The media world unfolds in the public eye, but there is a private world as well, the backrooms where the journalists work and the sausages are made. And in that world, Raymond Louw, who turned 90 last week, is loved.
In the media, there were many who courageously fought apartheid: Zwelakhe Sisulu, Laurence Gandar, Percy Qoboza, Max du Preez and others. None knew better how to fight for justice with skill, courage and an obsession with detail in a hostile time. Louw became editor of the Rand Daily Mail at the end of 1965, and his term in that job coincided almost exactly with John Vorster’s term as prime minister, 1966-1978.
The mists of memory have frozen the Rand Daily Mail in time, as a great anti-apartheid fighting newspaper of high quality, and by some critics as continuing the discriminatory hiring practices of the time, at the expense of black reporters. The truth is more complex. Before it was turned around starting in 1957 by the courageous Laurence Gandar, it was a jingoist rag. Much like the public service today, an early priority was firing journalists who were conducting private businesses while of the Mail’s payroll. Others were fired for violence in the newsroom.
Louw was one of the early Gandar recruits, after an early career when he was told he could not be on staff because his name was Afrikaans. Louw and the others helped Gandar turn the paper around, so that by the time Gandar was fired it was already cited as one of the world’s 10 best papers. Louw was chosen to succeed him because he was good at his job and lacked a political profile. Little did management know.
Louw dedicated himself to the same principles. In a time when liberals, as well as ANC leaders and communists, were banned or on trial, Gandar famously responded to a taunt by a pro-Nationalist newspaper that the paper’s opposition to apartheid meant "going the whole hog": blacks would be the bosses of whites, live in their neighbourhoods. Louw supported that view.
But the fight against Vorster required a different skill set. Vorster lacked the vision of Verwoerd; he was just an enforcer, the bully, and Louw stood firm. It was not a time for histrionics. It’s was a time for firmness. It was Louw who put the paper on a firm financial footing, and remembered the detail of every story.
He had a knack for finding the right people and supporting them to the hilt. That was why his attempts to block apartheid spies did not go beyond questioning the accused. When John Horak, who later emerged as a long-time security police captain, denied he was a spy, Louw left him in the newsroom. He feared the damage to staff morale in such a tough climate if he started witch-hunts.
Louw’s name rarely appeared in his newspaper. He made others shine. Journalists rewarded him with fierce loyalty. When he called a meeting to tell us there was no money for increases, we just worked harder.
When the laws blocked the photographer Peter Magubane from using the developing room, Louw built a new one on the roof. White printers, photographers and others harassed Peter, but Peter stood up to them. When some criticised Louw after 1994 for not doing more, Peter was clear: "Raymond Louw does not have to apologise to anyone."
Louw built as ideologically diverse a newsroom as possible, but tied them to high standards.
He combined skills rarely seen in editors — not only an excellent journalist, he ushered in the first electronic editing in South African newspapers, a decade ahead of Fleet Street, so successfully the company sold a system to Naspers. The company fired him as editor soon afterwards, apparently because of his politics. Though the paper did go into a loss, circulation was soaring.
Vorster left office in disgrace because of Muldergate. This scandal resulted directly from his government’s fear of Louw’s Rand Daily Mail. Muldergate was a vast network of covert funding for interference in South African and overseas media and politics. When attempts at direct censorship created too much outcry, a secret fund was used to try buy the Mail. When that failed, the funds were used to start The Citizen in the hope it would squeeze the Mail’s advertising.
Louw has honorary doctorates from Rhodes University and the University of the Witwatersrand. He was honoured along with the American foreign correspondent Daniel Pearl by the International Press Institute, as a World Press Freedom Hero, in 2011. He still travels domestically and internationally, fighting for press freedom and individual journalists.
More than once he went to see an editor in prison in Africa, then to the president to let him out.
Pleading the cause of an imprisoned Cameroonian editor, Pius Njawe, whose trial he had attended, to then President Nelson Mandela, Mandela called Cameroon President Paul Biya. "I’m sitting with my colleagues from the press," Mandela said. "They are concerned about Pius Njawe. I told them I knew I could assure them he would be released very soon."
Mandela turned to Louw and his colleagues with a twinkle in his eye, as if to say, "Will that do?" It was classic, extraordinary Mandela. It was also classic Louw.
• Matisonn is the author of God, spies and lies, Finding South Africa’s future through its past, and host of CTV’s Between the lines with John Matisonn
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.