A Censorship rant......................

[Trevor]

“What Did You Tell The Librarians?” ~ or the horrors of South African literary censorship



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Before I commence my presentation, I would like to ask how many of the people present were at the IFLA conference in Durban in 2007? It was South Africa’s sincere pleasure and privilege to host all of you there and I trust that you all enjoyed yourselves very much: I bring you warm greetings from South Africa.

The title of my paper comes from a rather rude telephone call that the filmmaker Michael Moore received from his publisher regarding his book “Stupid White Men”. The publisher demanded to know what was going on because “we’re getting hate mail from librarians”. What had happened was Mr Moore had told his guests at a lecture in New York that, due to the tragic events of September 11, 2001 (my birthday, unfortunately) his book would not be released and the stored 50 000 copies awaiting distribution and sale would most likely be pulped. What Mr Moore was unaware of was that one of the guests there was a librarian who, angered at the censorship practiced by the publishers, emailed her colleagues, telling them what had happened and to contact the publishers to demand that Mr Moore’s book be released. The upshot of this was that thousands of librarians across the country contacted his publishers, the book was released with no media fanfare and became a best-seller almost immediately. Mr Moore’s wry comment in that book was that “librarians are one terrorist group that you don’t want to mess with.” I’d like to thank Mr Moore for allowing me to include part of his book in this paper.

I was introduced as being from the SA National Film, Video and Sound Archives, so you are no doubt wondering what on earth a film archivist is doing at a library conference? I am not really sure either but let me try to enlighten you..
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In his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 2007 IFLA conference in Durban, the Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Z Pallo Jordan, touched on the subject of literary censorship in South Africa and mentioned that the “august” body known as the Censor Board made a serious error of judgement when they banned a supposedly offensive book with a supposedly offensive title. The author: Anna Sewell. The title: Black Beauty. You can laugh, but it was and is sadly true: the Censor Board had banned it on the title alone.

The South African Censor board (later to become known and feared as the Publications Control Board) was established in 1933 and continued its’ reign of terror until the GNU was formed when democracy and sanity came to South Africa in 1994. In the years preceding the advent of democracy, thousands of films were either banned or cut, millions of books, magazines and newspapers were banned, people were thrown into prison for possession of so-called undesirable material and one of South Africa’s foremost poets, Professor T T Cloete, became a censor in 1963.

Just a minute, I hear you saying: A writer being a censor? Could this be true? Yes, unfortunately. Having a writer as a censor is like having a child molestor look after your children: it is wrong and just does not work. The Publications Control Board and its’ big brother, the Publications Appeal Board had frightening powers and ruled with an iron fist ~ what is worse is that they had no public faces and could have shop-owners arrested on the spot for selling “indecent” or “offensive” material. No South African was allowed to possess material that they found objectionable, and as my Minister said, free thoughts were not encouraged, unless they were free thoughts sponsored by the National Party.

Having said that, the rise of the South African Censor Boards was not due in any way to the ugly policies of Apartheid ~ if one says that it was so, how can it be that liberal and politically progressive countries outside of South Africa also banned and censored publications and films? No, the censorship policy of South Africa can be ascribed to a blinkered mentality: anything that they did not recognize or understand is of the Devil himself, i.e. horrible things like television, (yes, TV was banned) having a drink in a bar on a Sunday, buying a newspaper on Sundays and Lord forbid that one should actually want to go shopping on that day. For many years, South Africans were told what they may or may not read, listen to, see and virtually what they may do. The true horror of this state of affairs is that the Censor Boards did their work with little or no opposition from the public, who boneheadedly let the then government make decisions for them. Thankfully, this rotten status quo no longer applies.

Even worse, film screenings were banned on Sundays and this policy continued until 1993, video stores being exempt from this policy. Films were heavily censored and restricted: a sad example is the Lou Adler film “Up In Smoke” starring Richard “Cheech” Marin and a famous son of Canada, Tommy Chong. The Censor Board banned this film, stating that “it will encourage the use of marijuana by the impressionable youth of South Africa”. So as a result, I didn’t see this film until the censorship laws were relaxed. When I finally did see it on DVD, I was shocked. Shocked because the Censor Board were in a sense right as it did encourage me to do something. But not, to their dismay, I suppose, to smoke marijuana: It encouraged me to laugh. I could go on for hours concerning the films that were banned by the Censor Boards and for which reasons, but I would need a few days to do this correctly.

