CCC 61:2 / december 2009
Bryan Trabold
Walking the Cliff’s Edge: The New Nation’s Rhetoric
of Resistance in Apartheid South Africa
This article examines the rhetoric of resistance used by South African anti-apartheid
journalists to expose the links between the apartheid government and death squads.
By utilizing allusions, repetition, and a concept I refer to as “subversive enthymemes,”
these journalists managed to reveal publicly information about death squad activity
in a context of overwhelming constraints almost a full decade before these facts were
confirmed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
They [apartheid government officials] deliberately wanted the
law to be vague. There are many people who criticize these laws
and said the guys who wrote these are stupid, they can’t write
a decent law. That’s in fact not the case. The people who wrote
these things deliberately made them vague because they wanted
people to not know where the edge of the cliff was, and if you
didn’t know where the edge of the cliff was, you were naturally
cautious. You would stay very far away from it—a lot of people
did. So your mainstream papers took a very conservative view
of it, whereas your so-called alternative press, in which the New
Nation considered itself part, were happier to walk quite close to
the edge.
—Norman Manoim, attorney for the New Nation, interview
CCC 61:2 / december 2009
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F
or those working for the New Nation, an anti-apartheid newspaper circulating in South Africa in the mid-1980s, conditions were, to say the least, stressful.
The editor, Zwelakhe Sisulu, had been abducted from his home by members of
the security forces wearing black masks. After psychologically torturing him,
leading him to believe he was going to be the next victim of a death squad,
they proceeded to detain him indefinitely without formally charging him with
a crime. Despite domestic and international pressure calling for his release,
Sisulu would be detained by the apartheid authorities for two long years. In
addition to denying the newspaper its eloquent and charismatic editor, Sisulu’s
detention sent a chilling message to those who continued to work for the New
Nation: You could be next. For those who had previously been detained and who
had suffered brutal physical and psychological torture while working as journalists for other newspapers, this was no idle threat. Other tactics of intimidation
the government used included sending police to the offices of the New Nation,
where they would lock the doors and detain the entire staff while searching
through files for evidence of “illegal activities.”1 The government also sent the
New Nation several warning letters identifying those articles in violation of
the myriad censorship restrictions, threatening to close the newspaper if the
editors and journalists did not desist from publishing similar articles in the
future. The government ultimately made good on these threats at one point,
closing the newspaper for a period of three months.
In the end, however, those working for the New Nation would not be intimidated. In fact, the New Nation staff not only continued to publish during
this time period but actually transformed the newspaper from one that was
published every two weeks to one that was published weekly, increasing its
circulation several fold in the process. Despite the existence of literally hundreds of censorship restrictions, those at the New Nation, along with those at
other alternative newspapers, continued to publish articles that both exposed
the numerous abuses of the apartheid regime and provided a voice to those
individuals and groups the government was trying to silence.
The question guiding my analysis of the New Nation is how, specifically,
the journalists working for this newspaper negotiated the dizzying array of
constraints that allowed them not just to survive in this context but to actually
thrive. My findings revealed that those working at the New Nation developed
a strategy that consisted of trying to read the complex power dynamics for
the purposes of determining the outermost point of acceptable resistance. In
other words, those at the New Nation sought to achieve a delicate balancing act:
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maximize the amount of information published without crossing the unknown
line that would lead to permanent closure. For the purposes of implementing
this strategy, the journalists and attorneys developed several tactics perhaps
best described as “oblique speak,” or “communication by implication,” a concept coined by Irwin Manoim, coeditor of another anti-apartheid newspaper
circulating at that time, the Weekly Mail (74).2 In this article, I examine the
two most significant tactics used by those working at the New Nation to link
the South African government to the death squads operating at that time: allusions, as defined by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, and a tactic I describe
as the “subversive enthymeme.”
Origins of Project and Methodology
In the wake of poststructuralism, with its emphasis on the dominant role that
discourses of power play in human relations, many scholars have focused on
the ways individuals and groups seek to resist oppressive power. Several studies,
of course, have focused on the use of language, both spoken and written, as a
means of resistance. Much of this scholarship acknowledges and foregrounds
the central role of power in shaping these acts of resistance while simultaneously highlighting the strategic and tactical choices individuals and groups
make within oppressive contexts. Ellen Cushman, for example, in The Struggle
and the Tools, examines the linguistic practices of Quayville residents for the
purposes of providing “an upclose account of the tight connection between
agency and social structure as individuals maneuver through asymmetrical
power relations” (xii). Shirley Wilson Logan’s We Are Coming: The Persuasive
Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women and Jacqueline Jones Royster’s
Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women,
meanwhile, focus on nineteenth-century African American women rhetors
for similar purposes. As Royster writes in her introduction: “Despite such
constraints, however, my research indicates that African American women’s
resistance to sociopolitical barriers has been considerable and that, although
their achievements have been devalued, they have not been thoroughly neutralized or contained” (4). Royster’s description of her project, which in many ways
applies to Logan’s and Cushman’s, captures the essence of what James Scott
refers to as the “arts of resistance.” In his compelling book, Domination and the
Arts of Resistance, Scott examines the numerous ways groups have resisted oppressive power throughout history: songs, dance, folktales, and jokes. Scholars
in composition and rhetoric, with the broad range of methodological tools at
their disposal—protocols, stimulated recalls, rhetorical criticism, interviews—
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are uniquely positioned to examine empirically an art of resistance that has
been and continues to be used by groups in this country and throughout the
world: writing. What does an examination of writers operating in contexts of
constraints reveal about the intersection of writing, resistance, and power?
