PATRICK LAURENCE:PATRICK LAURENCE, who has died aged 74, was one of South Africa's most respected, meticulous and incisive journalists.
He left no fact unchecked, very few politicians unscathed and every infinitive unsplit. In his time he worked for several publications at home and abroad including the Economist,the Observerand the Guardian. He was editor of Focus, the magazine of the pro-democracy Helen Suzman Foundation, and a frequent contributor to The Irish Timesover many years.
The old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, certainly applied to Laurence, but he regarded it as a blessing. Out in the field, at his newspaper office and in the basement study of his house in the affluent Johannesburg suburb of Parktown, he set about chronicling and analysing his country’s progress from authoritarianism to democracy.
It was a severe and punishing journey not only for South Africa but for Laurence himself. His two loves were politics and sport, and the latter suffered for the former’s evils. A Springbok athlete in his youth, the international anti-apartheid boycott kept him from participating in the Olympics. He kept fit right up to his final illness, running in marathons in the heat and altitude of Johannesburg.
According to the Johannesburg Star, his daughter Sarah Magni described his training methods for those marathons as follows: "First he would go out running with the family's small dogs, then the bigger ones and finally with strap-on ankle weights and dumbbells."
Laurence paid the same punishing attention to his journalism, a driving force of which was his unshakeable integrity. In his early days with the Rand Daily Mail,a fearless voice of white anti-apartheid liberalism, he clashed frequently with the regime. In 1973 when in his 30s he was arrested under the notorious Suppression of Communism Act (1950).
The Act had nothing to do with communism though it was designed to give the impression outside South Africa that a struggle against communism was in progress. In fact, the Act was phrased in such a way that anything the regime did not like could be defined as “communist”.
In Laurence's case the offence was to report a statement by Robert Sobukwe of the Pan Africanist Congress for the Observerin London. As a first "offender" his sentence of 18 months in prison was suspended.
In 1991 Laurence was arrested again, this time for refusing to reveal his sources of information, and was sent to the detention cells in Johannesburg’s John Vorster Square police station. A campaign for his release was pursued by the International Federation of Journalists and colleagues demonstrated on the streets of Johannesburg and Durban. He was quickly freed on bail and the charges against him were dropped some months later.
Recognised as an astute political columnist, Laurence was different from many members of today’s commentariat in that he went frequently and bravely into the real and dangerous world as a reporter.
This was particularly striking in 1994, the definitive year in South Africa's move to democracy. At Mafikeng, in what was then the "Bantustan" of Bophuthatswana, Laurence was beaten up by marauding members of the neo-fascist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging who had spent a day out shooting black people. Laurence described his experience in an Irish Timesarticle on March 14th, 1994, under the headline: "No Point Reasoning With a Gun in Your Face."
Two weeks later Laurence was caught in a sniper attack on a group of Zulu marchers in downtown Johannesburg. He threw himself to the ground and his back was used as a pathway by those escaping. Fifteen people died nearby. When the shooting stopped he caught the eye of a Zulu man who had survived and gave him an open-palmed peace salute. The man replied with the word " Umfowethu" ("my brother").
When interviewing Nelson Mandela on his release from prison, this newspaper’s Séamus Martin recalls that the mention of Laurence’s name caused the great man’s face to light up and elicited the words: “An excellent journalist.”
Few have received such a tribute but although it pleased Laurence it did not stop his fierce criticism of the errors of the ANC in power and the excesses of some of its members.
He is survived by his wife, Sandra, herself a journalist, and his daughters, Sarah and Emma.
His family has set up the Patrick Laurence Foundation for the education of young journalists in South Africa.
Patrick Laurence: born April 2nd, 1937; died June 30th, 2011