Enrolment of first year students in journalism leaps up by 30% in 1979. Why?
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"Possibly because the Information scandal has made journalism seem like a glamorous profession." At least this is the opinion of Journalism staff who compare the jump in numbers with a similar phenomenon at journalism schools in the United States after Watergate.
Of course, the increase may also be linked to the growing reputation of the Rhodes department, the only one of its kind at an English-language university in South Africa.
Bulletin, 1979 (2): 3
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DEVELOPMENT
THE BLACK JOURNALIST
(1) Greyling, 2007; Senate VI, 1946: 312 - 313, Rhodes University Corey Library Archives, Special Collections.
2) Shear, Wits, pp. 34-36, 77-76.
3) J. Cock, "Reflections on the Relation between Rhodes University and the Wider Society, 1977-1981", African Sociological Review , 9, 1, 2005 p. 94
Les Switzer, acting head of department in 1976, speaking about the Journalism Department becoming a hub of diversity and a place to study for previously racially excluded students. Recruiting black students was considered subversive in the apartheid era.
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However, ministerial permission for the admission of black students to white universities was coming more readily, although students still could only register for courses not on offer at their 'ethnic' universities (2)
The launch of journalism as a course in 1970s at Rhodes provided opportunity for a 1947 Council policy that considered the applications of 'black graduates'for courses not offered at other 'homeland' universities, particularly Fort Hare to come to action. Although this was strictly regulated by the university through 'Ministerial Dispensation'that revolved around academic merit for admission (1)
It was only due to Senate's recommendation to Council to accept the new policy of admitting black students on the amendment that black graduates would only be considered for courses not offered at 'native' universities.
Since the journalism department was a new field to study at an English-medium university, it was one of the courses that black graduates could apply for, depending on their academic merit.
Journalism Department became a space of racial integration. Prior to Henderson's arrival (insert dates), Rhodes had admitted Chinese students since 1963 and in following years, a very small number of Indian students. Black students required the permission of the minister to attend a 'white' university. If this law was disobeyed, it was the individual and not the university that would be punished.
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In 1976, around the same time Les Switzer made correspondence with the then minister of Bantu Education, Henderson made a representation to the Minister of National Education, Piet Koornhof, for Rhodes to admit all students of all races based on academic merit. It is important to note that both Senate and Council had supported Henderson with this endeavour...RU-C, Cory Library, Council XX, MS 17 846/4, p. 88, 26 November 1976, min. 17. Koornhof promised to look into the matter but had explained that it would take up to three years to change government policy (Greyling, 2007: 125
1977: (first intake of black students at Rhodes since the 1950s)
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9
AFRICAN
15
COLOURED
8
INDIAN
54
CHINESE
WHITE
2568
During the mid 1970s and into the 1980s the landscape of journalism experienced notable changes, particularly in the accelerated increase of editorial control being granted to black editors in the black press. Alongside this, white English and Afrikaans papers progressively sought to employ black journalists.
"Commentators propose that both of these tendencies were informed by an increasing awareness of the importance of accessing journalists who had experience and knowledge of communities who were directly involved in the resistance struggle," (Du Toit, 2013: 189).
Literature indicates that black journalists were becoming more radicalised after increasing dissatisfaction with the position they were occupying within news production processes. Influenced by ideas drawn from the Black Consciousness movement they held an opposing position toward the conciliatory policies of editors and the compromised approach to critical journalism that newspapers were prepared to make (4). They criticised the rhetoric of neutrality represented in the mainstream press "which was seen as maintaining the news sanctioning of an oppressive political order (5)
ZUBEIDA JAFFER
4) (Du toit, 2013; Tomaselli & Tomaselli, 1981).
5) Louw & Tomaselli, 1991:10)
In 2005 Zubeida Jaffer writes:
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Rhodes University was a very different place 25 years ago. It was a place where
a handful of black students (African, Indian and coloured) were allowed entry with the special permission of their respective racial authorities. It was a place to which these students could be denied access at the whim of a state official. Grahamstown was a very different place. The only cinema barred all coloured and African students from its premises. The eating places barred all students of colour. The first day when I visited the town with my parents, my mom and I were unceremoniously asked to leave the Wimpy Bar when we wanted to buy a sandwich and a cup of tea. The local people had no hope or very little hope of their children attending Rhodes. Instead, the most they could dream of was being lucky enough to find work as domestics or drivers so that they could put food on their tables (179).
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Jaffer was one of the students that got given special permission as a student of colour to attend Rhodes. Jaffer's mixed heritage was labelled Coloured under Apartheid. As a graduate of UCT, Jaffer went to Rhodes to study Journalism in 1978.
The Department of Coloured Affairs gave me special permission to study in terms of vague criteria that allowed students of colour to attend the white universities if they could prove that the subjects they wanted to study were not on offer at their exclusive university.
In remembering her time as a journalism student at Rhodes, Jaffer calls for the 'official' histories to acknowledge how different the experiences of so many students were. Conferred to second class status, facing daily oblivion from white students, not treated as full students, defending against apartheid accommodation; Jaffer recalls an incident where a white girl in the residence they shared claimed she had been "told that [they] had a low IQ and so could not understand how [they] were sharing a residence with her" (180). This was her perspective even though Jaffer and the other four women had significant academic achievement over the young white woman who was registered to do a diploma in pre-school education because she hadn't qualified to complete a degree.
"What I further cannot understand is why there is this continued pretense that Rhodes University stood up for freedom of association and freedom of speech. Rhodes University did not even defend its own students who were there purely on merit," explains Jaffer (181).
Guy Berger describes new priorities for journalism training in 1994 stating the "priority is for programmes, especially quality programmes, to grow the numbers of black journalists," (Berger, 1994: 45)