South African scandals
Richard West
Johannesburg The new revelations of scandal within the South African Information Department have caused, besides consternation, a cer tain amount of glee among journalists and even some of the ruling National Party. The former Director of Information, Eschel Rhoodie, turns out to have been not nearly as clever as he, and even some of his enemies thought. Some of the millions of Rands in his secret funds appear to have been spent on completely ludicrous enterprises, such as making a loan to an American financier to purchase the Washington Star, completely forgetting that Washington is largely populated by blacks who would not be likely to buy a pro-apartheid newspaper.
When I wrote on this scandal in the Spectator (June 24) it seemed that the misuse of funds concerned fairly trivial matters like taking wives on official trips, giving a sinecure to Rhoodie's brother and making pleasure jaunts to the Seychelles at the tax-payers' expense. Now it transpires that many millions had been placed in Swiss banks, that the extent of the scandal was known to some of the Cabinet, who tried to cover it up, and that two people may have been murdered to stop them revealing breakages of the exchange control regulations.
The scandal reveals considerable dis sension within the National Party, which is to say the Afrikaner nation. The various leaks to the press appear to have come from underpaid bureaucrats within the civil service who resented Rhoodie's expense account and self-importance. It now appears that Rhoodie's patron, Connie Mulder, the head of the National Party in the Transvaal, knew the quantity of the money involved and that this was known to his sponsors for premier in the recent Party election — and he has now resigned.
Did P.W. Botha, who won that elec tion, also know the extent of the scandal and try to keep it quiet? Did the past Prime Minister, now President, Vorster, also join in a cover-up? 'I never thought I should see the day,' an Afrikaner told me half seriously, 'when any suspicion should rest against John Balthazar Vorster'.
The moral of all this is that, when a Government of a State with a free press attempts to use clandestine means of persuasion, the whole thing will blow up in its face. The public relations profession (its title, not mine) is useful as a device for preventing information reaching the public concerning for instance, British Rail, Islington Council or Shell, but it is worse than useless in what it would call the positive work of 'image building.' Institutions like British Rail, Islington Council and Shell can only improve their 'image' by improving their behaviour. South Africa will never improve her 'image' in the United States by secretly buying newspapers: only by making her policemen desist from beating and killing black detainees.
This brings me to the case of the Citizen newspaper which, it is now revealed, was all along subsidised by the South African government (to the tune of 12 million Rand) and not, as Eschel Rhoodie had led us to think, by a National Party millionaire, Louis Luyt. One of the arguments used by Rhoodie for the establishment of the Citizen was the need of foreign journalists, who did not read Afrikaans, to get a different political point of view from that of the liberal, anti-apartheid papers such as the Star and Rand Daily Mail. This seems an expensive way of informing foreign journalists, most of whom anyway get translations made of the Afrikaans press. The significance of the Citizen is the way it puts over National Party views tc sym pathetic white South Africans who are not Afrikaners. Such people tend to be working class, so that the Citizen is brash and popular in its tone: not unlike that of our Mirror and Sun. It speaks for the white miners, factory workers, bus and taxi drivers and also many recent immigrants such as the Portuguese from Mozambique; and it speaks out against the Anglo-Jewish middle class and capTihtae clistsit. izen constantly rails at Harry Oppenheimer, for example, the liberal boss of the Anglo American Corporation which owns, apart from most of the gold and diamonds, most of the English law guage newspapers. To give an idea of the tone of the Citizen, here is its comment on a rally of the Progressive Reform Party at which Mr Oppenheimer was one of the speakers: 'the PRP, backed by the progressive press and supported by the beautiful and well-heeled people of the northern suburbs, has this advantage — it has organised American-style bands, ballyhoo and songs of endearment for the jolly old golden city 'The Citizen does not, however, play on the anti-Semitism of poor white South Africans, who, before the war were wont to rail at 'Hoggenheimer'. Enemies of the Citizen say that one of its journalists may be suspiciously close to certain government agencies. The most controversial man on the staff is Gordon Winter, an Englishman who a few years back tried to sell round Fleet Street the allegations of Norman Scott, a famous male model. It may have been this that led Sir Harold Wilson to accuse the South African government of being involved in a plot to discredit British politicians. At any rate, Mr Winter is nov" an employee of the South African goy' ernment, thanks to his job on the Citizen. The Omen is losing money partlY because it tries to sell as a national IWOpaper in cities as far apart as Johan" nesburg, Durban and Capetown. Not onlY do copies have to be sent by air but the Citizen also loses out on the local adver" tisements that make the Star or the Cape Times so prosperous. And, from what'e know must have been government the Citizen dropped its lucrative ads for massage parlours and launched out instead on a series of shock horror expose reports. The Citizen and the Afrikaans newspapers have another, inherent weakness: their editorial poll° is unacceptable to the non-white poINIlation. While virtually no blacks read the Citizen, they form more than fifty pC cent of the readership of the Star and the Rand Daily .Mail, which are not only liberal in their editorial policy but carrY much news of specific interest to non; whites. The former editor of the Ea' London Dispatch, Donald Woods, wh° later escaped from South Africa, told ire last year that four-fifths of his wh.lt.ie readers disapproved of his editorial politc, — which nevertheless was very poPtilaft with the blacks who made up 55 per ce.n of the readership. Partly because of thisi the sale of the Dispatch overtook those °t the rival Port Elizabeth paper for the firs_ time since 1872. I do not suggest for a.. moment that newspaper editors teraPe,,i their own views to increase their blac! readership: rather that South Africa get' the press that the majority of its peollici the non-whites, desire. No amount °A public relations by Eschel Rhoodie an" others, can get round this fact.
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