Even popular music was not exempt from these idiots and their ability to turn gold into turds: after John Lennon’s infamous comment about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus was aired, their music was banned from airplay. I am sure that David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Richard Wright and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd would be amused to know that their album The Wall was denounced as offensive and banned. When asked about the banning later, the Minister of the Interior was quoted as saying that he had never heard of the group Pink Floyd at all. Artists such as Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel also had their works banned in South Africa, both for the direct anti-South African political stance that these artists chose to take, other than focusing on racial injustices in their own countries.

The Censor Board under the chairmanship of the 80 year old Professor Gerrit Dekker underwent a major change in 1963 and was re-named the Publications Control Board, but no matter: it was still a faceless, bureaucratic, shadowy, faceless organization who found everything from women’s naked shoulders in films, to so-called adult magazines to television “offensive to the population of South Africa” and banned them. As regards television, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Dr Albert Hertzog, condemned it as “the Devil’s box” and banned it forthwith. A major irony: once TV came to South Africa in 1975, the first telecommunications tower in Johannesburg was named after him.

Many famous authors’ works were banned ~ I am sure that Stephen King would be delighted to hear that Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, It, The Dead Zone and ‘Salem’s Lot were denounced as offensive and banned for many years. Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” was also banned as “undesirable” although the Steven Spielberg film was not. Jackie Collins’ novels were all banned, as were the novels by Jacqueline Susann. Many of the books by James Herbert, Peter Straub and Clive Barker were also declared as offensive and banned. Robert Ruark’s books on Africa, such as “Uhuru” and “Something Of Value” were also banned.

The renowned South African authors Andre P. Brink, Wilbur Smith, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Breyten Breytenbach, Richard Rive, Ezekiel Maphalele and Stuart Cloete also had their works banned and the controversial author Etienne Leroux also went through the PCB gauntlet: there were cries of horror when Leroux’s “Seven Days With The Silbersteins” was awarded a major SA literary prize and calls were made in Parliament for it to be banned, even though none of those people had actually read the book. Even if you were a Nobel Peace Prize Literature winner and an Oscar winner, your work was not immune from banning: Nadine Gordimer and Ronald Harwood respectively found this out to their disgust.

Even humour was considered offensive back in the day: the first two Second World War autobiographies of Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall and Rommel? Gunner Who? were banned. After hearing all this, you must be wondering what the PCB wanted South Africans to read exactly? Other authors who had their works banned included the following authors:

William Styron (Sophie’s Choice)
Dean Koontz
Harold Robbins
Henry Miller
Judith Krantz
Grace Metalious
Anthony Burgess
John Farris
Gore Vidal
Calder Willingham
Don Pendleton
Charles Bukowski
Donald Woods
Steve Biko
Jack Kerouac
William L Burroughs
Robin Moore
Eric Von Lustbader
Irving Wallace
Ernest Tidyman
Nelson Mandela
John Jakes
Joan Collins
Norman Mailer (The Naked & The Dead banned for its’ title alone)
Norman Spinrad
James Blish
Dennis Wheatley
Mickey Spillane
James Baldwin
Mario Puzo (The Godfather)
J G Ballard
Kingsley Amis
Larry MacMurtry
John D. MacDonald
James Hadley Chase
Ken Follett
Paul Theroux
Sidney Sheldon
Brendan Behan
Kurt Vonnegut
Joseph Heller
Lawrence Sanders
James A Michener
Joseph Wambaugh
Dick Francis
Germaine Greer
James Jones
Mario Puzo
Thomas Pynchon
Morris West
Vladimir Nabokov
Boris Pasternak
Frederick Forsyth
Irwin Shaw
Nicholas Monsarratt
Georges Simenon……………..etc, ad nauseaum.