Upon arriving in South Africa for my one-year stay, I soon learned about
the various and rich ways in which writing was used to resist apartheid, and I
realized that I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the issues of constraints, resistance, and writing in relation to one of the most compelling liberation struggles of the twentieth century. I focused on anti-apartheid journalists
for two reasons. First, the journalists working for these newspapers represented
a collective group working together to challenge the apartheid government;
second, these newspapers had considerable interaction with governmental
censors, literally on a daily or weekly basis. Of the many anti-apartheid newspapers that existed, I chose the New Nation and the Weekly Mail for a number
of reasons: both were written in English, both were national newspapers, and,
perhaps most significantly, both were founded during a pivotal moment in the
anti-apartheid resistance. One month after the Weekly Mail printed its first edition and five months before the New Nation would print theirs, the apartheid
government declared the first of several states of emergency, which created
even more constraints operating on writers.
I began by examining and reviewing every edition of both newspapers
that was available at the University of Cape Town library. I started with their
first editions and stopped at 1990, the year the apartheid government released
Nelson Mandela from prison and unbanned the African National Congress,
the Pan African Congress, and the South African Communist Party. With this
initial reading, I identified and photocopied articles that appeared to employ
some form of indirection. I then conducted more than thirty interviews with
the editors, journalists, and attorneys working for both newspapers, basing
several questions on these photocopied articles. After transcribing and reading
the interviews, I developed my categories of analysis, which I then used to code
my transcripts more systemically. As a result of this process, I then proceeded
to read, once again, every available edition of both newspapers over the same
time period, photocopying literally hundreds of additional articles as a result
of my more nuanced appreciation of these journalists’ strategies.
This article examines two series that appeared in the New Nation, one in
1987 and one in 1988, that focused on the South African government’s links to
the death squads targeting those in the anti-apartheid struggle. Despite the fact
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that these journalists were writing in a context of overwhelming constraints,
they managed to use various tactics of indirection in order to reveal information
publicly about the government’s use of death squads almost a full decade before
these facts would be confirmed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
New Nation: Historical Background
Before examining subversive enthymemes and allusions in detail, it is first
necessary to understand the historical context in which they were used. In the
mid-1980s, the apartheid government, facing formidable international pressure and massive domestic unrest, imposed martial law in one final attempt to
maintain power. The government granted the police and security forces sweeping powers, which they then used to detain literally thousands of activists. It
also issued several media restrictions designed to curb reports and images of
armed police officers using massive violence against unarmed civilians that
were undermining the legitimacy of the apartheid government at home and
abroad. In an effort to control both the domestic and international press, the
executive branch issued several administrative regulations to supplement the
more than one hundred censorship statutes that had already been enacted
by Parliament over the years. It is not possible to discuss the full scope of the
censorship machinery in this article, but generally speaking, the statutes and
emergency regulations were designed, as they are in virtually every oppressive context, for two primary purposes: to prevent the media from exposing
the myriad abuses committed by the government and to deny a forum for the
opposition. Some of the emergency regulations enacted prohibited reporters
from writing articles that did any of the following:
• describing “scenes of unrest”
• containing “subversive statements”
• “promoting or fanning revolution or uprisings in South Africa or other
acts aimed at the overthrow of the government”
• “promoting or fanning the breakdown of the public order in South
Africa”
• “stirring up or fomenting feelings of hatred or hostility in members of
the public towards a local authority or a security force” (Race Relations
Survey 826).
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As Norman Manoim observes in the epigraph, the very scope of these regulations rendered them virtually meaningless for those who looked to them for
guidance regarding the parameters within which they could safely operate.
It was within this context that the New Nation was born. The first state
of emergency was declared in July 1985; the New Nation began publication in
January 1986. The government loathed the alternative media in general, but
the New Nation in particular struck a nerve. In fact, it struck three. The three
publicly acknowledged “fears” of many in the Afrikaner community included
the fear of communism (rooi gevaar), fear of blacks (swaartse gevaar), and fear
of Catholicism (Roomse gevaar). Given that the New Nation was run by and
overwhelmingly staffed by black South Africans who targeted the black community, was funded by the Catholic Church, and frequently voiced enthusiastic
support for trade unions and socialist principles, it is perhaps not surprising
that the apartheid government developed a particular dislike of this newspaper.
Irwin Manoim, coeditor of the Weekly Mail, grudgingly conceded: “The New
Nation held a mantle of honor among South African newspapers: it was the
publication the government hated most” (114).
In addition to tapping into these fears, the New Nation engaged in “advocacy journalism” and was even more confrontational than other alternative
newspapers. When asked during an interview, for example, what he viewed as
the central purpose of the New Nation, the editor, Zwelakhe Sisulu, stated that
the newspaper served as “a transporter of shared experience”:
And what I mean by that was that there were struggles that were taking place at a
very basic level, and we wanted people throughout the country to understand that
the struggles they were involved in were not as highly localized as they believed,
but that this in turn was a national phenomenon. So I would say that really what
the New Nation sought to do was basically to get people to share their experiences
and understand that in fact what was happening was a national moment, rather
than a highly individualized or highly localized moment.
The New Nation did not seek, therefore, merely to report news affecting the
black community, but actually to mobilize the black community to take action
against the apartheid government.
Moreover, the New Nation sought to promote resistance consistent with
the values and objectives of the ANC and ANC-related organizations.3 According to Tyrone August, a journalist for the newspaper:
For me, apart from, broadly speaking, trying to provide a voice for black people,
they [the New Nation] were partisan in the sense that they regarded the ANC as
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the main representative of the black community, and they did tend to reflect the
ANC’s views more than other organizations like PAC [Pan African Congress], for
example, and AZAPO [Azanian People’s Organization].
