Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s, South Africa prided itself as having the most tolerant press laws on the African continent.' Yet, as South Africa came under increasing domestic and international pressure to end its policies of racial separation, the government of State President P.W. Botha imposed increasingly severe restrictions on dissident elements of the population and the press.2 Fighting back, the South African press reported the unrest and, through editorials and commentary, attacked the government's oppressive segregationalist apartheid policies.

In this paper we propose to examine how the growing crisis in South Africa transformed various laws and government policies that affected the press, both directly and indirectly. In doing this, we will trace the history of government regulation of the press in South Africa, and review the press-related laws imposed by the Afrikaner government since its rise to power in 1948. Our examination will focus upon the last half of the 1980s, when press control and suppression of speech seemed to become an obsession with the Botha government, which struggled to maintain apartheid policies in the face of growing white fears that the storm of black nationalism and international condemnation could not be contained. An attempt also will be made to put the South African press restrictions into a more global and historical context by comparing them with those of other nations that from time to time have been faced with internal or external threats to their national security. Of particular interest will be parallels to what we call the other universe - the United States. This article will examine restrictive measures imposed on the press by the government of the United States whose Constitutional guarantee of a press free from just such government interference has traditionally held America up in the world community as the bellwether of press freedom.

This article will conclude with an examination of the positive changes under the government of F.W. de Klerk whose major achievement, at this writing, culminated in a vote of support for the dismantling of apartheid by the white African3 minority. We will conclude with some observations as to what the future might hold for that nation's media assuming that the government is not overthrown, not an uncommon occurrence on the African continent.

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