Books, magazines, journals, pamphlets, posters, films, videos, sound recordings even magic lantern shows were all banned and being in possession of these and being caught so doing left the person with two options, one worse than the other: a stiff jail sentence, a heavy fine or both. One of my weekly tasks at the NFVSA was to put new lists of banned articles into an ominous sounding file called Jacobsens Book Of Objectionable Literature.

I have our copy here with me and I had to pay extra baggage handling fees for it as it is so heavy. This file has over 600 pages of so-called “offensive” and “objectional” material listed in it, much of it being of a political and sexual nature, but ultimately, all of it was declared to be against the wishes of the government of the day and “offensive” to a certain section of the public.

It is interesting to note that while all so-called “Communist” books and pamphlets such as the works of Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Nikita Khruschev and Joseph Stalin were banned, works such as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf were not. Idiocy also ran rampant when two books published in Zimbabwe in the 1980’s were banned for “having possible communistic influences” ~ these books were entitled Thoughts Of Chairman Jesus and Quotations From Comrade Jesus ~ books containing quotes from the Bible. This "ban everything communistic in sight but leave the rest alone" jag could be put down to the fact that the Prime Minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1977 (when South African censorship was at its’ most claustrophobic) was one Balthazar Johannes Vorster, a man who was interned during World War 11 for his pro-Nazi stance.

If, after a certain period, books and other items were found to be non-offensive anymore, the PCB and PAB still issued orders regarding the sale and displaying of such items. These books were not allowed to be in public view and if they were, they had to be in a sealed wrapper, possibly for fear that the thoughts somehow could infiltrate the minds of the easily convinced by some weird sort of osmosis. Previously undesirable publications were held in libraries and if the publication was of a sexual nature, these books were kept locked away until someone plucked up the courage to ask for them. Even by appearing like benevolent uncles and saying that “we trust you, you’re adults now, you can read / see / hear this” the Censor Boards still put restrictions on what could be seen, heard, read and done by the public that paid their salaries.

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In conclusion, I would like to dedicate this paper to a special friend of mine, a lady who is sadly no longer with me. Her name was Jeanette Burger and she was someone who managed to look beyond my problems and encourage me greatly. She always told me (unlike the other teachers in my life) that I had tremendous potential to do whatever I wanted (that I should also dismiss the nay sayers in my life) but that I should watch that temper of mine.

What did I tell her? Nothing.
What did I teach her? Nothing.
What did she tell me? A lot.
What did she teach me? Everything I know.

What was she, you ask? She was simply these two things: A good person and a librarian. She was the best at both, I miss her a lot and think of her often.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

[Trevor]

I will also add the following, sort of 'off the cuff' comment when I start, so long as Andrew gives me permission to do it.

"Thank you for the introduction. I must just add one thing to my list of achievements which you are not aware of and that I am the unofficial South African ambassador for the website www.badmovies.org. If your spirits need a lift, please go there. You will not be disappointed, I assure you."

[Andrew]

Trevor, you say whatever you want to say.  Promising them that the site will make happy bunnies dance on their keyboards might get you some weird looks.

That's an interesting essay there.  It almost sounds like McCarthyism, but focused on written works and decades after we experienced the witch hunt in the United States.  It also sounds like the people establishing the censor list were not familiar with a number of the works they determined should be banned.

[Trevor]

  Thanks, Andrew: I can't put that paragraph in when I send in my script for approval to go to Quebec in August 2008 but you can be sure that I will say it.

Those "august" PCB and PAB members were all powerful and never really needed to give reasons as to why things were "offensive" or "objectionable" in the slightest. The worst Censor of the whole bunch was an odious character named J.H. Snyman, nicknamed "Lammie" [lamb] who ruled with an iron fist.

I am not one to make fun of health issues but after being less than two weeks in his post as Chief Censor, Snyman suffered a serious coronary and was away from his post for about three months. Comedians of the time suggested that his coronary was due to him viewing what the South African public must be protected from.   

[indianasmith]

I've always believed that adults should have the right to watch and create whatever art they want, unless it involves seriously evil stuff like REAL torture, pedophilia, or murder.  I do believe in having some sort of ratings system that is fairly specific so parents can exercise control over what their minor children see and hear.  Beyond that, let freedom ring!

