Walking Blindfolded Through a Minefield

Early in his detailed and gossipy book on The New York Times, Gay Talese describes the tension in The Times's newsroom on the day its editors had to decide whether to print secret information on the Bay of Pigs invasion, and if so, how. Rarely does an American newspaper need to weigh its First Amendment rights against such "national security" concerns--only once in a newsman's career, perhaps--and so when it does the decision can cause even a seasoned editor, as Talese puts it--paraphrasing Times editor Clifton Daniel---"to quiver with emotion and turn 'dead white.'"

Benjamin Pogrund wonders at this sort of fuss. In Johannesburg, South Africa, at The Rand Daily Mail (where Pogrund works as Associate Editor, third in command), decisions of this type--whether to or how much of a story to run, while trying to avoid a judicial run-in with the government--occur every day, and nobody bats an eyelash.

"I am told," Pogrund says, "that the editors consult their lawyer about once every six weeks here at The Globe." (The Boston Globe invited Pogrund to take a six-month position last year, and since June his byline has appeared atop stories on the mounting racial crisis in South Africa.)

"At The Mail we consult our lawyer often six times a day," he says, adding, "Generally we do take his advice, because it's our heads that are on the chopping block."

Investigating a lead, sifting out hard facts, even choosing one's words proves a ticklish, and often mind-racking chore, Pogrund says. Since he began to regularly but cautiously cover the activities of South African black nationalists and investigate what he terms the "appalling" conditions of government prisons (where mostly black political prisoners are held), Pogrund has had to go to court three times, and without the support of many First Amendment-like rights.

"This was the major effect of my first trial," he says on the subject of one safeguard, the right not to disclose sources. "I was convicted and I took the case on appeal. No precedent existed at the time, so the Supreme Court made one. It ruled that in this area the press has no legal rights under South African law."

Given this lack of legal protection, the white Afrikaaner government--the regime that imposes a nation-wide policy of apartheid, the racial segregation of South Africa's four million whites, 18 million blacks and 2.3 million coloureds (people of mixed racial ancestry)--can arbitrarily determine when The Mail has stepped out of bounds, and in some areas can demand a blanket right censor.

"Under the Defense Act, for instance," Pogrund says, "we cannot print anything about the government's purchase of military hardware from France, say, without clearance. Last fall, we couldn't publish a word about the Angolan war without checking with the Defense Ministry first."

What would happen if The Mail ignored the act? "Oh, that would mean a very serious trial," Pogrund says. "They'd charge us with printing military secrets--very serious."

Pogrund readily acknowledges the need to compromise principles involved in this type of compliance. "The press in South Africa has a very interesting history," he says. "Sometimes we can be brave as hell, and sometimes just as cowardly." Or, "editing a newspaper in South Africa is like walking blind folded through a mine-field," was the way Pogrund put it in an article that appears in the Autumn-Winter '75 issue of the Neiman Journal. "It is indeed a mine field of legal hazards."

But Pogrund also takes great pride in the stature and reputation for integrity that The Rand Daily Mail enjoys throughout the world. The American National Press or "Emperor" award for 1966 went to The Mail, South Africa's most widely read morning publication, and the paper still carries the award emblem above the masthead each day. The same front page, however, carries a box every day with the name of the Editor, Raymond Lauw; of each editorial writer for that day and of the newsman who wrote all the day's headlines.

"This lets our readership know who had said what, and also covers us in case the government brings suit," he says. "This makes clear that the editor carries the can."

In fact Prime Minister John Vorster's Afrikaaner regime never has jailed Lauw. But Pogrund, on his way up through the ranks as a reporter, has received a series of suspended sentences. "The story of my life,' he says.

Bringing a reporter before the bar in South Africa is simple enough, Pogrund explains. Under the Incitement Act, a newsman becomes criminally liable for stirring up racial conflicts just by the slant he takes on a given story, or for the language he uses.

The security police have also gone so far as to raid Pogrund's home. On one occasion raiders barged in on him in the middle of his work on a doctoral study of black nationalist movements in South Africa and arrested him, charging him with possession of banned leftist newspapers--all more than twenty years old. Ten years ago, when he began to report on prisons, the government confiscated his visa, later restricted it, and it was only last year that he regained the normal traveling privileges that allowed him to accept The globe's invitation.

Now in the U.S. and at more than arms' length from the South African crisis, Pogrund feels he has gathered an even sharper understanding of the widening and, he thinks, probably irreparable gash in the fabric of apartheid society.

