By Riaan de Villiers
As a former (but now partly resurrected) old-school journo, I have a soft spot for ultra-compressed, Reuters-style reporting. It must be really good, otherwise it can tip over into ridiculous oversimplification. A few years ago – at the time of COVID — I cited the following example on Facebook:
‘Wanna know what’s up with COVID? You could spend a few hours on the internet trudging through a new hundred thousand words. Or you could glom this 25-word thumbnail in a Bloomberg report (on Toyota suspending production at all its Japanese plants due to the global COVID-induced shortage of computer chips):
‘COVID, it casually tells us, is a “… pandemic that’s confounding scientists, governments and public-health officials, sparking fresh lockdowns around the world, and wreaking havoc on a vast array of industries’”. Bloody marvellous.’
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Now, another notable example has swum up in the course of a BBC report on the infamous ‘Oval Office ambush’ by the BBC World Service reporter Nick Ericsson.
Ramaphosa and his delegation, Ericsson writes, went to Washington hoping for a ‘boost and a reset’ after months of acrimony with the Trump administration. Instead, they got ‘brutal, high-stakes diplomacy, peppered with insults’, played out to millions across the world. Turning to the pressures and realities awaiting Ramaphosa back home, Ericsson continues:
‘The ANC has been in an uneasy coalition – or government of national unity (GNU) – with 10 other parties for almost a year, forced into sharing power after dismal results in national elections.
‘There have been public fights between parties inside and outside the coalition over controversial land and health care legislation and attempts to push a budget through parliament which would hike taxes for the most vulnerable. This almost saw the end of the coalition earlier this year.
The economy is stagnating, crime rates are sky-high as is corruption and unemployment, public services are largely dysfunctional, and infrastructure is crumbling. There also seems to be very little accountability for those who break the law.
This has meant uncomfortable and intense questions about Ramaphosa’s policies by various political parties, as well as civil society. Meanwhile, the ANC itself is unstable, as opposing factions begin jockeying for position ahead of a crucial elective conference in 2027 which is likely to see a new party leader emerge. … ‘
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If you were confused about where we’re at, there you are, done and dusted in three short paragraphs. Contrast this with the following cheerful but profoundly confused item on the CapeTownEtc website last week about stoppages on the N2:
n2 closed in cape town due to ongoing protest action
‘Traffic congestion in Cape Town has intensified following ongoing protest actions that have led to significant disruptions on the N2 highway. Authorities have confirmed that the N2 outbound is currently closed at Mew Way, while the inbound route is equally affected and closed at Spine Road.
‘This situation has left many motorists in a bind, making it essential to find alternative routes amid rising frustrations on the road. Motorists caught in the disruptions are advised to steer clear of the N2 at both closure points.’
Seriously? The N2 closed in Cape Town? And if you’re ‘caught in the disruptions’, and therefore ineluctably on the N2, how are you meant to ‘steer clear of the N2 at both closure points’ at the same time? It’s a mystery …
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All of this has brought back memories of a special friend, the late Patrick Laurence, whom I came to know during an eventful stint at the now defunct Rand Daily Mail in the late seventies and early eighties. Patrick was a political reporter on the RDM, but also a long-standing stringer for the liberal British newspaper The Guardian, among others.
Like almost everybody else at the RDM, Patrick was an unusual person. A Natalian, he held a master’s degree in history, and had started out as a history teacher before transiting to journalism, first for The Star before joining the RDM.
A lanky, patrician figure, largely bald, with round spectacles and a scraggly bread, he was courteous and soft-spoken, but had an iron commitment to liberal values as well as the old-style rules of journalism. (This had brought him into conflict several times with the apartheid state, narrowly escaping imprisonment for refusing to name sources, etc.) Years in the hustings had given him a sceptical, sardonic mindset, which stood him in good stead when dealing with politicians of all persuasions.
I liked him immensely, and we became friends. On Fridays, we would have lunch at one of the wonderful Portuguese restaurants in downtown Johannesburg – usually bacalhau gomes de sa, together with a crisp vinho verde.
While he did not trumpet this, Patrick was also a sub-four-minute Springbok miler. In the early eighties, he decided to run the Comrades, and asked me to second him on my motorbike (then a Honda 400c), which I duly did. He finished in a good time, and ran several more Comrades thereafter. (The practice of seconding runners with motorbikes – handing them water bottles at various points, etc – was ended a few years later.)
More to our point, Patrick was also a master craftsman. Writing for The Guardian on a rickety typewriter in his distinctive hunt-and-peck style, and then phoning the copy through to London, I used to marvel at his ability to summarise complicated political issues in a few crystal-clear sentences.
Following the RDM’s closure in 1985, Patrick returned to The Star, and later worked for the Helen Suzman Foundation. At some point, he thought about emigrating to New Zealand, but while he was there he famously got earache, which soured his mood, and he decided to stay put in SA. He married a very nice person called Sandy, and they had two daughters. They will be grown up by now.
In the meantime, I had moved to Cape Town for some time, moved to contract publishing, and lost contact with most of my former colleagues in journalism. But in the early noughties, Patrick and I reconnected, and among others had lunch in Rosebank where we reminisced about the old days.
In 2011, Patrick fell ill and passed away within months. Richard Steyn wrote an informative and moving tribute, published by the Helen Suzman Foundation, noting that, while a commited liberal, Patrick was a ‘rarity among journalists – a reporter and commentator who valued factual accuracy and balance above all else’.
He also recounted that, at Mandela’s first media conference after his release from prison, he ‘singled out Laurence as a political writer whom he had read with appreciation for many years’.
There were other wonderful writers at the RDM – some of them old-style Fleet Street people. At ten in the mornings, they would politely absent themselves from their offices and the newsroom and line up, with great dignity, outside The Fed (the Federal Hotel) two blocks away, waiting for the pub to open. But by god, could they write.
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The world has changed almost unrecognisably, and journalism with it. Even in our time at the RDM, the traditional notion of ‘balanced’ or ‘dispassionate’ reportage was challenged by a younger generation of reporters, some of whom had studied at Rhodes, bringing with them a notion of ‘committed journalism’, to the unease of some old-timers. Some of them went on to great things, among others the founding of the Weekly Mail.
All the same … faced with the avalanche of real and fake news flooding our electronic devices (and colonising our minds) every day, I can’t help but feel that we could do with a bit of the old discipline drilled into journos of my generation – report, first, analyse second, comment third. And never the thrain shall meet.
And sheesh, CapeTownEtc dude, thanks for the heads-up, but kindly look at a bloody map before you write about the N2.
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FEATURED IMAGE: The old SAAN Building in Main Street, Johannesburg — the notoriously shabby home of the Rand Daily Mail and other SAAN publications in my time – has been refurbished and converted into a swish apartment block, featuring permanent exhibitions about its history. Image: Mail & Guardian.
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Patrick was one of my neighbours in Parktown West. I remember him well and, just as you describe him, he jogged the roads around his home in Escombe Avenue with small dumbells in his hands. He was a serious person and his writing was equally serious; to be taken seriously. I was very sorry to read of his death some years after I moved from Parktown.
Who what where when why how.
Great overdue article riaan; there’s dang few of us left these days. We are like those polish officers caught between the Russians and Germans in Warsaw. Destined for oblivion in a forest somewhere. I remember Patrick well. One of the good guys.