Black Wednesday on Tuesday

Today is Tuesday and we the media people we call it Black Wednesday. We remember the role of the courageous journalists, newspapers, anti-apartheid organisations and activists targeted by the apartheid regime in 1977. These men and women sacrificed their freedom in their quest to inform the public about the realities of our country then; and in the struggle for democracy.

I was not born in 1977 on the 19th of October as most of, when The World and the Weekend World newspapers were banned by then minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger, their editor Mr Percy Qoboza and deputy editor Mr Aggrey Klaaste were detained and 17 anti-apartheid organisations were banned.

I read that Mr Nelson Mandela and his colleagues, then they were imprisoned on Robben Island. The Nelson Mandela foundation writes that, it remembers how Mr Qoboza was one of the first public figures to campaign for their release from jail. It goes on by saying that year marked a turning point in the South African state’s oppression of the media, and in the next decade many more journalists were detained and banned and newspapers were shut down. As the struggle intensified, so did the regime’s attempt to silence the media.

When he was finally released from prison in February 1990, Mr Mandela paid tribute to the press, both local and international, for keeping the world informed of his plight and that of his colleagues. The release of Mr Mandela and other political prisoners, the unbanning of political organisations and the return of exiles after 1990 led to democracy in South Africa and the adoption of a Constitution which enshrines press freedom (Nelson Mandela Foundation).

Mr Mandela had often paid tribute to journalists. In December 1997at the closing session of the ANC’s National Conference, Madiba said: “Instrumental in keeping us in touch and informed, in the dissemination of both, the good news and the bad, the sensational and the mundane, has been the media. I wish to pay tribute on this occasion to their unflinching, and often ill-appreciated, commitment to their task and their contribution to a more informed and hence a better world.”

We at Kovsie FM would like to honour all those journalists who had contributed to the struggle for freedom, and all our media who continue to contribute to the making of democracy. To our entire journalists and up and coming journalists of tomorrow happy Wednesday a happy Black one.