*****
Having first learned about this troubled tip of the Dark Continent from "Life magazine's photo spread about apartheid in the late 1950's with its striking images of the winds of change, the bus boycotts and passive resistance campaigns that foreshadowed similar events in our country" along with irresistible music like "Wimoweh"; having first visited there in 1967 as an innocuous, inconspicuous Mercury dispatched by the ANC at LSE to deliver some messages and mail and to circulate fliers to the Apartheid victims, Schechter tells us that "[it]t was hard to say 'no' even though I was scared shitless at the idea of actually doing it!"
His life was changed forever by that trip, which "would involve me in that struggle for the next 40 years, would lead me to write countless articles, make six films with Nelson Mandela and then another on the making and meaning of 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom' [the epic movie made in 2012-13] and produce 156 weeks of a TV news series called South Africa Now."
Upon his return, Schechter resolved to get the news out to everyone, not just "those in the know," such a vast minority. First, he helped found a research group (the African Research Group [ARG]. Its purpose was to "popularize African issues. We wanted to encourage, if not inspire, political action." In an unpublished working paper prepared for a January 1969 conference of radical researchers, Schechter argued that the truth about what was going on in South Africa could have "political implications and action consequences."
Schechter emphasized the large time stretch, several decades, that the battle against Apartheid had been going on, not just since the Soweto uprising and the murder of Steve Biko. And then, as a USA-stabbing aside: "the apartheid system was actually modeled after America's system of Indian reservations."
But then, he continued his still-ongoing mission through the various media mentioned above, his true calling. For example, through his five years producing for ABC's "20/20," "I came to see that independent production could be more fun and fulfilling, without the editorial restraints, layers of control and pretensions of the corporate news world."
Hence the Emmy award-winning documentary TV series "South Africa Now," which lasted three years on PBS stations throughout the country as well islands of the Caribbean, Japan, and South Africa, and shared with the public all that it needed to know--oceans of knowledge, analysis, and multimedia messaging, that were found nowhere else but in the "beloved country" itself and surrounding areas. "Gaps, omissions, distortions, and dis-information" emanating from the MSM were also covered.
Two other vitally important events ignored by the media? 1) that "Mandela himself initiated the negotiations that resulted in his own release, and that he did so from behind bars"; and 2) how he ended up in prison in the first place-- the CIA tipped off the South African police as to his whereabouts.
Further, the mainstream was ignoring crucial problems related to HIV/AIDS and education. Such gaping omissions might have reflected the low priority the South African government assigned to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
"We have presented apartheid as more than a system of legalized racial domination, viewing it as a framework of economic exploitation and ethnic division and manipulation. We covered apartheid as a labor system, a tool for preserving racial privilege through the exploitation of labor as well as dealing with questions of race. . . .[Mandela] emphasized that class, not color, is a crucial factor in the struggle, and that economic power is as important as political power."
In South Africa and overseas, endorsements flowed in "from Allister Sparks to Bill Moyers, Gwen Lister to Anthony Lewis, Les Payne to Peter Magubane."
Others, including former viewers--black South Africans as well as fellow journalists--said that "South Africa Now" had contributed to the coming of democracy in that country.
"Now, that's a feeling that makes media work worthwhile -- a sense that your work matters and has had an impact."
But what about democracy in our country? muses the author.
Note the dovetailing with another reference to our own diseased society: "Some black stations said [that Sun City] was 'too white' while many white stations considered it 'too black.' (How's that for a comment on our own apartheid?)"
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