This month marks the 41st anniversary of the banning of the World and the Weekend World newspapers by the erstwhile apartheid government.
The banning order was extended to a number of opponents of apartheid and formations, including Daily Dispatch editor Donald Woods and progressive Afrikaner clergy Beyers Naudé, as well as a host of black consciousness movements like the Black Parents Convention, the SA Students Organisation and the Union of Black Journalists.
That month, over 50 people were arrested, including the World and Weekend World editor Percy Qoboza, outspoken medico Dr Nthato Motlana and eight members of his Soweto Committee of 10.
A month earlier, Black Consciousness leader and member of Saso, Steve Bantu Biko, had died in police custody, after being tortured and driven semi-naked in the back of a police van for almost 10 hours from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria.
The events of 1977 need to be revisited to look where black journalism comes from.
When I became a reporter in 1982, just a few months after the launch of Sowetan newspaper, the country was in political turmoil.
The erstwhile apartheid government had imposed a number of draconian laws which affected the free practice of my chosen craft. Many of our colleagues now and then missed the step and put our feet in harm's way.
John Vorster Square, Protea Police Station and Modderbee prisons became our home away from home.
Zwelakhe Sisulu spent more time in jail than editing his newspaper, The New Nation.
Thami Mazwai, Siphiwe Nyanda, Gabu Tugwana, Duma Ndlovu, Joe Thloloe, Thami Mkhwanazi, Aggrey Klaaste, Charles Nqakula, Phil Mtimkulu, Sam Mabe, Mathatha Tsedu, also became frequent visitors of prison cells for sins they committed using the pen.
That was the era of Struggle journalism, wherein the craft’s prescripts of balanced and impartial reporting was often secondary.
The explosion of political resistance had turned South Africa's black townships into a bloody battleground, and had turned the newsrooms into a battlefield: as young reporters, fresh from witnessing scenes of brutal repression in the townships, we fought bitter verbal battles to get our stories into the newspapers against tough resistance from managements who feared that such stories would both terrify their predominantly white audiences and - more importantly - scare off their advertisers.
Back then, black reporters worked in so-called township sections of the main body of the mainstream newspapers. The Star had an Africa edition, the Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Times had an Extra edition, dedicated to township news.
A break came in 1976 during the Soweto uprisings when white reporters felt not safe to venture into volatile black townships to cover the events.
Black reporters became the only conveyors of news from the townships to the white communities and the world. Many a black reporter's byline started to feature prominently in the main sections of the newspapers, previously a preserve of white reporters.
Black reporters started to be taken seriously, and were now allowed to write front page stories, leaders and columns. We told the true story to the world our contribution to the Struggle!
Nhlanhla Mbatha is a sub-editor at Independent Media