Both of these objectives—trying to mobilize the population to resist the government and trying to promote the ANC—were, of course, illegal. Indeed, they
were the raison d’être of the censorship restrictions. In order to accomplish
their goals and still survive, therefore, the journalists working for the New Nation needed to develop several forms of oblique speak.4
Allusions and Subversive Enthymemes
At a certain point in the liberation struggle, the apartheid government began to
assassinate several political activists in the ANC and the South African Communist Party using a variety of methods: letter bombs, car bombs, shootings,
and stabbings. As a means of denying its involvement, the government disseminated allegations, some of which made their way into the mainstream media,
that these murders were the result of in-fighting within the anti-apartheid
movement. Tyrone August, when discussing how difficult it had been for him
to work in the mainstream media prior to working as a journalist at the New
Nation, provided an example of how newspapers would sometimes publish
these governmental claims uncritically: “For instance, when Joe Slovo’s wife,
Ruth First, was murdered, the Star sort of unblushingly printed this report
linking Joe Slovo to the assassination of his wife because of the kind of sources
that they relied on.”5 While those working at the New Nation knew this was
complete nonsense, they were nevertheless in a difficult position. Clearly, they
could avoid contributing to the government’s disinformation campaign by not
reporting these false allegations, but how could they report the realities of the
death squads without incurring the wrath of the censor?
Allusion was one form of oblique speak that the journalists used. Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca observe:
There is allusion when the interpretation of a passage would be incomplete if one
neglected the deliberate reference of the author to something he evokes without
actually naming it; this thing may be an event of the past, a custom, or a cultural
fact, knowledge of which is peculiar to the members of the group with whom the
speaker is trying to establish communion. (177)
Indeed, Logan notes how nineteenth-century African American women utilized
allusions in many of their speeches. When writing or speaking in contexts of
constraints, in which there are clear threats—violence, imprisonment, etc.—
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from those in power for speaking about various subjects, the advantages of
allusion are obvious.
Ryland Fisher, a journalist at the New Nation, discussed during an interview
how those at the newspaper would utilize this tactic. He noted:
So, for instance, one of the emergency regulations that they introduced at some
point was that you couldn’t write about the actions of security forces. So we never
wrote about the police. But we did write about men in blue uniforms, driving
yellow vehicles, engaged in a certain activity, and you know, involving a group of
people who are unhappy about something. So it was ridiculous, and if you read it
now, it would seem totally stupid. But people knew what we were writing about.
Fisher’s final comment is significant: “people knew what we were writing
about.” Journalists at the New Nation could make allusions to security forces,
confident that they would be understood because of the “knowledge [. . .] peculiar to the members of the group with whom the [writer] is trying to establish
communion.”
“72 Hours of Terror,” an article that recounts the kidnapping and torture
of an activist living in Moutse, provides a concrete example of the power of allusion. It begins: “A Moutse activist this week gave a harrowing account of 72
hours of interrogation and torture at the hands of four hooded white men” (1).
Later in the article, there is a reference to the fact that “The alleged abductors
spoke in Afrikaans throughout the ordeal and never removed their hoods,” and
when these “white men” finally released this unnamed activist after three days,
they “warned him that they would continue monitoring his activities through
their informers” (1). The article concludes with the fact that this unnamed
individual had been detained by the police the previous year “as a result of his
political activities” (1). The journalist thus never states directly that members
of the security forces tortured this political activist, but the numerous allusions
make this fact abundantly clear, particularly to the readers of the New Nation.
In addition to allusions, journalists utilized another form of oblique speak,
the subversive enthymeme. This tactic, in essence, represents a variation of the
enthymeme defined as a truncated syllogism.6 To understand how this tactic
functioned, it is useful to recall the classic example often used to demonstrate
the difference between syllogisms and enthymemes:
Syllogism: Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates is
mortal.
Enthymeme: Socrates is a man; therefore, he is mortal.
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In this case, the rhetor expects the audience to supply the obvious claim, “All
men are mortal.”
Imagine a situation, however, in which restrictions expressly forbid
anyone from stating the fact that Socrates will one day die. In such a context,
one could convey this meaning by emphasizing the claims that lead naturally
to this conclusion, trusting that audience members would be able to take the
final step on their own. In other words, one could use overwhelming evidence
to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Socrates is a man. Then one
could provide overwhelming evidence to show that all men up to that point
in history have indeed been mortal. Rather than relying on the audience to fill
in a missing claim leading to the conclusion, as is the case with a traditional
enthymeme, one could instead trust the audience to fill in the logical conclusion following well-established claims. This is precisely the strategy the New
Nation utilized when discussing the death squads operating in South Africa.
Both series on this subject consisted of three articles, which, when read together,
formed a subversive enthymeme.
In order to understand how the subversive enthymeme functioned, it is
useful to consider the syllogism and traditional enthymeme one could use in a
context free of censorship. The formal syllogism would read as follows:
Death squads targeting opponents of the apartheid regime are acting
with impunity.
All death squads throughout the world targeting opponents of a regime
and acting with impunity have been shown to have links to their respective regimes.
The death squads targeting opponents of the apartheid regime and acting with impunity have links to the apartheid regime.
The enthymeme would thus read:
The death squads targeting opponents of the apartheid regime are acting with impunity; they must be linked to the apartheid regime.
It simply would not have been possible, however, for the journalists working
for the New Nation to make such a direct statement.
In each of these two series, therefore, the journalist wrote three articles
that never explicitly made a direct link between the death squads and the
apartheid government. They do, however, make the following claims explicit:
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Death squads targeting opponents of the apartheid regime are acting
with impunity.
All death squads throughout the world targeting opponents of a regime
and acting with impunity have been shown to have links to their respective regimes.
When the three articles are read together, the subversive enthymeme is formed,
and the obvious link between the South African government and the death
squads becomes clear.7
In addition to the subversive enthymeme formed when reading the three
articles in their entirety, the journalists also used subversive enthymemes
within individual articles. Similar to the subversive enthymeme formed between articles, those within articles consisted of a series of claims that lead to
a logical conclusion without ever explicitly stating it. Conceptually, subversive
enthymemes formed between and within articles are the same, but those appearing within articles are more compact, formed over the course of a few
sentences, and thus more direct.
