Laurence Gandar

Laurence Owen Vine Gandar (born January 28, 1915 in Durban , † November 15, 1998 in Pietermaritzburg ), under the pseudonym Owen Vine , also called Laurie , was a South African journalist and editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Rand Daily Mail . He was considered one of the most influential critics of apartheid policy within the country.

Life

Youth, training, military service and career beginnings

Gandar spent his youth in Durban, a major South African city with a high proportion of Indian descent and conservative British. He studied at Natal University , where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts .

He took his first steps on the way to a later career as a journalist as a reporter for several small newspapers in the Durban area. During this time Gandar met his future wife Isobel Ballance, who was working as a teacher at the time. They both married in 1944. The marriage produced a son.

During the Second World War , Gandar served in North Africa and Italy as an officer in a reconnaissance unit in the 6th South African Armored Division , part of the volunteer army of the South African Union . There he entered their service as a corporal and resigned as a captain .

After the war, Gandar returned to his homeland and worked as an editorial assistant at the Argus Company , then the country's leading newspaper company. With funding from the Kemsley Empire Journalist Scholarship , he was able to spend a year in England. Then Gandar left the newspaper sector and wrote for the editorial team of Optima , a magazine of Ernest Oppenheimer's Anglo American Corporation .

Worked for the Rand Daily Mail

With considerable journalistic professional experience, Gandar took up a position as an editor at the Rand Daily Mail in 1957 , where he later rose to become editor-in-chief. This newspaper was originally close to the United Party , but gradually developed into a mouthpiece for the “white” apartheid opposition in South Africa, which later found its political home in the Progressive Federal Party . Under the pseudonym Owen Vine , he wrote leading comments that took up the initially indifferent stance of the “white” parliamentary opposition to apartheid. Ernest Oppenheimer learned from Gandar's editorial colleague Benjamin Pogrund of the young editor's intentions to start an anti- apartheid campaign and responded positively astonished. At the time, Gandar was known to be a reserved and indulgent colleague.

Because of his increasingly stubborn and critical attitude towards apartheid politics, foreign media called him the "crusade editor", whereby he formed the Rand Daily Mail into a warning medium in favor of the observance of human rights in South Africa. These efforts earned him the invitation of a British newspaper group to London . However, his trip was prevented in 1965 by the government under Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd . On August 21, the Ministry of the Interior withdrew the passports of Gandar and the journalist Benjamin Pogrund from the same newspaper office. Gandar commented on the indefinite term of his passport revocation, which he had been told by telephone, with the ironic words: “For a moment, it struck me that somebody here might have been reading my mail. But I dismissed so unworthy a thought. ”(German for example: For a moment it seemed to me that someone might have read my post . But I dismiss such an unworthy thought. ) At that time, phone tapping cases were increasing in South Africa , the infiltration of police spies in editorial offices as well as the arrests and detention of uncomfortable journalists .

The travel ban by the authorities was a three-part article in the Rand Daily Mail ahead, which the newspaper on June 30, July 1 and 2 1965 on the living conditions in the former South African detention centers based on the accounts of former prisoners and painter Harold Strachan reported . Furthermore, on July 25, the Sunday Times published information from whistleblower and chief prison guard Johannes Andries Theron from Cinderella Prison in Boksburg , according to which torture during interrogation was common. These press reports received a great deal of national and international attention and on July 2, 1965 triggered a police assault on the offices of the Rand Daily Mail . The published information forced the then Justice Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster to investigate the conditions in the prisons.

The judiciary used the press reports on the prison conditions as an opportunity to take action against the reporting by means of criminal prosecution. In 1967 he, the editor Pogrund and the owner of Rand Daily Mail , SA Associated Newspapers Ltd. , Court summons and were according to Section 44 (f) of the Prisons Act : (prison German law) charged . The judgment was given by the President of the Transvaal Court . Laurence Gandar and Benjamin Pogrund were convicted in 1969 after a long trial as guilty of disseminating inaccurate information. Gandar and the owner company received a fine and Pogrund received a three-month prison sentence . All judgments were additionally provided with a three-year probation period.

Nonetheless, the press saw this as a moral victory on their part, although from then on there were inhibitions among journalists to take up this topic any longer. After this prison trial , the government put further pressure on Gandar, so that he was fired by his employer in 1969. He justified his step by stating that “some of his texts were not in the national interest”. The successor in the office of editor-in-chief was Raymond Louw .

Work in London and South Africa

As a result of his dismissal, Gandar moved to London and became the first director of the Minority Rights Group . This task included the documentation of human rights violations against minorities around the world . After three years, disaffected, Gandar decided to return to South Africa and lived on the south coast of Natal . During this time he made a living doing stock market trades and playing golf .

Years of age

The death of his wife in 1989 after 45 years of marriage caused him a serious emotional crisis, from which he was able to distract himself by the birth of a grandchild and the global political developments at the time.

Laurence Gandar died in 1998 at the age of 82 from complications from Parkinson's disease .

Honors

• 1964 by Harold Wilson with the gold medal of the Institute of Journalists in recognition of his unusual journalism and the defense of the freedom of the press .
• Freedom Award for the Mail from the American Newspaper Publishers Association
• In the mid-1960s, he was discussed as editor-in-chief after a possible merger of the British newspaper Times and the Guardian , without being informed about it in a timely manner
• 2010 by the International Press Institute with the World Press Freedom Hero

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Benjamin Pogrund: Obituary: Laurence Gandar . Reported in The Independent on November 17, 1998. at www.independent.co.uk
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Laurence Gandar. Short biography from the International Press Institute . at www.freemedia.at ( Memento of the original dated February 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (with portrait of Laurence Gandar) 
3. ↑ Heribert Adam: South Africa. Sociology of a Racial Society . Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 91.
4. ^ ^{A b} Dennis Cruywagen: A Story of Courage in South African Journalism. Blacks accepted the white-owned Rand Daily Mail as their champion . on www.nieman.harvard.edu ( Memento from February 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ 60 Years of Optima. on www.angloamerican.com ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 565 kB) 
6. ^ Sam Davidson: The Role of the Jews in South Africa Since 1948 . In: The Occidental Quarterly Vol. 11 (2011), No. 2. on www.toqonline.com (PDF; 1.8 MB)
7. ^ South Africa: How to Lose Friends . Time Magazine coverage of September 3, 1965. on www.time.com
8. ↑ ^{a b} Song of Death . Reporting by Der Spiegel from August 11, 1965. on www.spiegel.de
9. ↑ SAIRR , Race Relations 1965 , Johannesburg 1966, pp. 78-79.
10. ↑ ^{a b} SAIRR: Race Relations 1969 , Johannesburg 1970, pp. 57-58.
11. ↑ The lengthy trial of gandar and Pogrund ends. on www.sahistory.org.za
12. ^ Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Chronology of some Pointers to the History of the Media in South Africa . May 1997. at www.nelsonmandela.org
13. ↑ SOMRAF. Our partners . on www.somraf.org ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ Donald G. McNeil Jr.: Laurence Gandar, Apartheid Critic, Dies at 82 . New York Times coverage of November 16, 1998. on www.nytimes.com
15. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1964 . Johannesburg 1965, p. 48