Sunday Times marks 120 years of fearless journalism

This week it will be 120 years that the Sunday Times, in its own measured, meticulous — though at times eccentric and sensational — way, has been recording the first draft of South African history, warts and all.

The story of the Sunday Times is, at its core, a story of change: a changing birth city, a changing country, a changing economy, a changing way of story-telling and news consumption methods.

The paper was, almost at birth already, a juggernaut. Established on February 4 1906, in what was then considered the “Wild West” of the British Empire, at a time when there was no Sunday paper in South Africa, its growth was instant and rapid, assisted in part by its focus on skandaal and sport in a news ecosystem dominated by pro-establishment dailies.

The Johannesburg of 1906 was a dusty, high-energy mining camp with rickety residential and warehouse structures (replacing slums) for the largely diverse working class in present-day Newtown, while the nouveau riche built mansions in today’s Parktown.

The city was choked by white cyanide-laced dust blown off the tailings piles. The search for gold was everyone’s preoccupation. Environmental health was not a consideration. Lung diseases were the order of the day. For many, life was a hard slog. It was an era of high risk, high reward. Victorian elegance was en vogue.

The Randlords, a small elite of mining magnates, controlled the Witwatersrand’s smog-filled deep mining operations. It is these super-rich, who also relished horse racing, who started and owned the mainstream press.

The front pages of the Sunday Times were always a gauge of the national mood. When the nation was in mourning, it would be clear on its front page. When it was triumphalist, that too would be clear. The focus on skandaal transcended time and space.

Johannesburg was a city on edge, battling the colour bar long before apartheid was in place. The Lagden commission of 1905 recommended that territories be segregated, planting the seeds for a dark chapter in the decades ahead.

The historical roots of the nation’s iconic news brand imbued it with a sensationalist, muckraking character that is, today, tempered by new realities and new ways of doing things. Cities and countries change just as industries do. The journalism practised in Victorian Johannesburg was different from today’s. Ditto news consumption patterns. In its formative years, bravado was everything for a Sunday paper trying to assert itself. It reminded everyone on its masthead that it was the most-read newspaper in the country.

Part of the DNA of the Sunday Times was its fearless irreverence. It thrived on exposing the hypocrisy of the British colonial government and, later, the National Party during the apartheid years. To do this, its founder, George Herbert Kingswell, a swashbuckling New Zealander and war correspondent, focused on its profitability, which he correctly understood to be its protective shield. For the Sunday Times to be the people’s voice, it was crucial not to beg for financial support. This allowed Kingswell, as its first editor, to be, in the milieu, unpretentious, sharp and punchy in his focus on the white English-speaking population. The dailies of the time were subsidised by mining houses and political parties.

The pivot towards “The Paper for the People” came decades later during the editorship of Joel Mervis (1959-1975). While the Rand Daily Mail, a year older than the ST, established itself as more “intellectual”, with a lower circulation, the ST cemented its place as rooted in the people. Post-democracy, the moniker still means the pursuit of the public interest is done on behalf of and for the benefit of the people.

The front pages of the Sunday Times were always a gauge of the national mood. When the nation was in mourning, it would be clear on its front page. When it was triumphalist, that too would be clear. The focus on skandaal transcended time and space.

In the 1960s and ’70s, for example, it used its front pages to mock the absurdity of the Immorality Act, which prohibited interracial sex and marriages. Some of the stories included the ridiculous “bedroom raids”, chronicling tales of officers climbing ladders to peer into windows or storming people’s bedrooms to “feel bedsheets” for warmth that suggested a crime had occurred.

For some, today it may be hard to believe, but in the 1950s, it seemed quite a feat to offer content like “knitting patterns”, social tea announcements and “How to keep your husband happy” advice columns. Women as corporate leaders was too taboo a subject — even as women marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 to demand equal rights.

In 1978, the Sunday Times broke its biggest story — full exposure of the hyper-secret, all-male shadow government, the Afrikaner Broederbond. It was a “holy grail” moment. Until then, the Broederbond was known, but there was no proof that every prime minister and high-ranking official was a member of this group. It took grit from assistant editor Hans Strydom and reporter Ivor Wilkins, who received minutes and a list of 7,500 members, to expose politicians, judges, teachers and priests as members. This great work came at the worst of times, with Tertius Myburgh, a spy-editor, in charge as the apartheid government reigned. This collaborator, Agent T1396, suppressed some stories relating to Vlakplaas death squads and looked the other way as freedom fighters launched a deadly struggle that set our country on an irreversible path towards democracy.

Ken Owen, who succeeded Myburgh, was critical of his predecessor. The paper disowned Myburgh and correctly framed his conduct as a betrayal of the journalists who looked to him for guidance and leadership. Thankfully, he was an aberration, not the norm.

And while the Rand Daily Mail broke the Information Scandal of 1978, it was the Sunday Times’ relentless hits that brought the Nats’ government to its knees. Prime Minister BJ Vorster and his heir apparent, Connie Mulder, had to quit.

This scandal related to the use of spy slush funds to launch a global propaganda war, which locally included founding a progovernment newspaper, The Citizen, to rival the critical English press.

As democracy dawned and as our country changed, so did newspapers, their content and their managers. Newspapers embraced newfound freedom to report, to hold those in power accountable and to pick up the cudgels on behalf of society’s underdogs.

But the newspapers of the past, clunky and ink-stained, are undergoing a total metamorphosis into interactive digital ecosystems. As news consumption methods evolve, newspapers remain a critical node of influence in a global data network, slugging it out with technology giants that churn out much misinformation without an effort at mitigation.

It’s never about the temporariness of the time in office; it’s about being a great counsel to the nation, holding the mirror up so we all talk about why this economy is not creating jobs at the right rate

At the Sunday Times, we know that much has changed since 1906. In today’s journalism, journalists and editors embed videos, insert hyperlinks and use data tools that allow readers to access news and information tailored to their interests. They tell, with consummate professionalism, stories on multiple platforms.

While the use of AI has democratised information more than those who came up with “The Paper for the People” slogan could have ever imagined, we take extra care, knowing that information is power, to tell stories about our changing world with our hands on our hearts because we love our country. When we are critical of it, it’s because we know it could — and want it to — do better.

Yet social media, bereft of quality controls, continues to poison the well, aided by tech billionaires, making it harder for everyone to see the wood for the trees. We know journalism is a mark of honour, a force for good in democracies and resilient to capture by interest groups (political or otherwise).

A great newsroom, like that of the Sunday Times, excels at getting a great splash just as it does at providing cutting-edge contextual journalism — the “so what” factor. Bots can churn out everything that resembles fast news.

A great newsroom explains why a cabinet member with a history of putting his foot in his mouth can’t resolve the actual foot-and-mouth scourge afflicting the country. Or why his departure is great news for opposition politics.

Great journalism explains that our inability to create work for thousands leaving school is a danger to our collective future. A great newsroom is not afraid to upset or irritate those in power: it understands that its words must matter long after the incumbents have left the Union Buildings.

It’s never about the temporariness of the time in office; it’s about being a great counsel to the nation, holding the mirror up so we all talk about why this economy is not creating jobs at the right rate.

Exactly 120 years after its birth, the Sunday Times is a sanctuary of verification, a repository of scoops that resonate with its fearless irreverence, and a brand that is fast evolving in paper form, on the app and on socials. From the Business Times to Ideas to Lifestyle to Sport and News, the mighty Sunday Times has you covered.

In the next 12 months, we will be publishing stories that talk to the mutations of this iconic brand from Lifestyle, Sport, Business and all other areas in which it has interfaced with you, dear reader. — Editor