S. Africa Moving Toward Limits on Press Coverage

Angered by South Africa’s image as a riot-torn country on the brink of revolution, the government of President Pieter W. Botha is trying to curb domestic and foreign press coverage with measures that stop just short of formal censorship.

Blaming “hostile-minded media people, especially foreign correspondents,” not only for South Africa’s poor image abroad but also for much of the continuing unrest here, senior government and police officials have told the newspaper Rapport that “strong action will be taken against these people within the next few weeks.”

In the view of these officials, the media have become the main barrier to ending civil strife because the attention focused on anti-government riots and on the broader struggle against apartheid has encouraged the present rebellion.

Rapport, an influential Afrikaans-language paper, did not provide details of the government and police plans. But well-informed sources in the ruling National Party said Monday that they would, in the words of one source, “sharply reduce the scope and volume of unrest coverage” and “make journalists fully responsible under the law in ways they are not at present for their stories, their pictures and their films and the consequences of them.”

Editors of South African newspapers have, meanwhile, been recently reminded by the government that under the three-month state of emergency, the police have the power to impose press censorship--and will do so unless news reports and editorials on the unrest and police handling of it are “scaled down substantially.”

Newsmen, even blacks who live there, were prohibited last weekend by police under their emergency powers from entering Soweto, Johannesburg’s black satellite city. But Brig. Jan Coetzee, the Soweto police commissioner, said on Monday that he will allow journalists to enter the area to cover routine stories if they first seek his permission.

The ban prompted Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican prelate of Johannesburg and the 1984 Nobel Peace laureate, to comment in New York: “Things are going to be quite horrendous now. You should assume that it’s going to be very bad. If it can be so bad when the press is around, how much more will it be when the press is not there?

“Members of the press have a tremendous role to play, and we in South Africa know very well at the present time just how important a role you have been playing in making the world know what is happening,” Tutu added.

Tight state control of South African television, on which 71% of whites depend for their news, according to a recent survey, means that most of the country’s roughly 5 million whites have been largely unaware of the extent and character of the violence here over the last year. So strict is the South African Broadcasting Corp.’s controls that even the police reports on unrest are censored.

An informal alliance has emerged between the often frustrated local reporters and photographers and the now numerous representatives, many of them South Africans themselves, of foreign news media. They help and protect each other on the streets and exchange information and ideas, and this has made it difficult for the authorities to stem the flow of news over the last year.

But journalists are increasingly being ordered by the police to leave the scenes of violence--and threatened with arrest and even 14 days in solitary confinement if they do not. A reporter for the Cape Times was detained Sunday, but released after five hours and charged with violating police orders under the state of emergency.

Thirteen journalists are now facing trial in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth area courts on various charges. They are accused of interfering with the police, of “participating in illegal gatherings” they were covering, of publishing incorrect information that “defamed” the police, of working without government permits, of violating emergency regulations and possibly of violating the country’s security laws.

More than 20 others during the last week have been arrested in those areas and in Johannesburg, questioned and then released without being charged.

Journalists Become Targets

In recent police clashes with black and Colored (mixed-race) youths, newsmen have also become the targets for police whips, tear-gas grenades, rubber bullets and shotguns. The comment by police headquarters in Pretoria has become, “They should not have been there.”

Two journalists, a British correspondent and a noted black free-lance photographer, have been peppered with birdshot. More than a dozen others have needed medical treatment for welts left by police whips, for head wounds caused by police truncheons, for burns from tear-gas grenades and for a broken finger snapped by a policeman trying to seize a television camera.

In a Cape Town incident last week, whip-wielding policemen chased a local photographer more than three blocks to his office, up the stairs and into the newsroom, where others persuaded them not to beat the man further.

Journalists have also come under attack recently from black and mixed-race youths, particularly in Cape Town, in contrast to the tolerance they had met for most of the past year. Newsmen covering the unrest in Cape Town’s mixed-race suburbs have been repeatedly stoned, and one photographer was hit with a firebomb that failed to ignite.

Reporters from the Citizen, a right-wing newspaper begun by the government, and from the state-run South African Broadcasting Corp. became such frequent targets for black anger that they stopped covering most incidents of civil strife.

Police officers now regularly seize photographers’ film, television crews’ videotapes and even reporters’ notes, sometimes for use as evidence against rioters, though generally with the explanation that news coverage of the unrest has been forbidden. Some reporters have also been subpoenaed to testify in political trials.

The government’s new Information Department, established six weeks ago under former Deputy Foreign Minister Louis Nel, is said to be planning new accreditation procedures for South African and foreign journalists and permitting only those accredited by the authorities to work in this country. Those whose reports are regarded as unfavorable might be denied renewal of their accreditation. The move would also prevent many free-lance journalists, most of them South Africans, from working for foreign news media.

Permits in Limbo

In anticipation of the new accreditation system, the work permits and visas of most foreign correspondents have not been renewed in recent months, as had been routine when they expired. Nel told a group of visiting American editors this month that all accreditation will be on a case-by-case basis and that dossiers are being compiled to assist these judgments.

Senior government officials, including Nel and Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange, have accused the foreign press several times of serious misconduct, including making payments to black rioters and helping to organize anti-government protests. The press also has been accused of having had advance knowledge of planned violence that the police, had they been informed, might have prevented, averting loss of life, injury and destruction of property.

“I don’t want to be unfair--all the reporting is not unreasonable--but there are people in South Africa who . . . often send out untruths, half-truths and selective reports, and create a false and twisted image of South Africa,” Nel told a National Party meeting recently.

“This government places a high premium on press freedom, but it also places a high premium on journalistic integrity. It is time that the government reconsiders whether its hospitality should still be extended to people who share in organized lying.”

Two foreign journalists have been expelled in the last six weeks--Raymond Wilkinson of Newsweek magazine and Bernard Bisson, a French free-lance photographer. Others, notably Alan Cowell of the New York Times, have been publicly assailed here for their reports.

The government has made no secret of its desire to reduce the number of foreign correspondents working here. It believes that the sheer volume of their reports on the civil strife, as well as the often dramatic and emotional impact of the harsh actions taken by police to quell the strife, has contributed to the international campaign for economic sanctions against South Africa.

Over the last year, the number of accredited foreign journalists has risen from 78 to 172, and two to three times that number are believed to be working without accreditation.

But David Allen, president of the South African Society of Journalists, argued that tough action against the press will not solve the nation’s problems nor end the unrest.

“If South Africa’s image overseas is being damaged,” Allen said, “it is because of the upheaval in the (black and Colored) townships and not because the press is reporting it. To improve the image, eliminate the unrest, don’t control the newsmen.”