Selling The Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War
16 November, 2015KHARTOUM (SUDANOW) - This is a book that demonstrates how powerful the media is when it comes to embellishing even the ugliest of regimes. It shows you how the Apartheid regime was able to survive, notwithstanding that almost all people had been against it, by manipulating the media, and the press in particular.
The powerful investigative reporting carried out by Ron Nixon, an Afro-American journalist based in Johannesburg, South Africa, meticulously traces all the backdoor deals concluded by the Pretoria white minority regime at the time, to sell Apartheid.
It reveals shocking cases of how some black American civil rights leaders were sucked into the whirling manure waters of the Apartheid regime, singing along with Pretoria that race separation was in fact good for the black people in South Africa.
The book goes into the coulisses of parliaments, policy making circles and media companies, showing how the lobbying groups and the public relations companies were hired by Pretoria, through a fund especially created for the purpose, to serve its sole purpose: apartheid was good for the white, thus was good for the blacks, subjugated as they were.
It also traces how these public relations companies in the USA and in the United Kingdoms, were used to tarnish the image of freedoms fighters, the like of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Anton Fransch, Ronnie Kasrils, Mac Maharaj, Thabo Mbeki, Govan Mbeki, Robert McBride, Joe Modise, Siphiwe Nyanda, Solly Shoke, Joe Slovo, Marion Sparg, Solomon Mahlangu, Lennox Lagu, Jacob Zuma, Tatamkhulu Afrika, Ahmed Kathrada. They were portrayed as “communists” and “terrorists” trouble makers who were against the capitalist free market systems.
During the cold war era in the early sixty and late seventies of the last century, between the West in general and America in particular, on one hand and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, this was a serious crime in the eyes of the West and the UK and USA in particular.
And as the Apartheid regime had come under constant public, not governmental though, pressure, it decided that it was time to wage a war against those circles in the West and in Africa. The protests were growing in the 1970’s against Pretoria.
The apartheid regime’s response was to win the media on its side “in order to tell its story or else buy people with power and influence in the media, those who could influence the editorial content of their publications.” Nixon wrote. The regime was not responding to criticism, no, it went into the offensive.
And the main points of the project was, as Nixon traces it, to let others “particularly well respected individuals and institutions with seemingly no connection to the apartheid government, tell the South African story rather than having the government do the talking.”
The regime created a fund, away from the eyes of the ministry of information, away from the supervision of the ministry of finance, and only a very few people high in the government were aware of its existence. That fund was used to hire public relations companies in the West, buy the consciousness of black activists, extend invitation to editors and editors in chief to come and visit South Africa, and then write favorably about the Apartheid regime.
Another ways used was, when editors refuse to cooperate, to buy full page political advertisements in papers around the world. And he noted that one of the apartheid leaders said, the Western and American respected newspapers would quickly accept the advertisements and compete with each other to offer the best space and terms, of course turning a blind eye to the fact that it was propaganda for the apartheid regime.
The books give so many interesting details how the lobbyists worked within the House of Common and the House of the lords, in the Senate and in the Congress and within the administrations of the various Western governments.
The book is worth reading for those who want to know how you could manipulate the media to serve your interests, whatever they were. It also gives an interesting lecture to those interested in investigative reporting. It shows how the media works in the West and how advertisements and invitations and other means were used to this end.
The book- published by the JACANA MEDIA (pty) ltd in 2015,- South Africa- is composed of 15 chapters, and introduction and notes on sources and the acknowledgement.
But above all, the book, I guarantee, is interesting to read.
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MO/ AS
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