Rykie
by Lizette Rabe
(Tafelberg, R250)
Rykie van Reenen will go down in the history of the Afrikaans press as one of the most remarkable and respected female journalists. She worked in male-dominated news-rooms with the likes of Phil Weber, Piet Cillié and Schalk Pienaar, but stood her ground and wrote her way to the top – well, as far as one could in that era.
Van Reenen was, for example, the first Afrikaans female war reporter, covering the Yom Kippur war in Israel, and was part of the team when Sunday paper Die Beeld was launched by Nasionale Pers in 1965, 20 years after starting her career at Die Burger in Cape Town.
In those days women reporters were almost automatically assigned to the women’s page and left to battle the glass ceiling. She moved on to the crime desk, sports page, arts page (with WEG Louw) and weekend magazine, Die Byvoegsel. It might sound archaic, but women journalists had to work so much harder – up to the mid-eighties – to get the same recognition as their male colleagues.
Lizette Rabe (professor and post-graduate school for journalism head at Stellenbosch University) also comes from that stable, but decades later, and never having met Van Reenen personally.
In this biography she focuses on the road of Van Reenen’s career, often referring to forerunner MER (Miem Rothmann) and others. Rabe captures Van Reenen’s curiosity, versatility, honesty, fearlessness, political insight and command of language and her influence in the renewal of Afrikaans journalism.
The biography was the doctoral thesis of Rabe, which could have been adapted a bit more. She did use letters, documents and interviews to give insight into an extremely interesting character, but at times made too much use of other theses (like that of Marita van der Vyver) and people who did not know Rykie. Some more personal insights seem to be lacking. It also seems that discrimination against women in the workplace is overworked.
“Jovial” Rykie was a very private person and disliked attention, which makes a biography difficult, but with the help of Van Reenen’s godchild, Annatjie Louw (Schalk Pienaar’s daughter), Rabe had a glimpse into the personal side of her enigmatic subject – “it’s like catching a moonbeam with your hands”.
The very limited selection of Van Reenen’s work at the end of the book, while not doing justice to her rich contribution to Afrikaans journalism, reminds you of her brilliance. Apart from two books on Emily Hobhouse, a selection of her newspaper columns (Op die Randakker) was published in 1980.