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| Henry Nxumalo in 1953. (Jurgen Schadeberg) |
Just over 55 years ago, on New
Year's Eve 1957, trailblazing South African journalist Henry Nxumalo was
murdered while investigating suspicious deaths at an abortion clinic in
Sophiatown, a suburb west of Johannesburg.
A local journalist assassinated
while covering a local story, Nxumalo could be just one among the 631
journalists silenced by murder since CPJ began systematically documenting
media fatalities in 1992. However, Nxumalo's short-lived journalism career was
remarkable -- he operated as one of the first black journalists under apartheid
and pioneered undercover investigative journalism in South Africa.
Dubbed "Mr.
Drum" after the title of his publication, Drum magazine
-- which just marked its 60th anniversary as the premier publication
targeting urban black readers -- Nxumalo was the magazine's first black writer,
according to journalist Sylvester Stein, author of the biography "Who Killed Mr. Drum?" Stein edited the
magazine from 1955 to 1958, hiring, among others, Nxumalo and German photographer
Jurgen
Schadeberg.
"When I arrived in South
Africa I tried to freelance, but it was very difficult because there was no
history of documentary photojournalism. There was no real photo magazine,"
Schadeberg said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Berlin.
"We had Life in America, Look magazine in England, Pixar
Post in France, but nothing like that in South Africa," he said.
"I went to Drum. There were four people," including Nxumalo, whom
Schadeberg described as a "very good journalist, very courageous." A
World War II veteran, Nxumalo also wrote a regular column for the Pittsburgh Courier, Schadeberg said.
"We were doing
investigations about [working] conditions in the district where there were
potato farmers. Farmers had the reputation of terrorizing workers, using
children as slave laborers, killing people and exploiting them. I went with him
in the area. He signed up as labor in order to do the story, which is pretty
tough." Schadeberg recalled another investigation by Nxumalo on detention
conditions at Johannesburg's central prison, known as "The Fort,"
which was notorious for torturing prisoners. "[Henry] found a way to get
into prison -- he tried for two weeks. He tried to get very drunk and walked up
and down a police station singing. Police wouldn't lock him up."
Eventually, Nxumalo managed to get arrested and spent five days in the prison.
His exposé caused uproar and the government, keen to
suppress similar stories, eventually passed a law restricting reporting on conditions
in South African prisons. "We did a lot of stories together. With all the
horrors, we had a lot of laughs," Schadeberg said.
 |
|
Jurgen
Schadeberg is arrested at the treason
trial
of anti-apartheid activists in 1958.
(Jurgen
Schadeberg)
|
Those horrors stemmed from the
racist policies of apartheid. Drum operated in a small office in Sophiatown, from which the apartheid regime
forcibly evicted a diverse mix of blacks, "coloreds," Indians and
Chinese between 1955 and 1960, relocating them to townships outside
Johannesburg. The town was subsequently bulldozed, repopulated with whites, and
renamed Triomf (Afrikaans for
"Triumph"). "Those days, black people's education was suppressed
deliberately by the [ruling National Party] government. There were some papers
for the black population, but they were paternalistic and ran by whites. There
was no news about their events, their points of view," Schadeberg said.
White Afrikaners were
consistently uneasy when Nxumalo introduced himself as a journalist, Schadeberg
said. "They couldn't handle it. We interviewed a white official. Henry was
asking a question. When he talked to Henry, he used a voice with authority and
superiority. If [the official] talks to me, he has a specific type of voice
because I'm white. He had to change his voice all the time. He started
stuttering!" Schadeberg recalled another occasion, when a policeman he
described as a "very young, tough Afrikaner" put a pistol to
Schadeberg's head as he was the first reporter on the scene of a bombing of
government buildings by fighters of the African National Congress.
Drum also covered the 1956
high-profile treason trial of 156 anti-apartheid activists
including Nelson Mandela. "I photographed Mandela first in 1951, then
again in 1952. We used to meet at a printing shop, we had brandy,"
Schadeberg said. "Walking into Drum was like leaving South Africa,
and coming into a different world," Schadeberg said of the magazine,
adding that its writers came from missionary schools which were mixed and had
better education than the segregated schools.
The apartheid government had Drum
in its sights. "The Special Branch tried to blackmail some of our people
when they went for [their] passport, or permit - they tried to infiltrate the Drum
office." Eventually, Drum went bankrupt in the late 70s-early 80s,
and was acquired by the then-pro-National Party newspaper group Naspers,
according to Schadeberg.
Nxumalo was only in his mid-30s
at the time of his murder, Schadeberg said. "There was a doctor who was
attached to a police station in the area, and it was known that there had been
some botched abortions, some of the patients died. [Henry] tried to investigate
it. He went to talk to nurses." Nxumalo was stabbed while walking home
after meeting a colleague for drinks. "We tried to investigate, but police
were sloppy about it. They weren't interested." (Unfortunately, this is an
all too familiar pattern in anti-press violence, where murder represents the
ultimate tool of censorship and where authorities lack political will to deliver justice. The
killers of journalists escape justice in 9 out of 10 cases, CPJ research shows.
CPJ is waging a global campaign to combat this culture of impunity,
which breeds a lasting culture of self-censorship for colleagues of the
murdered journalist.) In fact, while Nxumalo was survived by a wife and three
children, the hard-hitting investigative journalism he pioneered at Drum
did not endure, as the magazine gradually did fewer and fewer such stories.
While no one was ever arrested or
convicted for Nxumalo's murder, his colleagues were able to shed some light on
the circumstances of his murder. Schadeberg said they were able to track down
two criminals whom they believed were hired to carry out the killing. "One
of them ended up in prison and he told his story to another prisoner. He said
he got 200 pounds [sterling] for it."
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Mohamed Keita is advocacy coordinator for CPJ's Africa Program.
He regularly gives interviews in French and English to international
news media on press freedom issues in Africa and has participated in
several panels. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ.
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