SA-Israeli journalist honoured for anti-apartheid work

JULIE LEIBOWITZ

The Order of Ikhamanga is a national award for achievements in arts, culture, literature, music, journalism, and sport. It is the highest honour the president of the country can bestow on a citizen and members of the international community. It recognises those who have made a meaningful contribution towards a South Africa that is free, democratic, successful, and united in its diversity.

“You have shown that as South Africans, we can render service to the republic in many different ways. I wish to congratulate you. You have done your duty. You have made your country proud,” Ramaphosa said to Pogrund at the ceremony.

Pogrund was honoured for his excellent contribution to the field of journalism, and for his scholarship on the liberation struggle. “His informative writing shone a light on our country during some of the darkest days in our history. He defied those who deceived the world,” said the president.

Pogrund said (in an interview prior to the event), “I was fortunate because of the brave and wonderful people I dealt with. I trusted them to tell me the truth. More importantly, they trusted me with information and thoughts even at risk of their own liberty.

“It’s important to remember that whatever I did as a reporter to expose and denounce apartheid was possible only because of the support and protection of my esteemed editor, the late Laurence Gandar, who transformed journalism in this country, and his successor Raymond Louw,” he said of his former colleagues at the anti-apartheid newspaper the Rand Daily Mail, where he held the position of journalist and later deputy editor.

Pogrund was a reporter at the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960. He was the author of a 1965 series on beating and torture of black inmates and the maltreatment of white political prisoners based on a series of interviews with anti-apartheid activist Harold Strachan. During his career in South Africa, he was put on trial several times, put in prison once, had his passport revoked, and was investigated as a threat to the state by security police.

In the interview, Pogrund cited Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Harold Strachan, Ernie Wentzel, and Robert Sobukwe, who became close friends, “and innumerable others who were committed to freedom without any thought of reward”. He authored a biography of Sobukwe published in 2006, titled How Can A Man Die Better: The Life of Robert Sobukwe.

Now living in Israel, Pogrund said he was forced to leave South Africa after the closure of the Rand Daily Mail in 1985, for being “too fiercely anti-apartheid for the nationalist government and business interests at the time”. Following the newspaper’s closure he became “unemployable”, and had little choice but to leave. “Britain gave me sanctuary. I lived in the United States for a while. Finally, I came to live in Israel.”

He now lives in Jerusalem, where he founded Yakar’s Centre for Social Concern. According to its website, Yakar is a place for spiritual quest, authentic learning, and connection between people around a deep exploration of Judaism.

Pogrund was a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001, and is co-editor of a book on Palestinian-Israeli dialogue titled, Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue. He is also the author of a more recent book about Israel and apartheid, titled Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel.

Arthur Lenk, the former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, congratulated Pogrund on Twitter. “Mazel tov to my good friend, Israeli-South African journalist Benjy Pogrund on receiving this well-deserved honour today,” he said. “His life story is a perfect message of all our two peoples have to share together.”