The ANC’s Jackson Mthembu sounds more like a National Party official than someone who would like us to associate him with the "struggle". The media were responsible for exposing Sharpeville to the world in 1960, leading to the first arms embargo against the apartheid regime. Similarly, it exposed the Rivonia Trial in the mid-1960s. Yes, it was antagonistic to the rise of Black Consciousness in the late 1960s, portraying it as reverse apartheid, but soon got in line following Onkgopotse Tiro’s explosive speech in 1972. Black journalism came of age in 1976 as the only source of the story of the Soweto riots as no one could enter the township except Africans. The World and Weekend World were at the forefront during the riots and demanding answers about the circumstances of Steve Biko’s death. For this, they earned a shutdown with their editors detained. The East London publication Daily Dispatch was similarly at the throat of the regime; fortunately, being a "white" paper the wrath of ...
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