Subversive enthymemes and allusions, both forms of oblique speak, differ in the following way. A subversive enthymeme is formed when the writer
provides important information in a direct and uncoded manner for the purposes of making claims within a chain of reasoning that leads to an unstated
conclusion. Allusions, on the other hand, consist of coded language and oblique
references readers interpret based on their cultural knowledge of conditions in
apartheid South Africa. Of the two series published by the New Nation on death
squads, the 1987 series relies more on the subversive enthymeme formed by
reading the three articles in their entirety, whereas the 1988 series more directly
and forcefully links the death squads to the government by including several
subversive enthymemes and allusions within individual articles.
1987 Series
In the July 30, 1987 edition, the New Nation ran the first two-page series on
death squads that consisted of three articles. The first, “Death Squads Waging
War in the Shadows,” chronicles the history of death squads in two Central
American nations, El Salvador and Guatemala, exploring the purpose of death
squads, examining their victims, and most importantly, explicitly linking them
to the governments of those two nations. In this entire article, there is not a
single reference to the South African government. The second article, “The
Secret Slaughter without Boundaries,” focuses primarily on the numerous ANC
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members who had been assassinated over the years. As in the first article, no
statements directly link the South African government to these murders. The
final article, “Killings Didn’t Stop Liberation,” discusses how the use of death
squads in Zimbabwe, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique were ultimately unsuccessful in quelling the revolutionary movements in those countries.
The first two articles in the series, “Death Squads” and “Secret Slaughter,”
examine the strong similarities between death squads in other nations with
those in South Africa, specifically in terms of their purpose and targeted victims.
In the first article, for example, the journalist claims that death squads in El
Salvador and Guatemala have sought “to neutralise anti-government opposition as swiftly as possible” (6), and later describes this broader objective more
specifically: “Firstly, it is an attempt to prevent the development of an unarmed
opposition. Secondly, it is an attempt to prevent any support for the guerilla
movements” (6). Compare this to the objective of death squads described in the
second article that focuses on South Africa: “to neutralise key members of the
opposition, prompt a breakdown in organization, prevent the maintenance of
an open political presence, and to spread terror generally” (7). The objectives
of death squads in these three countries, therefore, are strikingly similar, and
the link between them is made even stronger by the repetition of such terms
as “neutralise” and “opposition.”
The first and second articles also describe the similar targets of death
squads in these three countries. In the first article, the journalist notes that the
victims in El Salvador and Guatemala include trade union leaders, students,
priests, and journalists. The second article, which focuses on ANC members and
sympathizers who have been targeted, includes a leader of a trade union, a university president, academics, and a priest. The purpose and targeted victims of
death squads in all of these countries, therefore, are virtually indistinguishable.
While these articles contain similar descriptions in terms of the purpose
and victims of death squads, they differ in a significant way. In the first article,
the link between death squads and the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala is made explicit and repeatedly. After briefly describing the origins of
death squads and their overall objective in the first two paragraphs, the third,
fourth, and fifth paragraphs of the first article read as follows:
The silent executions enabled right-wing governments to stand aside with folded
arms and deny any responsibility.
They wanted to convey the impression that these squads were renegade groups
beyond their control.
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However, it has since become common knowledge that the squads were set
up by right-wing governments. (6)
Later in this same article, when examining the situation in El Salvador, the
journalist again establishes this link: “Since then, death squads in El Salvador
have been linked publicly to high-ranking military officers and other allies of
the ruling group” (6), and “These squads are made up of soldiers, policemen,
and private gangs recruited by right-wing businessmen and farm-owners. They
are commanded by high-ranking army officers, and act on intelligence reports
provided to them by the army” (6). When discussing the “disappeared” in Guatemala, the journalist informs the reader that “the Guatemalan government’s
complicity has been proved in at least 75 percent of these disappearances” (6).
After outlining all of the similarities that exist between the death squads of El
Salvador, Guatemala, and South Africa, these explicit links between the death
squads of El Salvador and Guatemala with their respective governments are
indeed significant.
The third article in the series, “Killings Didn’t Stop Liberation,” which focuses primarily on the futility of death squads in other contexts, also establishes
the link that existed between death squads in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia,
and the Rhodesian government. Specifically, the journalist writes about the
assassination of one leader in the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu),
Herbert Chitepo:
Although there was widespread suspicion at the time that Chitepo had died as a
result of internal problems in Zanu, a book has recently been published in Zimbabwe—which draws on former Rhodesian intelligence sources—saying it was
in fact carried out by Rhodesian agents. (7)
In this article the journalist also describes the assassination of Jason Moyo,
a leader in the Zimbabwe African People’s Union: “Rhodesian security police
admitted in interviews after independence that they had got news that the
parcel was to be sent to Moyo by tapping a phone. They had intercepted the
parcel and inserted an explosive devise” (7).
The links established in this article between the Rhodesian death squads
and that government would have perhaps resonated even more strongly with a
South African audience. In addition to the many similarities between the white
supremacist governments of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, the specifics provided in this third article are directly applicable to the South African
context. The fact that Chitepo was assassinated by Rhodesian agents despite
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the “widespread suspicion” he was killed as a result of “internal rivalries,” for
example, directly mirrors the disinformation campaign surrounding the assassination of Ruth First described above by Tyrone August. Moreover, the fact that
Rhodesian security forces assassinated Moyo with a letter bomb is significant
given that the second article in this series, “Secret Slaughter,” chronicles the
numerous ANC members who had been assassinated in a similar manner. The
first and third articles of this series, therefore, provide considerable evidence
to establish the second claim of the subversive enthymeme: All death squads
throughout the world targeting opponents of a regime and acting with impunity
have links to their respective regimes.
