it represents the very essence of what a democratic society – whose attainment was achieved through great sacrifice and bloodshed – should look like. The freedom of speech, as in to speak left when all about you are running headlong in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, in polarised socities (SA having regressed into such tendencies), these sort of characters often find themselves the objects of rejection, sometimes only absolved in their deaths.
So who will man the defence against social and racial division when they vokof? Which other legion might be tempted to follow suit and shut the doors on what is increasingly looking like a journalism industry on life support? After a splendid 42 years, City Press published its last print edition on 22 December last year, signaling the end of an era. Four years earlier, Drum, that iconic magazine that was a staple in almost every African home and produced some of the most outstanding African writers in years gone by, also pulled the plug on its physical existence, disappearing fully into the online space. Virtually every publication with enough sense has had to disappear behind a paywall. There’s simply no other way to remain alive and pay salaries. In years gone by, one had unfettered (albeit sometimes delayed for the benefit of the hard copy consumers) access to these online publications because advertisers were faithfully feeding the machine. But with cheaper means to get one’s message across, bottom-line priorities have seen corporates leap at these new opportunities. With the decreases in revenue also lurks the unavoidable issue of mortality, which has a major effect on the industry’s human capital.
Nearly two years ago, the journalist and writer Jeremy Gordin was murdered in his home. In January Paddy Harper, political editor at the Mail & Guardian passed away due to a heart attack. Described by journalist Niren Tolsi as ‘The sloping, stoner flaneur … the friend of the people,’ Harper’s every article – even the usually dreary hard news stuff – was just too damn good, witty, sharp, every time. He not only inspired this wannabe writer to reach out to the M&G but he also ensured that the e-mail I sent found its way to the right person. I suspect that he might have even dropped a kind word even though he barely knew me from a Facebook avatar.
In light of the sad closures and tear-jerking departures, I mourn and try not to think too hard about the road ahead. Yes, these are just papers, printable a million times over. Except now they join the rubbish heap of all that makes one apprehensive about the Mzansi future. They go into the potholes, the bottomless long fingers around the coffers, the uncontrollable influx of illegal migrants, the crime that kills good people and the good newspapers who are brave enough to tell us exactly who the bad guys are. Without these guys and their words, the powerful will toast and it’ll be hard to separate facts from disinformation. For the most part, these credible papers have been instrumental in enabling us to gauge the truth from the flood of misinformation that sweeps across social media every day. Hopefully, no other should have to go under.