Inside South Africa’s radical anti-apartheid zine

The legacy of Staffrider — Published between 1978 and 1996, Staffrider introduced a sense of unity that was nationally outlawed. Here, the people who made it happen reflect on its significance.

The first victims of totalitarian states are the artists and writers,” says Staffrider editor Andreis Oliphant. As a South African creative coming of age under the Boer regime, he is keenly aware of how instrumental censorship was in perpetuating apartheid. The Suppression of Communist Act passed in 1950 sanctioned the government to “ban” any person, publication or organisation that it felt was a potential threat to their unjust order. This incited a wave of mass banning that not only landed African National Congress leaders like Nelson Mandela in prison, but also silenced the country’s progressive writers, photographers, musicians and artists – many of whom went into exile.

This stifling repression created what Oliphant calls a “cultural desert” in South Africa, leaving decades worth of suppressed creativity in need of an outlet. Staffrider magazine became that.

The arts publication was an indirect product of the Christian Institute of Southern Africa, an organisation founded in 1963 with aims of uniting Christians against apartheid. The institute started a publishing program that planned to focus on emancipation theology – but instead, they found themselves inundated with manuscripts by writers of colour who had been silenced by the state and presented with no alternate publishing avenues.

Slowly, the Christian Institute shifted its intent to inclusivity, and developed into a fortified publishing house. But after the 1976 student uprisings, its leaders were banned and confined to their homes, leaving the race-blind publishing initiative at a standstill. In order to continue their efforts, they appointed an English literature academic named Mike Kirkwood to run it in their absence. There, Ravan Press  – an acronym of the banned leaders’ last names – was born.

One of Kirkwood’s first intentions was to start a popular journal, which addressed the widespread writing communities popping up in townships across the country. “There was a need for an arts magazine that would serve as a platform for a new generation of community-based arts groups allied to the Black Consciousness movement, that would also include white activist artists,” says photographer and long-time Staffrider collaborator Omar Badsha. Badsha, along with Mafika Gwala and Nkathazo ka Mnyayiza of the Mpumalanga Arts Group, met with Kirkwood just before he took his new position at Ravan Press, to discuss the concept for a new, multidisciplinary publication.

The editorial policy was based on Ravan’s anti-apartheid ethos. It was non-racial, populist and chose English as its language of publication (rather than Afrikaans or other indigenous languages). Even though Kirkwood is considered the founding editor, in the early days of Staffrider, the publisher’s intervention was minimal. The real editing process was done at the community level; writers groups worked together to edit and select pieces they wanted to publish, before sending them to Ravan. The pages of Staffrider were filled with poetry, social realist fiction, popular history, graphics, fine art and documentary photography. The multitude of mediums reflected the multitude of voices legitimised and validated by the publication: first-time writers were published beside some of South Africa’s most famous, including Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, Douglas Livingstone and Rose Zwi. The levelled playing field conveyed a sense of solidarity in rebellion.

The magazine’s name came from a slang word referring to the ticket-less young men who clung to the sides of the roof of overcrowded, segregated trains that travelled between townships and city centres. It alludes to the everyday necessity of “the commute” for South African workers who were barred from living in white areas, and even more poignantly, to the rebels who refused to comply with expectation. According to Oliphant, a “Staffrider is a daredevil who defies convention, who transgresses the imposition of a particular system.”

The first edition of Staffrider was published in March 1978, and it got immediately banned for distribution. The second suffered the same fate. But the magazine’s structure, which lacked formal hierarchy and attributed works largely to their groups, made it more difficult for censors to target an individual for their work. Moving forward, Staffrider editors learned to find the loopholes in the apartheid censorship system, and the following editions were allowed to circulate freely.

By 1980, the magazine’s print run was 7000, and 90 per cent of the readership was black. It ended up becoming an indispensable forum for PoC writers to share their work with the world, and challenge racial and cultural oppression when the propaganda of apartheid machinery was at its most dominant. It also received an enthusiastic response from progressive white students, who viewed it as one of the few publications in the country that allowed for an alternative (rather than state-sanctioned) viewpoint of South Africa.