If the facts in these articles are not sufficient for the reader to see the
connections between the death squads in South Africa and those in other
countries, the journalist strengthens the subversive enthymeme by using similar
phrases in the conclusion and introduction of these articles. The conclusion
of the first article, for example, which repeatedly links the death squads in El
Salvador and Guatemala to those governments, reads: “The war in the shadows
has failed. The struggle continues” (7). The introduction of the second article
examining ANC targets of death squads reads, “Former University of the North
SRC president Ongopotse Tiro was the first victim of South Africa’s war in the
shadows in 1974” (7). The journalist is clearly inviting readers to see the second
article as a continuation of the first.
The second article, “Secret Slaughter,” not only completes the subversive
enthymeme formed when reading the three articles in their entirety but also
contains an important subversive enthymeme within the article itself. When
describing the assassination of Joe Gqabi, an ANC leader living in exile in
Harare, Zimbabwe, who “died in a hail of bullets from silenced weapons in the
grounds of his Harare home” (7), the journalist informs the reader: “The white
Zimbabwean detective who headed the investigation into the murder—and
blamed it on internal rivalries within the ANC—was subsequently exposed
as a South African secret agent” (7). In this sentence, the journalist conveys a
fact that begs the question: Why would the apartheid regime engage in such
activities if it had nothing to do with this assassination?
This second article in the series, with its subversive enthymeme contained in the description of the Gqabi assassination, strongly implies a link
between the death squads and the South African government. The subversive
enthymeme formed by reading the three articles together, however, conveys
the real persuasive power of this series. By explicitly linking the death squads
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in other nations to their respective governments, and then revealing the many
similarities between those death squads with those targeting opponents of the
apartheid regime, the conclusion becomes chillingly obvious: The death squads
acting with impunity, killing activists in South Africa and abroad, have links
to the apartheid government.
1988 Series
The 1988 series on death squads shares similarities with the 1987 series in that
it, too, uses three separate articles to form a subversive enthymeme. It does so
in part by comparing South African death squads to the death squads operating
in Chile under Augusto Pinochet. Similar to the 1987 series, the first article,
“Hit Squads on the Rampage in Chile,” makes explicit links between the death
squads in that country and the government. The second article, “Apartheid
Death Squads,” never explicitly links the death squads in South Africa to the
apartheid government but examines the similarities between South African and
Chilean death squads in terms of organization, training, and access to information. Moreover, the journalist draws strong parallels in these articles between
the similar political situations that existed in both countries prior to creation
of the death squads. South Africans reading the description of Chile in the
1970s would clearly see the parallels with their own country: mass arrests, the
declaration of a state of emergency by the government, detention and torture of
leading activists, and suspension of the right of people and groups to organize.
In addition to the subversive enthymeme formed when reading these two
articles together, the journalist also utilizes subversive enthymemes within the
second article, “Apartheid Death Squads.” In one passage the journalist writes:
The declaration of the state of emergency two years ago is an open admission
by the government that extraordinary legal means were necessary to restore
order. But even these seem to have failed, with the government admitting that
a revolutionary situation continues to prevail. It is against this background that
the political killings and abductions have occurred. The identities of the killers
remain mysterious. Given the choice of their victims, it is certain which side of
the political spectrum the killers come from. (7)
After strongly hinting at the involvement of the government but not explicitly
stating so, the journalist then invites readers to complete this subversive enthymeme: “But that is as far as anyone would venture in trying to identify the
killers without fear of reprisals” (7).
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Later in “Apartheid Death Squads,” the journalist constructs an ingenious
subversive enthymeme by strategically using the phrase “pro-apartheid forces”
and the word “elements” within a carefully constructed series of claims. The
passage reads:
Given the form of repression that has emerged, mass intimidation and the systematic removal of popular leadership seem to be the answers pro-apartheid forces
have come up with. At a legal level, this has been achieved to a certain extent by
the detention of key leaders. But there are clearly elements which have opted to
operate outside the confines of the legal system. (7)
Note in the first sentence that the writer does not specifically identify the South
African government but rather refers vaguely to “pro-apartheid forces.” In the
second sentence, the writer describes the actions occurring at the “legal level,”
primarily the “detention of key leaders,” but, again, never refers specifically to
the apartheid government, despite the obvious fact that the government was
taking these steps. Although the journalist has not yet mentioned the government explicitly at this point, readers have clearly “filled in” this meaning for
themselves: What or who else could the journalist possibly be referring to?
What other entity operates at “the legal level”? The purpose of not explicitly
referring to the government becomes apparent in the final sentence: “But there
are clearly elements which have opted to operate outside the confines of the
legal system.” Given that readers have already determined that the journalist
is referring to the South African government in the previous sentence, they in
effect “carry” this meaning to the next sentence, perhaps not even consciously,
making the “elements” referred to in this final sentence quite clear: elements
of the South African government.
In addition to the subversive enthymeme formed between and within
these articles, the 1988 series also employs several allusions. The journalist, for
example, uses the kind of coded descriptions of security forces noted above by
Ryland Fisher. These allusions appear both in “Apartheid Death Squads” and
“The ‘Disappeared Ones’: Ten Years of Stabbings, Shootings and Abductions”:
• “Nkosinathi Solomon Shabangu . . . was gunned down in front of teachers and students on June 5 by three unidentified men, one in a balaclava” (7)
• “Their son, Chris Ribeiro, said two gunmen appeared to have ‘dark,
black faces’, but as he tried to pull one of the gunmen out of their
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getaway car he saw from the driver’s hand that he was a white man. He
thought the driver had worn something over his face to make himself
look black” (7)
• Armed vigilante gangs based in the townships have been responsible
for some of the killings. But there have also been some highly organised
killings involving white men (7)
All of these allusions would immediately be identified by readers of the New
Nation. It was commonly known that security forces wore balaclavas when
engaging in illegal activities. Moreover, the only whites who would be in
townships, particularly during a state of emergency, would be members of the
security forces.
