Benjamin Pogrund's title was "African Affairs reporter" for the old Rand Daily Mail in South Africa - meaning he covered what white South Africans, and newspapers, called "the native problem."
After 1960, when he got the job, Benji Pogrund was covering a three-decade "war of words." And the revolutionary black democrats led by Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were not the only enemy of the Afrikaaner government and its policy of racial separateness.
The trick was to get stories of black life and protest, and labor strikes, past the Official Secrets Act and then past cautious editors. Most black news was routinely blacked out, but for a conscientious white reporter like Ben Pogrund, there were big thrills. As when he was put on trial for reporting the squalor of South African prisons, and the police major told him: "You're the enemy. We'll stop at nothing to get you."
The news business in old and new South Africa is on this hour. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
