Ripple of Hope

CAPE TIMES

Wednesday, June 8, 1966

Tactical Error

WE hope our Department of Information, or whoever is responsible for governmental public relations, has learnt a tactical lesson from the Kennedy visit. It was quite obvious and perhaps understandable that the volatile senator's descent on South Africa was about as welcome as a lady of easy virtue at a christening. If there were really powerful reasons for fearing what Mr. Kennedy might say or do there might possibly have been a case for keeping him out of the country altogether. But if courage or conviction were lacking for such drastic action, surely the alternative should have been to make the visit as normal and as unobtrusive as possible? Instead our Government fell noisily between the two stools. It incurred as much opprobrium as would have been incurred if the senator had been refused a visa; and did nothing to reduce the publicity and mischief-making potentialities of the occasion.
The Government, in fact, did worse than nothing. By officially boycotting the visit, the Minister or Ministers responsible positively helped to inflate the occasion, to concentrate the maximum attention on it inside and outside South Africa, to ensure its maximum success as a "publicity stunt". No firm of public relations consultants could have done anything remotely as effective. The official reasons given are not calculated to enhance our country's intellectual image. The bit about a "private visit" is absurd when the private visitor is a United States senator, a former Attorney General, a very probable contender for the presidency of the United States, the bearer of a famous name and, in his own right, a politician of world stature. And prim talk about dislike of publicity stunts is foolish while taking precisely the action to ensure the success of the stunt.
The time chosen to invoke tyrannical executive powers to ban the visitor's host could not have been less happy. And, typically, it did not prevent the senator from seeing his nominal host (in the presence of flocks of newspapermen and under the glare of the TV cameras). All it did was to add a touch of drama and ensure that the subsequent reports and pictures carried an implicit comment which is about as unfavourable to this country as anything could be. Plus, of course, making absolutely certain that the occasion would be given maximum prominence in the newspapers and on the television screens of every country north and south of the equator.

The Press ban The exclusion of the American newspaper and TV men who were to have filled the seats of the senatorial aircraft also had an effect precisely the contrary of that intended. Those seats were in fact filled with newspapermen and much of the space was taken up with TV cameras. Not a Black hand was shaken or a liberal word uttered without the presence of notebook and camera. For hours on end the cables were crowded and the telex lines hummed to London, Washington, Europe . . . The NBC, the great television network of the United States, had its film of the Kennedy-Robertson meeting on a chartered aircraft at 2 o'clock yesterday morning. This caught the French plane in Johannesburg yesterday morning, was probably in Paris last night and, with the help of Early Bird, the first succulent shots will be on every TV screen in the United States for this morning's morning show. The full film will have gone by freighter plane from Paris last night and the full film will be shown from coast to coast in the United States tonight.
Could any flock of home-born American newsmen have done any better? Or any worse? All that our ban achieved was to exclude from the Kennedy entourage a score or so of correspondents and commentators who are his sworn political enemies and who would have gone to a lot of trouble to present the senator in the worst possible light. Which, in terms of governmental sentiments, means the best light for South Africa.
Footnote: In case it might be thought that we are alone in these opinions, this is the opinion of the friendly Daily Express of London:

Mr. Kennedy simply wants to advance his presidential prospects by creating a stir. Strangely enough the South African Government is helping him to do just that by denying overseas reporters facilities to cover his tour. As a result of this action people will conclude that Dr. Verwoerd is afraid of publicity. And so more attention than ever will be concentrated on Senator Kennedy's activities. How sad that Mr. Kennedy's unnecessary journey should be blown up to outsize proportions by South Africa's short-sighted restriction.