CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- It was subtle -- only a small one-column story on page 1 that urged readers of the Cape Times newspaper to turn inside for the full interview.
But what those Cape Times readers read in their Monday editions, a full-page interview with African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo, has sent ripples of anger through a government that is used to a normally tame press.
Tambo's ANC advocates any means, including violence, to topple South Africa's white-minority regime. Under South African law, no banned government opponent like Oliver Tambo can be quoted in the press.
But if the story has made the government angry, it has certainly made a folk hero of Tony Heard, the handsome, crusading editor of the Cape Times. It was Heard who met Tambo in London and conducted the interview last week.
Tuesday was business as usual in the modest greystone downtown office block that houses the Cape Times, once considered the baby and less outspoken brother of Johannesburg's now-defunct Rand Daily Mail.
Sitting in his wood-paneled office, Heard sips a cup of coffee only minutes after his second visit from security police that day and explains his decision to print the interview.
'I am nothing other than a professional journalist. There are very few things in life that I would be prepared to risk prosecution and possibly prison for but one of them is the public's undoubted right to know what is going on and I am prepared to go quite a long way down that tube because that is what I spent my whole professional life trying to do.
'I don't see it as particularly heroic. I just see it as a responsibility to our readers.
'I have never been a Buddhist monk who wants to pour kerosene over his head,' Heard said.
The editor said the investigating officers who visited him Tuesday told him 'a docket has been opened' but did not take any documents or tapes concerning the interview.
If convicted under the Internal Security Act of quoting a banned person, Heard faces a maximum term of three years in jail. There is no option of a fine.
Yet, Heard maintains the motivation was far from political or confrontational. It was simply his feeling that South Africans need to know all sides of the grim story engulfing the country.
'The motivation was not confrontational. It was not published confrontationally. It was not intended confrontationally. The motivation is that I want our readers to be the best informed readers in South Africa,' he said.
'I am under no illusion that there are some whites who will think somehow that I have joined the revolution,' Heard said.
'But I think there is a feeling among informed people that they are being treated with contempt (by the government) if they don't have access to the views of people ...'
Heard said he was surprised at the moderation of Tambo's views compared to the 'terrorist, Marxist demon' portrayed by the government.
It was this moderation and a bit of his own surprise that finally led to the decision to print the interview and risk jail.
'If he (Tambo) had made a general call to the people to take up arms against the government, I probably would not have run it. I was deeply impressed that he had such a moderate position. My view of the ANC is now a far more moderate view than the average South African white.
'Tambo believes in a mixed economy and his views are slightly to the right of (British opposition leader) Neil Kinnock. If the British can put up with Kinnock, I don't see why we can't put up with Tambo and certainly his economic ideas,' Heard said.
'I did not want to propogandize for Tambo, I just wanted to give his view,' he said.
The interview prompted a highly favorable reader response. The telephone lines at the Cape Times were jammed all day with readers expressing surprise and some relief that Tambo did indeed appear to be a moderate.
