A story about the SA schools population increasing by 100,000 pupils in 1981 got veteran journalist Len Kalane a spot on the front page of the first edition of Sowetan 40 years ago.
“The evolution of time is an amazing phenomenon. That story I wrote was about scale. At the time, SA had a population of 29m excluding blacks who lived in homelands. The 100,000 of new pupils was an astronomical number that time and that is why the story made it to the front page. Then township school kids were ordinarily in class at any given day or time. They didn’t roam the streets like they do today. It was strange for us to see so many of them walking the streets. That was unheard of back then,” said Kalane.
Journalists of his era operated using three methods: campaigning, creative and reactional journalism.
“We were proactive in terms of getting stories because we did not have the luxury of the internet, cellphones and social media. We had to get into our VW Beetle and go to the stories because Soweto did not have telephones or electricity at the time. Journalism was a novelty and people knew our names. We were demigods. There were three types of celebrities: entertainers, soccer players and journalists,” said Kalane.
Sowetan, which started out as a free-sheet publication to compete with a similar offering from another rival house, has stood the test of time.
At the time it was a question of Soweto News v Sowetan.
The birth of the Sowetan came after the banning of the Post Transvaal.
The Post had barely existed for three years before its banning as a successor to The World newspaper under the editorship of Percy Qoboza, which was also banned by government decree along with other 18 black consciousness movements on October 19 1977.
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Kalane, one of the first staffers at Sowetan and author of The Chapter We Wrote: The City Press Story, said Sowetan was created hastily. It was in retaliation of the emergence of Soweto News.
“People at Argus [Group] heard that their rival, South African Associated Newspapers was hatching a plan to start its own free-sheet black publication called Soweto News, which would mostly target Soweto and pose a threat and cannibalise the black readership of the Post Transvaal. Soweto was a big market for us. To counter this threat, Argus created Sowetan and launched it before Soweto News,” Kalane said.
Prior to this venture was the banning of The World and Post and the 1980 wage strike by Post workers. The strike lasted for a month and the apartheid government saw a loophole which it exploited by invoking the general Post Office requirement that all SA newspapers had to register with in order to operate.
The Post was banned on a technicality that it did not produce a publication for 30 consecutive days and therefore stood to be deregistered and stopped being published.
“We knew the real reason why they did that. It was just a political ploy being played by the apartheid government to shut us down as we were exposing the real stories and challenges that black people faced in the townships,” Kalane said.
“The hearts of our bosses at Argus were not really into it (Sowetan). Sowetan was used as the training ground for budding journalists. Soweto News also poached some journos from the mainstream Post newspaper and therefore boasted better news and content than Sowetan.”
Starting out with the mainstream Sowetan was a bit shaky. Adding to this was the inconvenience of Sowetan offices being in Commando Road [in Industria].
“It was a small building and we were crammed. The office ran on a manual switchboard, which meant that in order to make a call we had to first call the switchboard lady Hilary to check if there is an available line.”
Kalane said there was nothing special about the day before Sowetan launched in 1981.
The title Sowetan gave the perception that it would be a Soweto newspaper.
“Post was a national publication and Sowetan had replaced it. Some people who lived outside of Soweto rejected Sowetan because of its name. However, we overcame this. We were a national newspaper and that was reflected in the publication. We just went on about our business and they slowly started to accept us.”
Another veteran journalist, Monk Nkomo, was in charge of the Pretoria bureau. He said the existence of Sowetan was important, not only to its journalists but to the black community.
“We worked under terrible conditions imposed by the government of the time. We were always marked by police. We had to hold our convictions. We reported without fear or favour in telling stories that reflected the lives of black people who were exposed to injustices of apartheid in the township. We had to be bold. We also had fun,” Nkomo, now aged 75, said.
Kalane applauded Sowetan for maintaining its relevance to its readers and evolving through the years.
“It has adjusted well to have a fully-fledged digital platform. It has one of the most appealing print layouts in the country,” Kalane said.
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