Vrye Weekblad

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The Vrye Weekblad (roughly: "Free Weekly") was a South African national weekly newspaper. It appeared mainly in Afrikaans and - unlike the other newspapers in this language - was opposed to apartheid . She succeeded with investigative journalism revealing several secret security services of the apartheid regime. The Vrye Weekblad was published from November 1988 to February 1994. The abolition of apartheid in South Africa also fell during this period. An online edition has been published under the same name every week since April 2019.

history

The Vrye Weekblad was founded by Boer journalists out of dissatisfaction that the leading Afrikaans-speaking media represented only the conservative side of the Boers. Instead, the Vrye Weekblad should advocate a “non-racial, democratic, united South Africa”. The newspaper was owned by its founders, including editor Max du Preez and deputy editor Jacques Pauw . Alongside du Preez and Pauw, Karien Norval, Elsabe Wessels, Chris du Plessis, Victor Munnik and Koos Coetzee were among the first journalists for the paper. The sheet appeared in the specially founded trading company Wending Publicasies (German about: "Wendepublikationen"). Its board of directors included the politician Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Sampie Terblanche, professor of economics at the University of Stellenbosch . The place of publication was Johannesburg , the newspaper appeared on Fridays. In 1990 the newspaper had around 15,000 subscribers. In 1991 the newspaper was retailed for R.2.20. At that time it had about 30 to 40 pages in portrait format; some pages were printed in color. Around a quarter of the newspaper in 1991 consisted of English texts.

Exposures and repression

The government saw the newspaper as a threat when it was founded. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee increased the cost of registering the newspaper from Rand 10 to 40,000 . Since the owners could not raise this amount, the first issues were sold illegally, so that the owners had to answer for the first time in court. From a spell , the government refrained from because they feared bad publicity. Instead, the government pursued a strategy of forcing the financially weak newspaper to close by imposing heavy fines.

In November 1988 the Vrye Weekblad reported for the first time on the secret police unit Vlakplaas and its new commander Eugene de Kock . In December 1988, then-President Pieter Willem Botha demanded 200,000 rand after the paper exposed his ties to a mafioso . The lawsuit closed in 1989 after Botha suffered a stroke . In the same year, seven proceedings were initiated because, despite the current state of emergency , the Vrye Weekblad had repeatedly printed advertisements for meetings of the Mandela Reception Committee, a banned organization.

On November 17, 1989, the newspaper published the detailed confession of the South African Police officer , Dirk Coetzee , who had headed the Vlakplaas secret unit until 1981 and was responsible for numerous targeted killings . While media reported on it around the world, most South African newspapers - except for the Weekly Mail and the New Nation - did not take up the case. Instead, the press, led by Craig Kotze, an agent disguised as the star's journalist, tried to portray Coetzee as an unbelievable psychopath . The newspaper owners ensured that Coetzee was granted asylum abroad after his revelations. As a result, the government established the Harms Commission , which was supposed to investigate the allegations, but was soon replaced by the Goldstone Commission .

As a result, further practices of the secret police and army units became public. In December 1989, the newspaper revealed that opposition activist Siphiwe Mthimkulu was tortured and poisoned by the Eastern Cape Security Police in 1982 . In January 1990 the newspaper reported that the police tortured prisoners and supported Inkatha fighters - the "Third Force" - in attacks against supporters of the opposition United Democratic Front . She also reported on the police murder of activist David Mazwai. In February 1990, a named professor was exposed as an agent for the National Intelligence Service . The paper had to pay a fine of 7,000 rand for violating the Protection of Information Act ( Act No. 84/1982 ).

In May 1990 the Vrye Weekblad reported on the structure of the also secret military unit Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) and the efforts of the CCB commander Pieter Botes to kill the opposition Albie Sachs in Maputo in Mozambique in 1988 , and the following year the Namibian independence movement SWAPO before the elections to discredit and - this plan was successful - to kill its high-ranking member Anton Lubowski . In June 1990, the paper revealed plans to attack President Frederik Willem de Klerk and ANC President Nelson Mandela . In August 1991, the newspaper published a report about a police agent who turned large amounts of money over to violent Inkatha members and equipped them with weapons.

In 1991 the headquarters of the Vrye Weekblad was damaged in a bomb attack. CCB member Leonard Veenendal later admitted to having planted the bomb. Du Preez received multiple death threats. That same year, the newspaper was charged with alleged defamation in another lawsuit . On the basis of several affidavits by Vlakplaas police officers, she alleged that Police General Lothar Neethling tested poison and distributed it to subordinates in order to have anti-apartheid activists killed. Neethling asked for a million rand for defamation. First judge Johann Kriegler in the Rand Supreme Court ruled in favor of the paper. However, the appeals court overturned the decision and ordered the newspaper to pay R90,000. The dragging legal battle drove the Vrye Weekblad into bankruptcy .

The then-opposition movement, the African National Congress (ANC), criticized Jacques Pauw's report in the February 17, 1992 issue, in which he accused senior ANC politician Mosiuoa Lekota of handing a member of the right-wing African resistance movement 50,000 rand to Glory "September “To have Sidebe murdered, a former member of the Vlakplaas death squad . In June 1992, the Vrye Weekblad published details of secret actions by the State Security Council .

The paper was most recently produced in an old bank building in Newtown, Johannesburg.

After the closure

After the newspaper closed, Max du Preez worked for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and wrote books. In 1997, Max du Preez explained to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) the work and impact of the Vrye Weekblad and the attitude of the leading media to the revelations of his newspaper. Du Preez accused Lothar Neethling of, among other things, multiple murders. Pauw had the book In the Heart of the Whore back in 1991 . The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads is published, a book about the death squads during the apartheid era. He has also been with SABC since 1994 and has been recognized for his publications on conflicts in Africa such as the Rwanda genocide and the Darfur conflict .

New publication as an online newspaper

In February 2019, the release of the Vrye Weekblad was announced from April. The company is financed by the Tiso Blackstar Group , which publishes other publications such as The Sowetan and Business Day . The weekly online newspaper is again headed by Max du Preez ; Jacques Pauw is part of the editorial team. The first issue was published on April 5, 2019.

Honors

  • 1991: Louis M. Lyons Award from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University , USA, for Max du Preez, "for conscience and integrity in journalism"

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b In an ersatz-Gothic lair, four rebelle with a cause. In: Weekly Mail of October 14, 1988
  2. ↑ a b c Johannesburg journal for an Afrikaner weekly: Success brings bombs. In: New York Times, July 26, 1990, accessed November 28, 2013
  3. ↑ Individual issues as digitized digital.lib.sun.ac.za, accessed on December 5, 2018
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Max du Preez 'statements at the TRC (English), accessed on November 28, 2013
  5. ↑ Police General should be charged with murder, says Max du Preez. South African Press Association (summary of du Preez's statement )
  6. ↑ ANC displeased over Lekota revelation ( Memento of December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  7. ↑ Jessica Levitt: Vrye Weekblad is back and armed with a powerful crew. timeslive.co.za, February 19, 2019, accessed March 8, 2019
  8. ↑ Nieman Foundation Awards ( Memento of January 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English), accessed on November 29, 2013