It is the other way round there

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, MAY 1. A feature of newspaper publishing in South Africa has always struck one as rather unusual leaving aside the dominant ideology of the industry which has remained virtually unchanged six years into transition to democracy.

Thus, to take an immediate instance, the weekend newspapers have, almost without exception, dealt with the 25th anniversary of the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam entirely in terms of an American tragedy with hardly any reference to the incalculable devastation that the American political leaders and armed forces inflicted on the country and its people.

The thrust and emphasis of all these reports is on the `trauma' suffered by the Americans and not by the Vietnamese, and certainly not on the liberation and national reunification of the people of Vietnam.

Unlike in other places, newspapers in this country do not appear on the very days notified as holidays, but surprisingly appear on the next day.

Thus, May Day (officially designated as Workers' Day, in consideration to the sensitivities of those mentally and ideologically in the pre April 27, 1994 mode who would otherwise have seen red) is a public holiday, one of the 12 so designated. While there are no newspapers on the day, the next day we will have the newspapers.

Superficially, this might seem as an explicit acknowledgement that the working journalist is the most redundant and dispensable component in the publication of a newspaper in South Africa. While this may indeed be the case, a rather more decisive factor is the market.

The offices and the commercial establishments in the central city areas will be open tomorrow for business (as far as possible) as usual and will be buying large quantities of newspapers. So it makes commercial sense to come out with an issue tomorrow.

Indeed, since Good Friday (April 21), there have been only three issues of serious newspapers like Business Day, the financial daily which, outside one's personal contacts and the radio, is about the only material source of developments in the country and the southern African region. (The daily newspapers do not appear during the weekend.)

Thus, starting with Good Friday, followed by the long weekend including April 24, Family Day, there were no papers for four days.

Then, two issues of the paper (April 25 and 26), followed by another holiday on April 27 (Freedom Day) when again there was no issue. Then, another long weekend of three days, with May 1 as a pubic holiday.

Clearly, reading of newspapers in this country is not a matter of prolonged habit and part of an ingrained culture, a feature of a politically conscious people and society; rather, newspapers seem to be just one of those things that one ingests casually as part of one's intake during a working day, just like a take-away meal.

The approach is entirely in tune with the lofty disdain of `politics' that is so central to the dominant ideology of these very newspapers. This is so even when the newspapers deal with matters economic and political.

Indeed, such disdain and depoliticisation appears to have percolated now even to the once highly politicised section of the black majority.

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