There will be no gala dinner to praise a career. But those who know will, wherever they are, raise clenched fists to praise a conviction.
Bokwe Mafuna is now 89 years old. He will turn 90 on 14 January 2027 next year. I think he deserves more than a birthday cake. Sekola Sello wants some special event.
Eighty-nine to ninety years is a long time to live. It is an even longer time to remain unbroken.
Most people know the names that made headlines. We know Steve Biko. Barney Pityana. Mamphela Ramphela. But every movement needs men who make the headlines possible. Men who do not just believe in Black Consciousness, but who build its press army and mobilizes storytellers.
Bokwe Mafuna was that man.
He was Biko’s comrade and colleague. Not in the shallow sense that people now use the word “comrade” – as a greeting before they betray you. In the deep sense. In the sense that when the movement called, you answered with your life.
He was a freelancer at the Rand Daily Mail. In the 1970s, that was the pinnacle for a Black journalist. The Rand Daily Mail was the liberal white paper that allowed a few Black faces in its corridors, as long as they wrote what was permissible. It was a job, it was a salary, it was a passport to being called “one of the good ones.”
Bokwe Mafuna quit. The paper had continued to describe blacks as ‘non-white.’
Let that sink in for the young journalists here who think struggle is tweeting from a coffee shop in Rosebank. He quit his job. He walked away from security to join the Black Consciousness Movement when to join meant you would be watched, detained, banned, tortured, killed.
He did not join for a position. He joined for a principle: that Black people must tell their own story, in their own voice, without mediation.
That principle became concrete when he and the late Harry Mashabela – another giant we have not honoured enough – were tasked by the movement to establish a Black Press Publishing Company.
In 1972, to say “Black Press” was revolutionary. White capital owned the presses, white editors owned the headlines, white advertisers owned the news. Black people were subjects, not authors. Black press meant we would own the means of telling. We would print what Biko meant when he said Black is Beautiful, what it meant to be Black and alive and unashamed in a country that told you to be ashamed every day.
With Mashabela, they set to not just publish papers. Their ambition was to publish pride.
And because you cannot have a Black press without Black journalists who are conscious, they also founded and launched the Union of Black Journalists – the UBJ.
The UBJ was not a tea club. It was a declaration of war against the white liberal monopoly that said Black journalists must belong to white-led unions that saw them as junior partners. The UBJ said: We are Black first. We are journalists because we are Black and we must write Black. That union produced some of the finest, most fearless journalists this country has ever seen. And it paid a price. In 1977, after Biko was murdered, the UBJ was banned. Its leaders were detained. Its offices raided.
That is why Bokwe was forced into exile.
France. A cold, beautiful country that does not know what it is to be Black in apartheid South Africa. He stayed and worked there, far from home, far from the smell of home, far from the story he was born to tell, until he returned back to the country in the 1990s when the doors opened.
He returned to a different country, and to a different profession.
And here is the painful truth he will tell you himself, with that wry smile of his:
Over the decades, Black journalists have splintered and are now like a disorganized army. They have evolve into SANEF.
Black journalists are disorganized. Unlike News24 or Daily Maverick, they have no agenda. We must admit it.
We are no longer a collective. We are freelancers competing for crumbs. We are editors who have become spokespersons. We are spokespersons who have become editors. We are owners of nothing, defenders of everything that pays. We are suspender for alleged corruption. We insist we are innocent until proven guilty. We eat and drink with politicians.
We are business men. We have been co-opted, we have been bought, we have been divided into camps: this faction, that political party, this tender, that WhatsApp group. We are fronts for white business. The white press that once excluded us now includes us on condition that we attack each other. And we obey.
The UBJ spirit is dead. We killed the Forum For Black Journalists. We have South African National Editors’ Forum, we have press clubs, we have associations, we have a plethora of online platforms. But we have no unity of purpose. We are a disorganized army with many generals and no battle plan.
Bokwe Mafuna looks at this. He is 89. He has seen it all. He has seen friends die, movements banned, exile, return, democracy, disappointment. He could be bitter. He could be cynical. He could say, “I told you so.”
But he does not.
He looks back at his life with pride, as he did what a man had to do at the time.
That is the lesson.
He did what a man had to do at the time. Not what was fashionable. Not what was profitable. Not what was safe. What had to be done.
When it was time to quit the Rand Daily Mail, he quit. When it was time to build a Black press, he built. When it was time to found a union, he founded. When it was time to go into exile, he went. When it was time to return, he returned.
He did not ask, “What will I gain?” He asked, “What does my people need?”
At 89, his back may be bent, but his spine has never been bent.
So we honour you, Ntate Bokwe James Mafuna. Comrade. Colleague. Father of Black journalism. Friend of Steve Biko. Builder of the Black Press. Founder of the UBJ. Exile. Returnee. Witness.
You did what a man had to do at the time. And because you did, a few of us can stand here today and call ourselves Black journalists without shame.
May your life remind this disorganized army that we once knew how to march in formation.
We salute you. We looking forward to celebrate 90 years with you on 14 January 2027.