To augment the subversive enthymemes and allusions in this series, the
journalist uses repetition as a means of inviting readers to draw an obvious
conclusion. In the article “‘Disappeared Ones’,” the fact that not a single one
of these murders had been solved serves as a veritable drumbeat throughout
this article: “His killers have never been found” (6); “Her assailants were never
found” (6); “the cameraman’s killers have never been found” (7); “legal observers predicted that the mystery of the Ribeiro slayings would probably never be
solved” (7); “Police claimed they knew one of the suspects and expected to make
an arrest soon. No arrests have been made” (7); “His killers remain unknown”
(7); “His killers have not yet been brought to book” (7); “No one has yet been
arrested for the killing” (7). This repetition supports the claim that the apartheid death squads were acting with complete impunity. In “Apartheid Death
Squads,” the journalist writes, “Not one of these murders has been solved,” and
then cleverly cites a church group, which would have enjoyed some minimal
political cover in relation to the “Christian” apartheid government, to state the
obvious implications: “But unless the killers are brought to book, speculation
as to who was responsible for the senseless slayings and bombings will abound,
the SA Council of Churches (SACC) warned last week” (7). While the fact that
not a single murder had been solved could suggest raging incompetence on the
part of the South African police, it clearly suggests alternative interpretations,
particularly given the other evidence provided.
Repetition is also used as a means of establishing previous links between
the victims and the police or security forces. In several of these paragraphs, for
example, the journalist emphasizes how many of the victims had at one point
been banned or detained by the apartheid authorities:
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• Siphiwe Mtimkulu had been detained in 1981 (6)
• Moxolile Eric Mntonga “had been detained four times since 1981” (7)
• Sicelo Dlomo “had been detained a few days before his death and had
once been convicted on a charge of illegal possession of a firearm. He
said at the time he carried the gun because he feared for his life” (7)
• Rick Turner “was killed a few weeks before his banning order expired” (6)
The victims were thus not random South African citizens but those who had
been targeted by the apartheid government in the past. The journalist also
provides this leading bit of evidence regarding Matthew Goniwe, a political
activist in the Eastern Cape, murdered in 1985 on his way home from a United
Democratic Front meeting: “Goniwe had promised his wife before they left
that the only person they would stop for would be uniformed policemen” (7).
Finally, the journalist uses another ingenious tactic that relies on the
blurred meaning of a single word: “apartheid.” In addition to such phrases
as “defenders of apartheid ideology” and “pro-apartheid forces” that appear
throughout the articles, the second article is actually entitled “Apartheid
Death Squads.” While “apartheid” is technically the name of the system within
South Africa that regulated virtually every activity on the basis of race, it was
obviously a system enforced by the South African government. There was, and
still is, considerable slippage in the usage and meaning between “apartheid”
and “the South African government.” Within this article, for example, I have
engaged in the common practice of prefacing the description of the South
African government that existed at that time with either “South African” or
“apartheid.” The journalist clearly relies on this blurred distinction between
system and government when using “apartheid” in this series.
Remarkably, the journalists of these two series not only managed to link
the death squads to the South African government but also managed to cultivate defiance. It would not be unreasonable to assume that a sense of tragedy
and loss would pervade a series focusing on death squads: the horrific deaths
experienced by the victims, the fact that so many young victims were taken away
in the prime of their lives, and the suffering of the loved ones left behind. Both
series, however, encourage continued resistance, which was the best strategic
response to the death squads.
The 1987 series encourages resilience among its readers, making the
point repeatedly that death squads in every other context have failed. The article examining the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, for example,
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concludes: “The war in the shadows has failed. The struggle continues” (6).
The 1988 series maintains a tone of defiance primarily through its use of imagery. A large photograph of Matthew Goniwe, the young, charismatic activist,
appears in the middle of this series. No picture of his casket surrounded by
mourners, no close-up of his grief-stricken widow and children, but rather a
picture of Goniwe, full of life, in a stirring pose of defiance: arm uplifted, fist
clenched, standing in front of a microphone with his mouth wide open, as if
rallying a crowd.
The defiant attitude these two series promote is linked to the only strategic response to death squads available to those in the anti-apartheid struggle,
namely mass-based political organization. Once a person had been targeted, it
was virtually inevitable that the well-trained, well-armed, well-informed death
squads would carry out their mission. Mass-based political organization, therefore, was the only possible solution, a point made in both the second and third
articles in the 1987 series. “Secret Slaughter,” for example, concludes: “The fact
that other national liberation movements survived assassinations was the result
of the fact that they had sufficiently strong political organisation within their
ranks to ensure that no individual could be indispensable” (7). The defiance
promoted by both series in words and imagery is not simply an attempt to put
a brave face on a desperate situation, but rather serves to convey a strategic
message: now is not the time to mourn but to organize and resist.
In this political context, the subversive construction of meaning between
journalists and readers must have been particularly charged. After reading these
articles, most readers would not only realize the extent to which the South
African government was using death squads but would recognize that this
same government was preventing the New Nation from directly making this
allegation. The fact that journalists and readers were able to construct meaning with one another regarding to this issue, despite the restrictions designed
to prevent them from doing so, must certainly have strengthened the claim in
these articles regarding the inevitable success of the liberation struggle.
Reading Power, Writing Resistance
As noted above, the use of subversive enthymemes and allusions can perhaps
best be viewed as tactical maneuvers that facilitated the overall strategy of
the New Nation: to read the power dynamics in this context in order to determine the outermost point of acceptable resistance. The writers of these two
series, in other words, were fully aware that the government would recognize
the intent of these articles. There are certainly many documented examples
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in which oppressed groups have conveyed coded messages to one another in
the very presence of their oppressors.8 This was not the case here. Apartheid
bureaucrats may have been supporting an unjust cause, but they weren’t stupid.
