ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two sets of overlapping issues: public apathy and ignorance and censorship, intolerance, and government secrecy. Together they seriously undercut public support for newspapers and created an environment highly inimical to a vigorous, healthy press. Bob Steyn anecdote about the angry woman reader provides a troubling starting point for the discussion. Her denial of reality is documented repeatedly by observers of white South Africans. The government's strategy of introducing extensive media curbs in the latter 1980s was no surprise. Doing was perfectly in character for an administration that had progressively cultivated a climate of censorship, intolerance and secrecy since coming to power in 1948. By 1985 South Africans had grown accustomed to nearly four decades of increasingly authoritarian rule. Censorship, intolerance, and secrecy were cultivated among many white voters, who were all too ready to filter out the discomforting realities of an apartheid society.
