We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? Not on this blog, silly! I’m talking South Africa. And, this morning, I’m talking specifically about the old censorship laws under the apartheid regime.
Remember Scope magazine? Well, you won’t if you’re any younger than me. OK. quite a bit younger than me. Scope was like a combo of Mad Magazine, Playboy, Private Eye and Beano all mashed together. And it liked to publish slightly racy pictures of scantily-clad women. Far too scanty for the old Publications & Censorship verkramptes (ultra-conservatives) charged with keeping our morals upstanding. Although I scheme they took all the really nasty stuff home.
A Scope model (after the boys had got to work with the Pro Nutro/Handy Andy star remover, obviously)
Old Dave Mullany, with whom I later worked at The Mercury in Durbs, was editor of Scope and resorted to sticking those infamous black strips over nipples to stop schoolboys from breaking out in a red-faced rash of testosterone at the back of class. It was a hard time to be pubescent in South Africa. And I heard about boys who had found a way to rub off the black strips or stars with some special solution. A 60:40 mixture of Pro Nutro and Handy Andy or something.
I was reminded of this by a feature in Awesome SA’s fascinating Awesome South Africa book, in which they detail the things banned by old Vorster and his maatjies. Bliksem, it is scary to be taken back there. But here we go anyway… “A beer mug with a naked man’s figure and the inscription ‘Hers’ “; “Olivia Newton’s song ‘Let’s Get Physical’ “; A book on playing chess entitled ‘Black Queen, White King’ “; and, oh yes, “A bumper sticker which read, ‘And on the seventh day, God went surfing’.”
Livvy Newton John sings Let’s Get Physical… Yowzers, I think Vorster’s boys were right to ban that!
Heavens to Betsy, was our beloved country as backward as that?! We all know the answer to that question. But, somebody please tell me, how the hell did Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro) survive?
* Source material from Awesome SA\’s book “Awesome South Africa”.
Fred Hatman (AKA Howard Donaldson) knew he wanted to be newspaper journalist at age 13. He has worked as a reporter and sub-editor for the Daily News and Cape Times, both based in South Africa and Wimbledon News, Today, London Daily News, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, all based in London .
