There is a video on YouTube in which Gwen Lister tells a group of reporters: “Nobody in their right mind would become a journalist because they want to be popular”.
They are sage words.
In this age of unbridled confirmation bias and every Tom, Dick and Harry foisting their University of Wikipedia-cultivated opinion on the world, journalists have become personae non grata, foot soldiers of the “evil mainstream” there to be gloriously torn down in a fit of social media outrage.
As more people read to comment rather than understand, so the journalist’s role becomes less significant, even obsolete, in the eyes of detractors.
Sadly, though most in the profession are honest people who work unforgiving hours for a relative pittance, the ranks do also include a few glory hunters for whom a “following” on Twitter holds more value than substance.
It is they who befoul the Fourth Estate with their access journalism tendencies, antagonising at every opportunity to outrage middle-class morality to grow their personal audience.
The worker bees who grind away thanklessly are caught up in the maelstrom and are tarred with the same brush when the comments section hordes descend.
Despised on all sides, the journalist takes it all in, dusts himself off, and goes again.
East London-born Lister, the founding editor of The Namibian newspaper, knows a thing or two about being hated.
In the turbulent 80s , she was almost completely ostracised by then South West Africa’s white community for her reporting on the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) and that country’s liberation movement.
Lister was all in, risking imprisonment, and at times her own life, to report what she knew to be true.
She was and is what a journalist is meant to be.
Comrade Editor: On life, journalism and the birth of Namibia, published by Tafelberg, is Lister’s memoir, and tells of her transition from a student activist in Cape Town to one of Namibia’s most important figures in its fight for independence.
Countless books have been written about the atrocities of apartheid, but very few on how SA’s policies in its former mandate affected that country’s population — events that should be of no less significance.
To say Lister was green when she first made the journey to Windhoek to begin life as reporter is an understatement.
“I panicked at the prospect of becoming a reporter in a largely unfamiliar country.
“I actually knew very little about journalism. I’d had no formal training, and no experience whatsoever,” she writes.
By her own admission, it was a baptism of fire, especially considering she would cut her teeth under the editorship of an unrepentant, misogynistic — though intensely committed — journalist on the now-defunct Windhoek Advertiser.
Johannes “Smittie” Smith loved his booze and had an “eye for the ladies”, in other words, a caricature of the newspaper man at the time.
Throughout their time together on the Advertiser and later the Windhoek Observer, they had run-ins, even if Smith would come to respect his young charge, however begrudgingly.
Lister was determined to disprove that journalism was no place for the ladies, and succeeded.
As much as Smith could be boorish and abusive, their common love of flying in the face of the powerful made them a formidable pairing.
That is, until Smith was no longer able to hold the line.
Lister had successfully challenged a total ban on The Observer by the SA authorities, but a cold wind was blowing in.
The paper was in financial trouble, but a new owner was willing to save it — on one condition.
Advertisers were demanding a more “moderate political stance”, and Lister was demoted as politics editor and her column scrapped.
By that stage, her reputation for sympathising with Swapo and its leaders preceded her, to the point that rival publications regularly lampooned her in their cartoons.
Her demotion caused her to resign and embark on the long, arduous road to starting her own newspaper, The Namibian.
Smith barely uttered a word.
Lister was the consummate newshound, but it was her bravery that set her apart.
As terrified as she might have been, she would do anything to expose the apartheid government for what it was.
It had long been known that critics of the regime were spied on and their communications monitored. Lister showed to what extent this was happening.
On returning home one day, she found a large envelope addressed to the postmaster-general, but marked with her postal address.
Inside this envelope was another, stamped “Uiters Geheim” (Top Secret).
What she found inside was an interception order for her incoming and outgoing mail.
“The security police had made an embarrassing mistake by mailing it to me instead of the postmaster,” she writes.
She more or less knew what the consequences of making the mail public would be, but she went ahead regardless.
She made copies of the document and summarily distributed them among members of the press corps, even shouting, “Scoop! Scoop! Who wants a scoop?” in the process.
As much as Lister’s sentiments lay with Swapo — the book contains pictures of her sitting or standing alongside leaders such as Sam Nujoma and Andimba ya Toivo — she was also always careful to insist on her independence as a journalist.
Even when these figures offered her cash to fund The Namibian at a time when she needed it most, she refused.
“I would not start a newspaper without editorial independence, and would never work on a party-political publication, even though I was largely sympathetic to Swapo’s cause.”
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