Patrick Laurence with Nelson Mandela and daughters Sarah and Emma
Patrick Laurence, whose dedication and courage during a career spanning five decades made him one of South Africa's most respected journalists, has died aged 74 from a brain tumour. A physically imposing man – well over 6ft tall, rail-thin, with a long bushy beard – he was best known internationally for having twice been arrested for his political reporting.
His first arrest, in 1973, was for interviewing Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the ANC-breakaway organisation the Pan Africanist Congress, which, like the ANC, was a banned group under the apartheid regime. The second, in 1991, just weeks after the release of Nelson Mandela, came because he refused to divulge to the police his sources for a report he had written on the disappearance of a key witness in the trial of Winnie Mandela on charges of kidnapping. Bail was granted, but the following day a protest by journalists was nonetheless accompanied by the slogan "Free Laurence of Azania", prominently spray-painted on to a blank wall.
There was never any question where Patrick's sympathies lay: with the victims, not the masters, of apartheid. Nor about his personal hopes for his country's future: non-racial, democratic, governed by the rule of law. But he was a journalist of the old school. He always saw himself as a reporter, not a polemicist.
His journalistic credo grew out of his background as an academic historian. Born in Johannesburg, he gained a master's degree in history at the University of Natal, specialising in the emergence of African nationalism in Lesotho. He went on to teach history to secondary school students until the early 1960s.
It was then that he became a journalist, first on the Star in Johannesburg, then, in the 1970s, as the leading political reporter on the Rand Daily Mail, in its heyday the only major newspaper in South Africa to challenge the orthodoxies of apartheid. He also wrote for the Observer, the Economist, the Irish Times and the Christian Science Monitor – where I had the privilege of working alongside him when I was sent to South Africa as the Monitor's correspondent in the mid-1980s.
His knowledge of the history and politics of South Africa was encyclopedic. Still, when he sat down to write, he would almost invariably have a small mountain of books close at hand just in case. His former Rand Daily Mail colleague Jeremy Gordin observed: "Patrick would sooner have cut off his finger than get his facts wrong." He believed passionately that a story properly written – true, fair, balanced – would have the power to tell itself.
He earned the respect not only of other journalists but of the country's leading political figures. At Mandela's first news conference after his release from prison, Patrick was among the dozens of reporters to ask questions. "Patrick Laurence?" Mandela exclaimed. "I have been reading your articles for years." And he proceeded to walk over and embrace him.
From the 1990s, he went on to write for a variety of other South African publications, chiefly the Star and the Financial Mail, as well as to edit Focus, the political journal of the foundation set up to promote liberal constitutional democracy by the anti-apartheid MP, and his close friend, Helen Suzman. He also wrote four books: an exposé of the apartheid regime's death squads, a political history of the Transkei and two works on post-apartheid politics.
Despite the influence and praise he earned through his writing, he was the most gentle and soft-spoken of people, indeed sometimes to the point of a near-whisper. When he taught chess at his elder daughter's school in Johannesburg, her classmates promptly dubbed him BFG – "the Big Friendly Giant" – from Roald Dahl's famous children's book.
Only two other passions competed with his tireless dedication to his work. The first was his family: his wife, Sandra, a journalist for the Daily Sun in Johannesburg; and his daughters, Sarah, research manager at Health and Development Africa, focusing on social research into the effects of HIV, and Emma, curator at the Goodman gallery in Johannesburg. All three survive him.
His other passion was sport, above all running. At one point in his younger days, he was the leading mile-runner in South Africa. Until several years before his death he competed, unfailingly, in the annual 56-mile super-marathon in Natal known as the Comrades. For months beforehand his distinctive frame could be seen early each morning pounding the pavements near his north Johannesburg home – a phenomenon known locally as "Father Christmas on the road".
• Patrick Laurence, journalist, born 2 April 1937; died 30 June 2011
His first arrest, in 1973, was for interviewing Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the ANC-breakaway organisation the Pan Africanist Congress, which, like the ANC, was a banned group under the apartheid regime. The second, in 1991, just weeks after the release of Nelson Mandela, came because he refused to divulge to the police his sources for a report he had written on the disappearance of a key witness in the trial of Winnie Mandela on charges of kidnapping. Bail was granted, but the following day a protest by journalists was nonetheless accompanied by the slogan "Free Laurence of Azania", prominently spray-painted on to a blank wall.
There was never any question where Patrick's sympathies lay: with the victims, not the masters, of apartheid. Nor about his personal hopes for his country's future: non-racial, democratic, governed by the rule of law. But he was a journalist of the old school. He always saw himself as a reporter, not a polemicist.
His journalistic credo grew out of his background as an academic historian. Born in Johannesburg, he gained a master's degree in history at the University of Natal, specialising in the emergence of African nationalism in Lesotho. He went on to teach history to secondary school students until the early 1960s.
It was then that he became a journalist, first on the Star in Johannesburg, then, in the 1970s, as the leading political reporter on the Rand Daily Mail, in its heyday the only major newspaper in South Africa to challenge the orthodoxies of apartheid. He also wrote for the Observer, the Economist, the Irish Times and the Christian Science Monitor – where I had the privilege of working alongside him when I was sent to South Africa as the Monitor's correspondent in the mid-1980s.
His knowledge of the history and politics of South Africa was encyclopedic. Still, when he sat down to write, he would almost invariably have a small mountain of books close at hand just in case. His former Rand Daily Mail colleague Jeremy Gordin observed: "Patrick would sooner have cut off his finger than get his facts wrong." He believed passionately that a story properly written – true, fair, balanced – would have the power to tell itself.
He earned the respect not only of other journalists but of the country's leading political figures. At Mandela's first news conference after his release from prison, Patrick was among the dozens of reporters to ask questions. "Patrick Laurence?" Mandela exclaimed. "I have been reading your articles for years." And he proceeded to walk over and embrace him.
From the 1990s, he went on to write for a variety of other South African publications, chiefly the Star and the Financial Mail, as well as to edit Focus, the political journal of the foundation set up to promote liberal constitutional democracy by the anti-apartheid MP, and his close friend, Helen Suzman. He also wrote four books: an exposé of the apartheid regime's death squads, a political history of the Transkei and two works on post-apartheid politics.
Despite the influence and praise he earned through his writing, he was the most gentle and soft-spoken of people, indeed sometimes to the point of a near-whisper. When he taught chess at his elder daughter's school in Johannesburg, her classmates promptly dubbed him BFG – "the Big Friendly Giant" – from Roald Dahl's famous children's book.
Only two other passions competed with his tireless dedication to his work. The first was his family: his wife, Sandra, a journalist for the Daily Sun in Johannesburg; and his daughters, Sarah, research manager at Health and Development Africa, focusing on social research into the effects of HIV, and Emma, curator at the Goodman gallery in Johannesburg. All three survive him.
His other passion was sport, above all running. At one point in his younger days, he was the leading mile-runner in South Africa. Until several years before his death he competed, unfailingly, in the annual 56-mile super-marathon in Natal known as the Comrades. For months beforehand his distinctive frame could be seen early each morning pounding the pavements near his north Johannesburg home – a phenomenon known locally as "Father Christmas on the road".
• Patrick Laurence, journalist, born 2 April 1937; died 30 June 2011
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