The issue, then, was not whether government officials could “figure out”
what these anti-apartheid journalists were doing, but rather which acts of resistance they would grudgingly tolerate and which ones would prod them into
action. Despite the fact that apartheid officials had considerable power over
these journalists, there were several constraints operating on them as well, some
self-imposed, others imposed by the international community. Constraints
existed even for the constraints, which in turn provided the necessary space
for these journalists to operate.
One constraint operating on the members of the apartheid government
was their insistence that they were a legitimate government operating on the
basis of law. Shaun Johnson, a journalist who worked for the Weekly Mail, described this attitude as follows:
There was a strange legalism. It [the apartheid government] always thought of itself
as legitimate. Now that’s completely different from some kind of crazy dictator
who is just murdering people [. . .]. They believed they were a legalistic state, and
what they did, which allowed young idiots like us to drive them mad, was that they
tried to play it by the book. Their book. And our lawyers were cleverer at it. [. . .]
The emergency regulations were like that, and for every clause, there’s a loophole.
By making gestures toward adhering to the law and not flagrantly violating it,
therefore, these journalists made the work of apartheid officials much more
difficult.
International pressure on the apartheid regime constituted another important constraint. Drew Forrest commented on the fact that the South African
government was, in his words, “sensitive to external opinion”:
You know, Chile, they just assassinated, they just killed foreign journalists, not just
Chilean journalists but foreign journalists. Here, foreign journalists were allowed
in, they were allowed to send back the most damning reports to their publications
in America or Britain and so on. So it was a constant tension in the government
about wanting to repress, but not wanting to go too far, and that created the kind
of space which made it possible for us to operate.
The South African government’s sensitivity to international opinion was
particularly acute in the mid- to late 1980s with the growth of the formidable
anti-apartheid movement in the United States and Western Europe. If apartheid officials were to take any legal action against a newspaper, they knew
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this would only strengthen the position of anti-apartheid activists working
to impose economic sanctions. Thus, while the journalists were engaged in
complex calculations of power, so, too, were governmental officials: Was the
information contained in various editions of the New Nation worth the risk of
taking action?
The purpose of indirection in this context, therefore, was less about conveying messages so convoluted that they would pass unnoticed by the apartheid
authorities, but rather in displaying a basic adherence to the vague boundaries
that had been established. As Norman Manoim, attorney for the New Nation
observes in the epigraph, the law itself provided only a rough approximation of
these boundaries; no one really knew where the edge of the cliff was, perhaps
not even the apartheid officials. In the end, the decision concerning what material to publish and how to publish it came down to what Norman Manoim
described as “gut feels”: “This is how this beast reacts, and you need to be able
to read its reaction. Its reactions are unpredictable, but if you watch them
closely, you can sort of make an informed call about how it is going to behave,
which has not that much to do with their own law.”
Another important factor when trying to determine what to publish and
how to publish it, which may very well pertain to these two series published in
1987 and 1988, was the sense of momentum anti-apartheid journalists acquired
as they continued to engage in successful resistance. In several interviews
with the journalists who worked at the New Nation and the Weekly Mail, many
described the increased confidence they felt over time. Howard Barrell, who
contributed to both the Weekly Mail and the New Nation and who was also
secretly a member of the ANC, commented on this dynamic of the late 1980s:
We know that the initiative is with us. We also know, the more sensible amongst
us know, that the state has not yet extended anything like its capacity to punish
us. That’s clear. The question, of course, is whether it has the will to do so, which
now with hindsight, we know it didn’t. [. . .] So you know there is a sense in which
we created a space—we occupied it. The state can reoccupy it, it can set about
to reoccupy it, certainly it has the ability to reoccupy it, and it can set us back for
five or ten years, but in five or ten years, or three or four years, we’ll come back
even stronger. I mean, that’s how we’re feeling at that point, and I don’t think that
that is bravado.
Drew Forrest commented on this sense of momentum as well:
I think over time, and I mean this became much more pronounced towards the
end of the 80s, the authorities themselves became less and less sure about what
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they were doing. The ruling elite had sort of lost confidence in itself and no longer
had the kind of commitment to start cracking down left, right, and center. It was
a function of lack of confidence, lack of capacity.
The successful resistance of these anti-apartheid journalists, therefore, was
intricately tied to the larger culture of resistance within South Africa.
The differences between the 1987 and 1988 series reflect this momentum.
Whereas the primary persuasive power of the 1987 series results from the
meaning conveyed by the subversive enthymeme formed between the articles,
the primary persuasive power of the 1988 series results from the numerous
subversive enthymemes and allusions appearing within individual articles. In
other words, the 1988 series is considerably more direct in its indirectness. This
may account for the fact that the 1988 series includes an official denial from the
government, which does not appear in the 1987 series: “The government has
repeatedly denied that its forces have had anything to do with the bombings or
political killings” (“Apartheid Death Squads” 7). Including this official denial,
which provided the newspaper with some political cover, serves another purpose
as well. After reading a series that so conclusively links the death squads to the
apartheid regime, it evokes a sense of exasperation that the government could
continue to issue denials in the face of such overwhelming evidence.
Conclusion
Empirically examining writers seeking to resist oppressive power seems a
natural fit for composition and rhetoric, a field preoccupied with the writing
and rhetorical practices of individuals and groups, civic participation, and
social justice. Specifically, such research serves to advance Royster’s call “that
we need a more concrete sense of human variety in the use of literacy in order
to support the abstractions that we might very well draw more clearly at a later
point in this analytical process as we place well-told stories of literacy next to
other well-told stories of literacy” (6). Cushman’s, Jones’s, and Royster’s scholarship, with their fine-grained analysis of how writers in different places and at
different times have engaged in resistance, offer the kind of well-told stories
of literacy to which I seek to contribute.
