WITS END
learning a lot about journalism and media law. The best defence against defamation is truth and public interest. Unfortunately, we had our facts wrong. Eventually we had to settle out of court, for R20 000 if I recall correctly – a lot of cash in the early 1980s. I was grateful Wits University paid it, even though it was only the “third respondent”. Being in the non-racial student movement in one’s early 20s was both terrifying and educational. We learned from our comrades in the BSS and AZASO about nonracialism and the history of the struggle, and from incredible lecturers about the real nature of the apartheid system, and how it was based on conquest and designed for exploitation. Unlike the blind Hell’s Angel, many of us young white men were trying to stay out of the apartheid army. I was proud that by 1990, I had evaded 22 sets of “call up” papers, partly by stringing out my Master’s for years and then converting it to a PhD (in the History Department under the supervision of the brilliant, kind and committed Prof Phil Bonner, now sadly departed). After the Hell’s Angel lawsuit, I was keen to go deeper into the work of neutralising pro-apartheid elements on our campus and win over at least some people to opposing apartheid. My colleagues in the SRC decided it was a good idea for me, while transitioning out of editing Wits Student, to take on and transform the Rag magazine, Wits Wits. Rag seemed ripe for this approach: many students were only in it for the booze and the parties (which were legendary) but Rag itself existed to raise money for charities, some of which
served township and poor rural communities. Rag exposed white students, however superficially, to some of the horrors of apartheid, and I thought we could make it count more than it did. Working with a visionary Chair of Rag and SRC member, the late Nicholas Leonsins, I became the first “lefty” to edit the Rag magazine. I was determined to make the magazine as subversive as I could, using satire and parody instead of compiling a collection of lame jokes. We also profiled stories about Rag beneficiaries with original reporting and harrowing photos, trying to go deeper into explaining what the apartheid system was all about. I spent hours interviewing the brilliant Pieter-Dirk Uys, just then becoming famous for his satire of the absurdity and ludicrous logic of apartheid. Looking back, I think my approach worked to some degree. The struggle was deadly serious, but one way to engage privileged white students was through traditions like Rag and the Free People’s Concerts – in other words, with a lighter touch. I think it helped many students, even perhaps the blind Hell’s Angel, to open their eyes and see what was really going on.
Being in the non-racial student movement in one’s early 20s was both terrifying and educational.
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WITS REVIEW APRIL 2018
Professor Harry Dugmore (BA 1984, PDipEd 1984, BA Hons 1985, PhD 1994) is Director of the Centre for Health Journalism at Rhodes University and currently Visiting Researcher at the Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre in Brisbane, Australia.
