THE ILLUMINATI - THE RISE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN REICH

Chapter 12

The Control of Ideas

This process of cleansing our 'Kultur' will have to be applied in practically all spheres. The stage, art, literature, the cinema, the Press, and advertisement posters, all must have the stains of pollution removed and be placed in the service of a national and cultural idea. -- HITLER in Mein Kampf

'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right included freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.'

So reads Article 19 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948. For obvious reasons South Africa refused to sign the Declaration, and the Nationalist government feels under no obligation to honour it. The policy of apartheid is in its very essence a violation of the fundamental human rights of the majority of the population. How could the Nationalists be expected to respect the freedom of the Press when they were ruthlessly assaulting every other freedom?

In fact, the record of the Nationalists since they came to power is one of sustained attack upon the freedom of the Press, and the attack has mounted in intensity during recent years in direct proportion to the crisis which has overtaken the country. Control over the means of propaganda has become for them an absolute necessity, for without it they must fail in their bid to dominate the country.

For the Nationalist government remains basically weak. Taking the 1960 referendum figures as a guide it speaks for fifty-two percent of the White population, and by virtue of the very nationalism which constitutes its strength, it can never attract to its banner more than a small proportion of the remaining forty-eight percent, for the English are unlikely to accept absorption by an alien culture, though by virtue of their minority position they may have no alternative but to concede its overlordship. As for the non-Whites, it can be assumed that the overwhelming majority are bitterly opposed to apartheid, and the savage laws which have been put on the statute book are testimony to the resistance which has more and more been forthcoming from their ranks.

To preserve themselves in power, therefore, the Nationalists have had to mobilize their resources on all fronts with the greatest care and skill. By careful husbandry they have succeeded in harvesting for themselves a majority of votes. But votes are not everything. The one sphere where they have felt a permanent weakness is that of ideas, the written and spoken word, the Press, books, cinema, and stage. Day after day insidious, undermining ideas have been circulated in South Africa, liberal, un-national ideas, infiltrating the population in its millions, weakening the resolve of the faithful, producing in the very citadel of Afrikanerdom itself a succession of minor if unsuccessful revolts. It has taken all the ingenuity and cunning of the Nationalist leaders - with the frequent display of force - to combat this intellectual erosion. But they have dedicated themselves to the struggle against freedom of opinion and expression with all the determination of ultimate despair. The white supremacist is playing for high stakes. He must either win or die. There is no room for compromise in the battle of ideas.

Unhappily for the Nationalists, this is a battlefront on which they do not enjoy a superiority in weapons. Ask for guns, armoured cars, baton charges, detention without trial, hangings, lashes, and all the other trappings of physical intimidation, and they can prove their advantages. But ask them for an idea which can stand the moral scrutiny of the world, and their deficiencies are immediately exposed.

The very weakness of their position has made the Nationalists all the more determined to ensure that they obtain absolute control over the instruments of expression. Nothing must be said in South Africa which undermines their authority; nothing sent out of the country which stimulates antagonism. The only answer is - censorship. And the Nationalists have had this in mind ever since they came to power.

The difficulties that the Nationalists have had to contend with are best revealed by a comparison of the following figures, which cover the circulations of the Nationalist and non-Nationalist daily and weekly newspapers:

DAILY NEWSPAPERS

WEEKLY NEWSPAPERS

The circulation figures quoted above are based on external audits. The list of daily publications is complete, but the list of weekly publications is restricted to newspapers and excludes national periodicals, reviews, communal and religious publications. If these were included, the non-Nationalist total would be even higher.

Certain changes which have taken place between 1962 and 1967 should be noted. The opposition-controlled Afrikaans newspapers Weekblad and Sondagstem ceased publication, while the Landstem was bought by the Nationalist firm, Dagbreektrust. The effect of these changes is that not a single Afrikaans language newspaper of any consequence in South Africa is today controlled by the opposition; the Nationalists have achieved total dominance in this field. The triweekly Oosterlig became a daily paper in 1961, but its 1962 circulation figures (10,000) became available too late for inclusion in the first edition of this book. The new Nationalist Sunday paper Die Beeld, and the Cape Herald, organ of the Labour Party of South Africa, a new Coloured party formed in Cape Town, started publication in 1965. Figures for the Daily Representative, Queenstown, were not quoted in the 1967 audit. A new Nationalist daily newspaper, Hoofstad, was started in Pretoria in 1968. Its circulation figures were stated by the Financial Mail (8 November 1968) to be 18,000.

From these figures it can be seen that when it comes to influencing public opinion through the medium of the Press the Nationalist Party is at a serious disadvantage. The figures show that not all Nationalists read the Nationalist Press, and that many Nationalists read the non-Nationalist Press.

So long as this position is permitted to persist, it will be impossible for the Nationalists to eliminate all foreign political and cultural influences. The man who daily reads the newspapers of his political opponents is bound in the long run to be influenced by what he finds there. Whether he is conscious of it or not, he will be exposing himself daily to non-Nationalist ideologies, perhaps even to humanism and liberalism. Some of the ideas that he encounters may sooner or later win acceptance from him.

Two courses were open to the Nationalists to combat this danger. They could found rival papers in competition with the English Press, or they could force the English Press to conform. The first alternative was out of the question. The English Press, linked as it is with the great mining and financial houses, has financial resources which are beyond the reach of Nationalist competition. The English papers are bigger and brighter and contain far more news and features than the Nationalist papers, which concentrate largely on propaganda. Not surprisingly a Johannesburg survey has shown that, whereas only one to four percent of English-speaking South Africans read an Afrikaans daily, between twenty and forty percent of Afrikaners read an English daily newspaper. And this trend is unlikely to be reversed in the foreseeable future.

The alternative was control, and on this front the Nationalists, after more than a decade of agitation and pressure, have been able to achieve a great measure of success.

The Nationalist government was not the first to try and control the Press or to introduce censorship. In the 1830s Lord Charles Somerset suppressed the newspaper of Thomas Pringle and James Fairbairn, The South African Commercial Advertiser, and deported George Greig, the editor and printer. Pringle and Fairbairn are names now known to every schoolboy because of the fight they undertook in defence of the freedom of the Press. They rallied support both in the Cape and in London, and after a bitter three-year battle managed to get the autocratic Governor's order reversed. Pringle wrote of the atmosphere in the Cape at the time:

It was difficult to conjecture to what lengths the violence of arbitrary power would at this dismal period proceed. Fear is the most cruel of all passions, and infuriated by fear or exposure, the Colonial government seemed determined to strike down every man who should dare even to look or think disapprobation of the deeds. A frightful system of espionage pervaded every circle of society, and rendered perilous even the confidence of the domestic hearth. ... Informers and false witnesses abounded, and rumours of plots and disloyal combinations against the Government were assiduously kept afloat, for purposes as obvious as they were mischievous.

There seems to have been very little change since those days!

When the South African Commercial Advertiser reappeared, a special ordinance was passed providing that henceforth the Press would be under the protection of the law and immune from arbitrary suppression. In the days of the Transvaal Republic, President Kruger took a crack at The Star, but the paper appealed to the courts and its rights were fully restored. It was not until the time of the fusion government under General Hertzog that a serious attempt was again made to introduce censorship. The government's cause for complaint against the Press was that certain newspapers had insulted the heads of the Nazi and Fascist states in Europe, in consequence of which a complaint had been lodged with the South African government by representatives of the German Reich. Instead of brushing these complaints aside, Hertzog, by this time inclining ever more strongly to National Socialism, decided to take action against the Press. Dr A.J.R. van Rhyn, Nationalist M.P., told the House of Assembly in January 1950:

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