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Did you report from Parliament?

      Anton: No, I wasn’t a parliamentary correspondent. I was the political reporter, and in fact my main work was around extra-parliamentary politics.

      Ruda: Such as?

      Anton: Well, then it was the launch of the UDF [United Democratic Front] . . . and the rebellion that was growing in the early 1980s in the townships and around the tricameral parliament17 . . . so a lot of what I experienced at that time was a tug of war between the demands for coverage of white politics, because many of one’s readers were white, and the fact that politics was bursting out into the street in an extra-parliamentary way.

      Ruda: And that was a big change moment for South Africa, hmm?

      Anton: It was a huge moment. It was the beginning of the whole process. Well, I don’t know what the beginning is, but although we didn’t realise it so much at the time, the critical transition was starting.

      Ruda: And after working with the Rand Daily Mail, you put your own money into starting a new paper.

      Anton: Yes, mainly because we had no choice if we wanted to be journalists. The paper we worked for closed. We were unemployed. We were probably unemployable, so we had this crazy idea of taking the payouts we got when we were retrenched to put into a new publication. I think we had no idea that it would still exist thirty years later and would grow to what it has become . . . When I look back at the proposals we wrote at the time, they were quite modest and not so ambitious.

      Ruda: But that was a huge step. It meant starting a business and launching a new journalistic enterprise. How does one build that bridge? I always think of Indiana Jones stepping into the void . . . (gestures, leaning forward) It’s only when you shift your weight that the bridge appears.

      Anton: That’s right.

      Ruda: What are the mechanics of doing that?

      Anton: Well, the first requirement of doing something as foolish as trying to start a newspaper is not knowing what you’re doing. Because if you knew what you were doing, you would never do it. I remember, in fact, that we met with Dennis Becket, who had started a magazine, and he said, “Look, the only good advice I can give you is you’re crazy. Don’t do it.” And we laughed him off, but he was right. We were crazy, because we knew nothing about distribution or printing or running a business.

      Ruda: (Nods) The business side . . .

      Anton: The publishing side. We knew a little bit of journalism. (He shrugs self-deprecatingly.) We were very young. But we knew nothing about that side. And we had to learn it very, very quickly. And we had to teach ourselves very, very quickly.

      Ruda: What were the biggest hurdles that you fell over?

      Anton: Sjoe. We fell over many, because politics at the time meant that we couldn’t find a printer. People were not eager to print . . .

      Ruda: . . . what was seen as subversive?

      Anton: Yes. What was seen as alternative at best, and subversive at worst. And the Rand Daily Mail had just closed. We were looking at a small publication, and small printers were nervous and scared. But in fact I went back to my alma mater, where I had started – the Springs Advertiser. They became our printers, and for many early years until we grew too big they were stalwarts in that they stood by us and withstood the pressure and printed our paper through the difficult years.

      Ruda: Tell us something about that feeling of . . . not a band of brothers, but a band of brothers and sisters at the Weekly Mail.

      Anton: The camaraderie was extraordinary, because we were under pressure. We sometimes had no money, but nobody ever hesitated to come to work because their pay was late or didn’t come. We had to do everything. We had to fill the newspaper as journalists, we had to produce the news­paper. We then would go and get a few hours’ sleep, come back and wrap it for subscriptions, and then get a few more hours’ sleep and then go out on deliveries. So we worked seven days a week, twenty hours a day, and that binds you into a very tight-knit group of people who can and have to depend on each other.

      Ruda: What did you learn in the process, apart from the practical stuff?

      Anton: I obviously learned an enormous amount of publishing very quickly. Looking back on it, it was very difficult at the time. But it was a fantastic time, because we were our own owners and editors. Editors are always fighting with their owners – with their shareholders. The greatest luxury is to be an owner-editor. Nobody could tell us what to do. If we decided to take crazy risks, we could do it. And because we didn’t have lots of money and resources and investment, we could take risks. And so there was that thrill of being able to push the boundaries and do things that others wouldn’t do.

      Ruda: And what was the purpose, the driving, unifying ideal?

      Anton: The driving ideal was that we were passionate about our journalism, we were passionate about a particular kind of journalism. It was an activist journalism.

      Ruda: What do you mean?

      Anton: Well, we had strong points of view. We certainly weren’t neutral. We nailed our flag to particular masts, saying this is what we believe, this is what we will say as best we can under the legal restrictions at the time. We were committed journalists. So we were very proud of our independence, but we had no trouble saying we believe and stand for certain things and we want to see the downfall of apartheid. And we developed a journalism that tried to deal with those contradictions.

      Ruda: You started training young journalists at that time. Why did you feel the need? Weren’t there enough people coming through? Or were they not what you wanted?

      Anton: At the time we felt that many of those coming from the university really were not what we wanted. The university was a very academic institution and we found that people who came from it could give us a very good critique of the media, but couldn’t write an intro. And we had no time for that, because we were under-resourced and had too few people and you had to get down and produce. But it was a couple of things. The one was that we were a bunch of white lefties and we were conscious that if this publication was to have a life and grow, it couldn’t remain a white voice. So there was a long-term view that we were to be more diverse. But also, frankly, it was a way of getting support for the newspaper. There were many funders who said: “We would like to support your newspaper, but we can’t give money to a commercial venture. And so we will give you money for training.” That served our purposes and we could go out and recruit young black reporters, train them and get paid to do that.

      Ruda: Bliss.

      Anton: Yes.

      Ruda: What is the one thing that a young journalist needs to learn? Maybe two or three things?

      Anton: Sjoe.

      Ruda: (Smiles) I’ll give you a little bit more leeway . . .

      Anton: Look, you have to start with the fundamentals of learning to construct a story and to verify a story. You have to start with that. But a lot of what we had to develop and learn were ways of finding and telling stories that people didn’t want to tell, and that the [state of] emergency restrictions were there to stop us from telling. So it was always about how can we tell the story, knowing it was in the grey areas of the law and it was risky, and you had to constantly find ways to disguise the story and get people to read between the lines, and to use the language in a way that people would know what’s going on, but often you couldn’t be explicit because of the censorship of the time.

      Ruda: That’s a different skill from what is needed in more ordinary times, right?

      Anton: Completely different, which is why when that period ended and everything fell away overnight – all the restrictions fell away overnight in 1990 – we were caught like deer in the headlights. We said, “Oh my gosh, now we have to relearn our journalism.” That transition from being activist journalists to being journalists in a democracy was maybe the most difficult time, because we had to relearn everything we did, and of course it was a time of enormous financial difficulty and pressure as well.

      Ruda: When you say “relearn”

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