When Pogrund discusses the current turmoil, his emotions as a South Africa native and his insights as an obviously pragmatic, tough-minded journalist shift back and forth, showing on one hand pain and pessimism and on the other cold condemnation of the cynical pursuit of self-interest among parties on both sides. He sees those selfish pursuits in the Vorster government and among its economic partners abroad, and also among black leaders in the surrounding "front-line" countries who, he suspects, even if black majority rule arrives in Rhodesia, will continue to bend to South African clout.

"You Americans seem to think the Rhodesian settlement"--Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian D. Smith last month agreed to a proposal for a two-year transition to black majority rule--"signals a move in that direction for South Africa. You don't realize how strong Vorster is. This is what makes me anxious about Kissinger's settlement; there is nothing that Kissinger got from the Rhodesians that Vorster hasn't wanted for two years. Vorster wants a black government in Rhodesia. Kissinger's settlement, although meant to avert race war, just plays into the hands of the Afrikaaner regime."

New analyses in the U.S. press have suggested that Vorster agreed to put the economic screws to Smith's regime--threatening to cut off water and close down the country's only rail link to the ocean--because of weakened internal support in the face of rioting and strikes. Pogrund perceives that just the opposite is true. The new turmoil has strengthened Vorster's hand, he says, and this revived support among the frightened white minority freed Vorster to shove Smith out.

"The white Afrikaaners are heading for the hills; they don't want to hear about change and they've placed all their force in Vorster," Pogrund says. "And Vorster has not budged from his commitment to maintaining apartheid. He will increase repression if he must. He has said publicly he will brook no nonsense from blacks."

A sly smile spreads on Pogrund's face as he adds, "You know, you should appreciate Mr. Kissinger. He's a genius. He is protecting your interests, and he does a damn good job at it. I don't appreciate him, of course, but I'm a South African and I want to see a change there. But you should thank him."

All sides will go on "covering their tails," Pogrund projects, and he cites the number of U.S. allies that have heavy trade and shipping ties to South Africa: Japan, France, Israel and particularly Britain, which, he points out, "is in appalling financial straits and can hardly afford to abandon its commerce with South Africa."

As for the black front-line nations, Pogrund cites a New York Times report last week that black nationalists had blown up a train carrying "minerals" over the border from Zaire.

"'Minerals,'" Pogrund says, "that means copper. Kaunda [Kenneth D. Kaunda, the president of Zambia, which shares the same rail line] depends on copper for his survival. The railway through Angola was destroyed during the war; he has to send the copper through South Africa. He may be distressed that his black brothers are being discriminated against, but he'll strike a deal with Vorster if he has to."

Even the Marxist government in Mozambique, where any protracted guerilla war against the Afrikaaner government would place its base, Pogrund says, will find itself hard pressed to break all links with South Africa, from which 80 per cent of Mozambiquan income derives."

"It's all very cynical," Pogrund says.

Pogrund foresees only one indefinite scenario for his country: increased polarization and "the end of all hopes of reconciliation. Thing will get worse until whites and blacks are at each others' throats, and then, well, dot, dot, dot."

Even the black leaders of the government-established Bantustans (segregated homelands), who are considered sell-outs by more militant nationalists, insist that the homelands only offer a temporary solution and the only existing channel or official black demands.

"There are really only two sides now in South Africa," Pogrund says, "the White Afrikaaner Nationalist regime and the black nationalist movement. Everyone else is in the middle--the Coloureds, the Indians, the anti-apartheid whites--and they have to run to one camp or the other and hope they get protection. South African liberals are in despair--there is no place for them any more."

With greater strife will come increased government repression, Pogrund predicts--much worse than that which has already jailed, severely restricted or exiled members of the two major nationalist groups, the Black Peoples Congress and the South African Students Organization.

Vorster's regime has already routed a leftist newspaper. And Pogrund expects that greater restraints will be placed on The Mail. But he has no second thoughts about his future. "South Africa is my homeland, too," he says. "This is what I've devoted my entire adult life to."

What if the government finally does begin to imprison the editors of The Mail? "Any one of we top three can step in and take over at the drop of a hat or as a result of one phone call; that's what we've been brought up through the ranks and trained for," Pogrund says.

"I suspect we'll continue to print what we think we should and make sure we have the hard facts. In the past we've made it very difficult for the government to move against us, so we know what we're doing. After all," Pogrund says, "we're pros."