PAPER
TIGER
Iqbal Survé and the downfall of
Independent Newspapers
Alide Dasnois
Chris Whitfield
Tafelberg
To our patient and wise families and friends, and to all the journalists who tried or are still trying to do a good job in very difficult conditions.
Authors’ note
In this book we have tried to tell the story of how an important newspaper group was undermined by its owners and stripped of its role in South Africa’s evolving democracy.
We’ve turned to the unusual device of talking about ourselves in the third person because there were two authors and we felt that the alternative – indicating where each of our voices began and ended – would have been confusing and irritating for readers. Another factor was that the book evolved as we went along, from two people’s accounts to the stories of many journalists who once worked at Independent Newspapers.
The reader will notice that the voices of several people are missing: that is because they did not respond to requests for interviews.
1
The night Nelson Mandela died
At about 11.45 on the night of 5 December 2013, President Jacob Zuma addressed the nation on television. The staff in the Cape Times newsroom stood in silence as he announced the news the whole country had been dreading: Nelson Mandela is dead. Then everyone leapt to work.
Both the Cape Times and the Cape Argus newsrooms, on the fourth floor of Newspaper House in central Cape Town, were already buzzing. Senior staffers on both newspapers had heard rumours of Mandela’s death during a dinner at the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands with the new owner of Independent Newspapers, Iqbal Survé, and had immediately left to rush to their newsrooms. The regular night shift had been joined by other staffers from the day shifts who had returned to work, knowing they would be needed and anxious to be part of a historic edition of their papers.
Staff on both papers had prepared carefully for this day. Special front pages had been designed; significant photographs had been selected; graphics had been prepared; tributes had been written and edited. But there was still the news of the death to process, reaction to collect, photographs to find, and decisions to be taken about how best to cover an event which would make headlines all over the world.
In planning meetings held as the former President’s health deteriorated, the Cape Times team had agreed that if Mandela died during the day, the whole of the next day’s paper – or most of it – would be devoted to him. But if he died at night, close to the newspaper’s deadline, and there was no time to remake the newspaper, the time-honoured solution of the four-page ‘wrap-around’ would be used. The team would create a new edition, with a front page, a back page and two inside pages, into which the old edition would be folded.
On the night of 5 December editor Alide Dasnois phoned the printers in Epping to warn them four new pages were coming. ‘Get them to us by 1a.m. at the latest,’ the print chief told her.
There was a brief panic when the production team could not find the special front page which had been designed by sub-editor Lance Cherry, with a full-page black-and-white picture of Mandela. Someone telephoned Independent Newspapers’ production editor Dave Chambers, who found it hidden in a corner of the virtual system. So far so good. Veteran sub-editor Mike Stent got going with page four – the back page – which contained tributes from former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and FW de Klerk. Graphic artist Boetie Jacobs put the finishing touches to a timeline he’d designed to run across the bottom of the two inside pages. Head of news Janet Heard and news editor A’Eysha Kassiem, who had rushed back from the Vineyard Hotel dinner, collected copy and photographs for the two news pages, together with assistant editor Tony Weaver. Glenn Bownes, the chief sub-editor, was scouring the news agency wires. ‘We had been on Mandela alert for some months, with it becoming increasingly clear that the great man was nearing the end of his life,’ says Bownes. ‘Obits had been written, various pieces and pictures saved, and we had prepped a front page for when the sad, but inevitable, day arrived.’
In her office, Dasnois made a few last-minute changes to the page-three editorial she’d prepared and then crossed the newsroom to help the production team, proofreading pages, changing headlines, reading wires and discussing developments with the news staff, including night news editor Aneez Salie. There were posters to write and captions to check before the pages could be sent off, one by one, to the printers.
Chris Whitfield, editor-in-chief of Independent Newspapers Cape, was in his office between the two newsrooms after heading back from the dinner at the Vineyard. Also there was Karima Brown, who only days previously had been announced as the new group executive editor. Whitfield was uncertain what impact this appointment would have on his status – until then he had been the most senior editor in the company and responsible for co-ordinating group projects – but he put that concern aside as the news teams knuckled down to producing a newspaper to mark the momentous occasion.
Brown joined the Cape Argus planning conference and sketched her idea for the front page, a picture of Mandela with the words Hamba Kahle (Go well) above it. Whitfield was dismayed. The phrase had been used so many times in headlines by then – it was dusted off every time some dignitary died. Surely the paper could do better? He went to Cape Argus editor Jermaine Craig afterwards and suggested his team look for a more creative solution.
Then Brown sat down at the telephone on the Cape Times newsdesk – in the heart of the Cape Times production team – where, Janet Heard remembers, the Johannesburg-based executive spent much of her time changing her air tickets for the next day.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the Cape Times newsroom was ‘crazy’, says Heard. ‘At some stage, Alide called us around and said we would keep the main paper as is, due to deadline pressures, but we would do a special wraparound tribute containing the planned tribute cover, Mbeki’s tribute back page, a timeline by Boetie, and all the hard news of the drama and tributes on pages two and three. I remember thinking we should change the front page, but there was no dissent, no discussion, time was not on our side, we had to act quickly. The final page deadline was set. We had no time to debate or argue.’
Glenn Bownes, concerned that there was no time to remake the paper completely, agreed with Dasnois that a special wraparound four-page edition would be the best bet. ‘As we started putting together pages, it became clear that stripping the front page (and at least four other pages inside), and the knock-on effect of that, would make us very late for the presses and the trucks that needed to deliver the paper. As chief-sub, I felt strongly that a wraparound would be the best approach – both from a deadline perspective and because it would make for a more powerful tribute edition.’
Heard cobbled together a lead story for page two, adding in Zuma’s comments, copy from sister newspaper The Star, copy from the wires, the announcement that the national flag would fly at half mast, and accounts of scenes outside Mandela’s Johannesburg house. Night reporter Xolani Koyana called around for tributes. They poured in by email. News editor Kassiem got African National Congress comment while Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, Western Cape premier Helen Zille, struggle veteran Ahmed Kathrada, the National Union of Mineworkers, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu all made statements.
‘It rolled in. We were running out of time. We took the De Klerk tribute off the story to run separately
