Neels Blom, www.newstime.co.za November 29, 2010
Citizens who have attained fishing age will remember the republic’s second referendum, held in 1983, when South Africa’s whites-only voters were asked to say yes or no to the National Party’s tri-cameral parliament, an institution which would entrench the disenfranchisement of the country’s African majority.
Denis Beckett, in his new book, Radical Middle: Confessions of an Accidental Revolutionary, reminded me of that decade of heavy state oppression, bombs in street bins, economic sanctions – and Frontline magazine. If you were youngish and whitish in the 1980s, it was hip to profess pinko-liberal politics, wear a Che Guevara T-shirt and have the colour of your skin modified by the Purple People Eater during an illegal gathering. Those days the thinking pinko South African’s magazine of choice was Frontline, all seven of us.
Radical Middle is the story of the rise and demise of Frontline and Beckett was its founder, publisher, editor, part sales staff and unashamed exploiter of the platform to promote his brand of democracy, namely, “deep” democracy as opposed to the establishment’s ideas for shallow version for Africans. Its sounds absurd when you put it that way now, but in Radical Middle Beckett relates how not so long ago it was possible to debate the relative merits of the qualified franchise, group (read race) rights and sundry incremental shifts towards democracy and freedom.
One might wonder, what do Beckett’s co-liberals who think who have thought him mad for his one-man, one-vote stance or when he proposed that white voters spoil their referendum ballots. Do they marvel at how prophetic Frontline was? My favourites items are two of the Fronline covers replicated in the book, one of Mandela addressing parliament published while the great man was still a jail bird and the second of the Carlton hotel ruined and shot up, over the caption, The Future That Must Not Be. Have you seen the Carlton lately, all shot up and ruined.
It was the time when dour bureaucrats at the Publications Control Board could ban your publication if the female torso (never mind the other parts) depicted a nippled breast or, in the exact words of the regulation it “furthered the aim of a banned organisation”. One man, one vote was an ANC aim then and promoting the idea was risky business. Times were tough for hacks with integrity those days, though being banned was not necessarily a bad thing. It gave Scope and World and Weekend World credibility they did not necessarily deserve and certainly raised Frontline’s profile.
Radical Middle is Beckett’s reply to that inevitable question: So, what did you do during the struggle, Daddy? For Beckett’s detailed answer, read the book, but the short version is that he promoted, argued, tilted and published for the sake of full-scale democracy via his magazine.
Which brings us to a post-struggle issue in journalism. Beckett acknowledges his work as a journalist those days as bordering on zealotry, but he does not debate crusading journalism. Perhaps our Zeitgeist makes it unnecessary to appear to be fair and reasonable, though I think the partisan drivel dished up as political journalism in South Africa has rendered us inured to the demands of excellence.
Beckett made the point to me when he handed me he book for review, as he did in the book, that we should “engage the debate, rather than judge the book”. So here is the debate: If democracy has to be deep, that is, a fully fledged, hundred percent, no holds barred version to work for everyone, including whitish minorities, how come one man, one-vote is not working for the South African majority, not to mention those who would see only with their skins.
In the final chapter, Beckett does ask whether South Africa now has deep democracy, but unlike his stance during the struggle years, he does not quite make a straight reply. Instead, we’re treated to neo-establishment speak, in which he describes democracy as a work in progress and that nowhere in the world, really, would we find the full set of pyjamas.
Well, that may be true-ish, but I prefer your original position, Mr Beckett. We want deep democracy. Why? Because, at its most fundamental, democracy must permit the citizens to collectively provide security (including security from state abuse), with our tax rands open the doors of education and, together, as a nation allow us to take care of the sick, vulnerable and infirm. That is the basic test and we fail. To pass we need more democracy, not some patronisingly sanitised pretension so beloved of tin-pot regimes, specifically those of the Nats of old and of the new ANC.
If that gets your blood up, read the book. Revise that. Everyone remotely interested in contemporary and South African struggle history must read it, if only for an insight into the work of a true liberal and a remarkable publication. Besides, the interminable optimism which sustained Beckett through journalism’s romance with revolution is infectious. We all need a dose of that.
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