Moreover, I would argue that examining writers such as those working
for the New Nation, who develop a rhetoric of resistance, informs classical
rhetorical theory in significant ways. Writers operating in such contexts must
not only consider how best to construct meaning with their intended audience,
the focus of classical rhetorical theory, but they must do so while trying to
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gauge the outermost point of acceptable resistance, an issue classical rhetoric
never addresses. Classical rhetoric may offer some terms to describe the ways
in which rhetors can construct meaning indirectly with audiences (“allusion,”
“signifatio,” and “schematismus”), but it is not primarily concerned with how
best to construct meaning for the purposes of subverting constraints of oppressive power. This, however, is precisely the concern for literally millions of
writers around the world who walk “quite close to the edge” in their efforts to
determine the ultimately unknowable parameters of acceptable resistance.
Such writers, who exhibit the ingenuity, creativity, and courage to develop a
rhetoric of resistance, merit our attention as scholars. As Noam Chomsky once
observed, “We should join with the kind of people who are willing to commit
themselves to overthrow power, and listen to them. They often know a lot more
than we do” (108).
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the early drafts of this article, and a special
thanks to Patricia Stephens for her thoughtful and detailed commentary on my
later drafts. This article is dedicated to all of those who worked at the New Nation
and in the opposition media during apartheid. Their ingenuity inspires; their courage humbles.
Notes
1. Drew Forrest, a journalist for the New Nation, recounted: “The security police
came in after the declaration of the state of emergency and they instructed everybody to sit in their seats and they would not allow them to move from their seats
for like five or six hours while they searched the place. They had no power to do
that, but people were just so shit-scared that they didn’t dare contradict them.”
2. Irwin Manoim, the co-founder and coeditor of the Weekly Mail, was the brother
of Norman Manoim, who served as the lead attorney for the New Nation and who
provided the epigraph for this article. The house they shared was firebombed at
one point, but the intended target was unclear. At the time of the bombing, one
of Norman’s political clients was staying in the house, so neither of the Manoim
brothers knew at the time when I interviewed them whether the bombing was
designed to intimidate Irwin, Norman, Norman’s client, or perhaps some combination of the three.
3. The ANC was the political party of Zwelakhe Sisulu’s parents, Walter and Albertina
Sisulu. Walter Sisulu was imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and
was widely considered his closest confidant. Albertina Sisulu is one of the most
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well-known and highly regarded women activists in the anti-apartheid struggle. The
fact that their son was editing the New Nation, therefore, would only have provided
the South African government with yet another reason to hate it.
4. Another unique aspect of this newspaper was that it did not attach bylines of
journalists’ names to specific articles. This not only represented the collaborative
spirit of this newspaper but also served as a form of protection for individual journalists. In the remainder of this article, therefore, I can only refer to “the journalist
of this article,” without citing a specific name. Some of these articles may well have
been written by more than one journalist, but I have no way of determining that
at this point.
5. Joe Slovo was the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP). His wife,
Ruth First, was a prominent activist who had been detained by the South African
authorities. She eventually left South Africa but remained active in the antiapartheid
struggle. In 1982 she was murdered by members of the apartheid security forces
who sent a letter bomb to her office in Mozambique.
6. It is important to note that many in the field, including Gage and Hairston, have
argued that this conception of the enthymeme as a truncated syllogism is overly
restrictive. Specifically, Gage points to Aristotle’s claim that the enthymeme represents “the ‘body’ of all artistic proofs,” and from this perspective, the enthymeme
becomes much more robust, which can be used, as Gage argues in this and other
articles, to teach students how to compose arguments in a more systematic fashion.
In addition to “Teaching the Enthymeme,” see Gage’s “An Adequate Epistemology
for Composition,” “Towards an Epistemology of Composition,” “The Reasoned
Thesis,” and “A General Theory of the Enthymeme for Advanced Composition.”
7. I realize that there are other rhetorical terms that could possibly be used to describe this particular strategy. “Significatio,” for example, is defined as “to imply
more than is actually stated” (Lanham 138). “Schematismus” is defined as “Circuitous speech to conceal a meaning, either from fear or politeness, or just for fun”
(136). While fear was a factor in this context, these journalists were certainly not
using this strategy out of “politeness” or “fun.” Given the seemingly inexhaustible
list of rhetorical terms, there could, of course, be others. In the final analysis, I opted
for “subversive enthymeme.” Not only does it speak more directly to the considerable
scholarship that already exists on enthymemes, but the term “subversive” captures
an important essence of this strategy.
8. There has been considerable scholarly attention, for example, to the ways in
which slaves in the American South would sing songs to convey meanings to fellow
slaves that were not recognized by the slavemaster. And Nelson Mandela discusses
in his autobiography the various strategies he and Winnie Mandela devised to
communicate with one another in the presence of prison warders: “To get around
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the restrictions on discussing nonfamily matters, we used names whose meaning
was clear to us, but not to the warders. If I wanted to know how Winnie was really doing, I might say, ‘Have you heard about Ngutyana recently; is she all right?’
Ngutyana is one of Winnie’s clan names, but the authorities were unaware of that.
Then Winnie could talk about how and what Ngutyana was doing. If the warder
asked who Ngutyana was, we would say she was a cousin. If I wanted to know how
the external mission of the ANC was faring, I would ask, ‘How is the church?’ Winnie
would discuss ‘the church’ in appropriate terms, and I might then ask, ‘How are the
priests? Are there any new sermons?’ We improvised and managed to exchange a
great deal of information that way” (425).
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Bryan Trabold
Bryan Trabold is an assistant professor of English at Suffolk University, where he
teaches courses in first-year writing, upper-level writing, and literature. This article
and a previous article of his that appeared in College English in March 2006, “Hiding Our Snickers: Weekly Mail Journalists’ Indirect Resistance in Apartheid South
Africa,” are based on the research he conducted in South Africa in 1998–1999.
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