Mandela's Kinsmen by Timothy Gibbs

Author:Timothy Gibbs [Gibbs, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, General, Africa, South, Republic of South Africa, Social Science, Sociology, Rural
ISBN: 9781847010896
Google: qczCAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published: 2014-01-15T04:14:04+00:00

The making of the ‘Comrade-King’

The great paradox of Sabata’s trial was that Matanzima would never have moved against the Thembu king had he not judged that he could ride roughshod over Sabata’s supporters in the chieftaincy. Yet at the same time, Sabata’s political martyrdom provoked great fear of mass demonstrations. When Sabata went on trial in Port St Johns, police threw up road blocks, cutting off entrance to the town, and the army was mobilised and sent into the surrounding hills. The local magistrate banned all gatherings and public meetings.70 Sabata’s familial connections to ANC leaders and the coverage of his cause in national newspapers connected him to wider networks that stretched across the Eastern Cape and South Africa, giving him new prominence as the ‘Comrade-King’.

King Sabata’s celebrity owed much to the coverage he received from the newspapers. In Transkei a handful of newssheets – Imvo, Intsimbi, Isizwe and the like – circulated around Umtata. Sometimes typed and printed, otherwise handwritten and produced on duplicating machines, they were labours of love, whose editors faced censure and sometimes jail for their pains. They broke scandalous stories and achieved local fame around Umtata, but the success of Matanzima’s campaign to suppress them is seen in that only a handful of copies survive in South Africa’s libraries. The big change was the penetration of commercial newspapers into Transkei. Their success was epitomised by the Daily Dispatch, which had transformed its operation under a dynamic young editor, Donald Woods, in the mid 1970s. He covered forced removals and black opposition politics in the Eastern Cape Homelands. He employed more black journalists than ever before, who used their contacts to break these stories. He produced Indaba, a weekly supplement in English and isiXhosa. Most scandalous was the desegregation of the news pages which announced births, marriages and deaths. Circulation figures dropped from 21,000 to 18,000. But then a new black readership – which accounted for perhaps half the paper’s circulation – took figures to 33,000. Transkei readership accounted for one-fifth of the newspaper’s total circulation, and advertisements placed by the Bantustan Government proved a lucrative source of revenue.71

The Daily Dispatch was so much a part of Transkei’s politics that the militant young activists who anonymously leafleted Umtata sent copies of their tracts to the newspaper for publication. ‘Don’t fear Master’, one conspirator had written, in a letter to the editor, which he naively signed. ‘Do me one favour in your life: publish it [the pamphlet] as it is… Maybe you have got a fear that your newspaper will be banned in Transkei… By publishing appeals like this one, you will be popular with the public. There will be good sales.’72

The journalists working in Umtata were at the heart of Sabata’s trial. It was the newspaper reports of Sabata’s speech in Qumbu that were the immediate cause of the treason trial. Reporters from the Dispatch and Imvo were subpoenaed to appear as state witnesses. Their evidence would be crucial in corroborating the police reports on Sabata’s supposed subversive comments.

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