[trekgeezer]

I' m pretty much of the same opinion as indianasmith on this.  The real shame is that there are many in the US who would like nothing better than to control what others see, hear, and do.

[CheezeFlixz]

I will never understand a government or ministry's need to parent our entertainment/educational intake. I'm afraid that here in the good ole USA we are headed down that road, not in as a extreme manner as you had in pre-1994 SA, but slipping down that path under the guise of political correctness.

Certain words can't be said because it might offend someone, well if you let a word offend you that's your problem and not the populous.
Many of our classic cartoons and movies have been cut to pieces to remove anything that is so called "offensive" meanwhile they are destroying history in the process and more importantly violating the creators work. While there is no centralized agency to say what is and what isn't offensive in classic works, one can only wonder who is making these decisions. As you know here the MPAA rate what is released but they can not censor directly, on use threats of a poor unmarketable rating like NC-17 or X, very difficult to market those to the masses.

On self imposed censorship ask Disney why they won't release "Song of the South" on DVD is the US. They released it years ago on VHS, what's changed? Nothing other than the political climate in this 'hearts-on-their-sleeve's society' we find ourselves in is what has changed. The movie remains the same, the times are different. Same goes for "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain, many schools have banned it, why? I don't know. Makes no sense to me, take Huck Finn away and hand out condoms instead. You can't have a Coke it'll rot your teeth, but we'll help you get an abortion and not tell your parents ... makes my head hurt thinking about it.

Meanwhile you can have (so called) songs about gang-bangin, drugs, murder, cop killing, rape and the rest of the gambit and that's ok. You can release negative movies about the military or America in general and that's ok. Now I for one will never say one cannot or should not release such material. I might not like it, but in this country you are allowed to produce it and doesn't mean I have to pay to see/hear it or support it. But that still doesn't explain why some older classics are edited or banned over so called cultural insensitivities. If they can have some of the stuff they have today this I see no reason to banned/censor some of the old stuff.


BANNED

So back to your original post censorship to me in this age is meaningless with the internet, while the UN want control over the internet to restrict access (at the bequest of a few control hungry countries *see IGF) to some material you can never filter it all. The public is to savvy to kept in the information and entertainment dark ages. If they remove it from the surface, then it will go underground ... a little harder to find but still there.

We're adults and we should decide what we should and should not see, hear, read and if you are an adult with children then it's the parents job to monitor what that child has access too. I certainly don't expect the government to raise my children, and I don't expect them to raise me.

Here enjoy a BANNED BETTY BOOP cartoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIxHfwhckcs
	Small | Large

[Trevor]

The problem with our Censors, 1933 ~ 1994 was that they believed only what they believed in and recognized only that which they were aware of and comfortable with.

Anything that they did not know of or were afraid of was immediately "of the Devil himself" ~ things like TV for example. As to depictions of politics, across the colour line relationships, falling pregnant out of wedlock, friendship over racial barriers etc: those were alien to their culture and were banned.

Andrew said that the people in charge were not familiar with the works they banned: correct, sir. They were the government's yes men and toed the line, not because they were experts in their fields, but because they knew what was good for them.

As far as I am concerned, the apartheid government of South Africa only ever did one good thing for it and that was the establishment of the National Film Board to preserve films made in or about South Africa. It still exists today and someone you know works there. 

[RCMerchant]

Way to go Trevor! Keep up the good fight!   

[Trevor]

  Thanks, RC: karma for you. Hope you have a good day today, my friend!   

 It's 08h18 am here and I wish I was still in bed: I am still stiff and sore after that 10 mile walk on Sunday!  It was for a good cause though, so no problem. 

[Trevor]

  

I have just learnt that the new South African Film and Publications Board www.fpb.gov.za has, after a period of thirteen years since 1994, made its' first banning.

The film is Baixo das Bestas or Bog Of Beasts. Apparently, one person saw the film (oddly enough, this person was one of my clients recently and was a member of the FPB) and informed the board that a scene in the film "approaches child pornography and should be banned".

If it is so, I am actually glad that the film has been banned but I would like to see it to make up my own mind.