There’s a crucial aspect missing from the stream of well-deserved high praise that has followed the passing of “the Tambo editor”, Tony Heard of the Cape Times, who died on 27 March 2024 at the age of 86.
I was the night news editor on duty when he called me into his office to tell me he had done the interview with exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo in London and that it was to be published the next day, 4 November 1985.
In the greater scheme of things, the Tambo interview was undeniably brave, but it was also an extremely astute move on Heard’s part for the timing of it - if that was his intention and he had calculated it so, that is.
In the tradition of the Cape’s history of resistance to colonialism, there was a period prior to the insurrection of the mid-1980s when the Cape Times’ circulation, and its credibility, suffered due to a spell of conservative news editing that hurt the proper coverage of Cape Flats “township news”, as it was known then.
I recall that this issue had its roots in the late ’70s-early ’80s period (the beginning of my 20-year stint at the paper), when coverage had become so problematic that it had the collective disenfranchised black, coloured and Indian communities in uproar. Things eventually came to a head in a pre-1980 meeting between a delegation of community/business representatives which had practically summoned its counterpart on the Times’ editorial executive to address their concerns.
Some brief background to the period: Following a series of occasional flare-ups, the Cape Flats township resistance against the government’s increasingly repressive rule of fist had started to become, first, more overtly vocal, and then, falling on determinedly deaf ears, found expression in defiant activism that culminated in open confrontation with the apartheid police.
But this only caused the conservative element on the Cape Times newsroom/sub-editor’s floor to dig in its heels; coverage was scant. I hasten to emphasise that the protest demonstrations or public community meetings themselves, especially those that were overtly political, weren’t altogether ignored (although some, even many, were), but increasingly, press and public statements by unions and community organisations were cut short or sanitized of their more radical language. On the night news desk, I was on the receiving end of the brunt of community dissatisfaction phoned in by spokespersons demanding to know why this should be so.
And hence the aforementioned crisis meeting between the community delegation and the Cape Times. Among the latter delegation was general manager Wally Judge, who chaired, and managing editor Chris Greyvenstein, who had called on myself and my late colleague and friend, the ace reporter Enrico Kemp, to attend.
After grievances were vented and then responded to, Greyvenstein rather put me and Kemp on the spot, eagerly asking us to tell the meeting whether there was any standing editorial instruction regarding our reporting duties. Kemp said no, and I can attest that this was in fact the case at the time, except of course that once a completed news report leaves the reporter’s desk, its fate is then in the hands of news editors, sub-editors and other senior managers higher up the editorial chain.
The meeting ended amicably enough, though awkwardly when Judge misread the room and made the (no doubt well-intentioned, but terrifically naive) faux pas of offering these successful businessmen a gift voucher. They politely declined and as they all trooped out of the room, it was obvious to me that most of the delegation were not convinced that there had been a meeting of minds.
Indeed, echoes of this wary sentiment towards the Times among significant sections of the community only grew louder as years passed. This was despite attrition of the more prejudiced among the older guard of journalists that allowed for more comprehensive reportage of community issues in the period leading up to that seismic Tambo interview.
And here’s the crux: whether or not he had deliberately strategized it that way, the interview was a timely masterstroke on Heard’s part. If there were any lingering doubts as to the true nature of its politics – whether truly liberal or actually closet conservative - the credibility of the Cape Times, with Heard at the helm, was now instantly solidified among the more politically hard-core “township” skeptics. Not only that; Heard’s name was seen emblazoned in graffiti on a wall in a black neighbourhood after the interview was published, presumably in acknowledgement of his bravery; and the newspaper’s readership soared. Heard became a folk hero.
I didn’t get to talk to him much at work at the time, apart from attending his evening news conferences, because he was immediately plunged into a personal and professional battle to save his career. It was a battle he lost, but a war that time has declared he ultimately won when assessed not only in local terms, but also in the eyes of the international press.
His replacement was one Kosie Viviers, whose distant and aloof demeanour felt quite unsettling in the wake of the warm, open and friendly personality of his predecessor; it was hard to come to terms with the sudden transition from one to the other. This was not least because Viviers was an Afrikaner, and to a kid growing up in a coloured township watching the nightly news, the severe, heavily-jowled men shown on television were usually dour Afrikaner government ministers with a boorish disposition. More to the point, Viviers would soon include in his management team his old pal, former Cape Times news editor Wessel de Kock, returned now to serve as his night editor.
This was unfortunate because it coincided with me doing another round on the night news desk. And it was during the euphemistically labelled “unrest”, particularly of the late ’80s, that De Kock would expose – and impose - a distasteful penchant (to put it mildly) for voluntary censorship.
News stories that reporters were returning to me nightly from the township battlefield between police and ordinary citizens were heavily edited in favour of the police, beyond the dictates of the already strangulating Emergency Regulations on the media. The suppressed outrage that remained with me was to be tempered only by the gradual arrival of younger Afrikaner reporters who were of an altogether more enlightened, even activist ilk.
The journalistic epidermis of the Cape Times may have appeared largely to have remained unchanged following Heard’s departure, but it’s really the nature of the personality at the head of any organization that defines its character and drives its enthusiasm. In this department, Heard, the unflappable editor-cum-surfing enthusiast, had endeared himself to the newsroom with his progressive politics and easygoing manner; supported by his long-serving subordinate, Gerald Shaw (affectionately dubbed “Billy Bunter” by our driver colleagues), he belonged to that rare coterie of English editors who represent the best of liberal tradition.
But even great men have feet of clay. It must be hard to reassign political affiliation or switch loyalties when one has spent a lifetime committing to the purported lofty ideals of a majority liberation movement like the ANC. This applies particularly because after his firing, Heard then went to work for the ANC-led government and it was a surprise and a disappointment when in his later years, he chose to come out publicly in support of Cyril Ramaphosa. This despite the president’s bluntly-stated prioritisation of ANC interests above that of the country and the nation. Disappointment turned to disillusionment when, in a follow-up article, he doubled down on that stance, even in the face of mounting, unmitigating examples of egregious presidential dereliction.
Published on this platform recently, my former colleague Andrew Donaldson’s discomfiting recounting of how he was handed a full bottle of tequila, grenade-like and impishly at one of Heard’s farewell staff parties, made for another sobering realization.
Yet, all things considered, he was a fundamentally nice guy, a decent type, a worthy model of professionalism that a young and naïve reporter from the Cape Flats could look up to and be inspired by. Until, in the end, he couldn’t, that is.
Yazeed Fakier was reporter, night news editor and deputy news editor on the Cape Times, where he ended his career as a senior reporter in 1998, following his weekly “Grappling With Change” feature series for the newspaper. He was also Managing Editor of Rolling Stone SA.