The magazine’s editorial policy was subject to criticism, however, and shifted over time. “People who were into high art thought of it as a magazine of advocacy, that lacked subtlety,” explains long-time photo contributor Paul Weinberg. “They believed it was below the gold standard of where literature should be in the academic sense, because it was partisan and clearly political.”

By 1980, the Staffrider team was presented with such a high volume of submissions that it had no choice but to be more selective. Mike Kirkwood later appointed Chris Van Wyk to overtake the magazine and in his time, its quality (in terms of both design and content ) was elevated. Still, Staffrider’s mission wasn’t to publish the best writing in South Africa; it was to encourage new artists to share their artwork with broader audiences.

The end of the apartheid regime in 1994 marked the end of Staffrider. The magazine was an incubation site not only for progressive artistic expression, but also for broader political activity and cultural development. “Alternative press formed part of the mass resistance movement against the apartheid regime,” says Badsha. “It provided us with a window into the role and possibilities that the arts provided in the building of a new liberated South Africa.”

Despite it being of paramount importance, the potency of Staffrider’s legacy has been lost in the landscape of a broader narrative of struggle and oppression. Perhaps because the pages of Staffrider present ideas that are still, 25 years after the end of the Apartheid regime, subversive.

“Critics claim that artistic resistance is ineffective,” adds Oliphant. “But to those same people I ask, why do authoritarian states consistently go after artists and writers? They are silenced, killed, jailed and exiled, because artists articulate the experiences and conditions of their communities, of various classes, genders and races. It’s because they mobilise people.”

Read all of the Staffrider back catalogue on Digital Innovation South Africa.

Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.


Ad

Latest on Huck

Crowd of silhouetted people at a nighttime event with colourful lighting and a bright spotlight on stage.
Music

Clubbing is good for your health, according to neuroscientists

We Become One — A new documentary explores the positive effects that dance music and shared musical experiences can have on the human brain.

Written by: Zahra Onsori

Indoor skate park with ramps, riders, and abstract architectural elements in blue, white, and black tones.
Sport

In England’s rural north, skateboarding is femme

Zine scene — A new project from visual artist Juliet Klottrup, ‘Skate Like a Lass’, spotlights the FLINTA+ collectives who are redefining what it means to be a skater.

Written by: Zahra Onsori

Black-and-white image of two men in suits, with the text "EVERYTHING IS COMPUTER" in large bright yellow letters overlaying the image.
Culture

Donald Trump says that “everything is computer” – does he have a point?

Huck’s March dispatch — As AI creeps increasingly into our daily lives and our attention spans are lost to social media content, newsletter columnist Emma Garland unpicks the US President’s eyebrow-raising turn of phrase at a White House car show.

Written by: Emma Garland

A group of people, likely children, sitting around a table surrounded by various comic books, magazines, and plates of food.
© Michael Jang
Culture

How the ’70s radicalised the landscape of photography

The ’70s Lens — Half a century ago, visionary photographers including Nan Goldin, Joel Meyerowitz and Larry Sultan pushed the envelope of what was possible in image-making, blurring the boundaries between high and low art. A new exhibition revisits the era.

Written by: Miss Rosen

Silhouette of person on horseback against orange sunset sky, with electricity pylon in foreground.
Culture

The inner-city riding club serving Newcastle’s youth

Stepney Western — Harry Lawson’s new experimental documentary sets up a Western film in the English North East, by focusing on a stables that also functions as a charity for disadvantaged young people.

Written by: Isaac Muk

Couple sitting on ground in book-filled environment
Culture

The British intimacy of ‘the afters’

Not Going Home — In 1998, photographer Mischa Haller travelled to nightclubs just as their doors were shutting and dancers streamed out onto the streets, capturing the country’s partying youth in the early morning haze.

Written by: Ella Glossop

Signup to our newsletter

Sign up to stay informed from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture, with personal takes on the state of media and pop culture in your inbox every month from Emma Garland, former Digital Editor of Huck, exclusive interviews, recommendations and more.

Please wait...

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.