{"id":48390,"date":"2026-10-19T09:05:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=48390"},"modified":"2026-10-19T09:05:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:05:30","slug":"sa-marks-national-press-freedom-day","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-marks-national-press-freedom-day\/","title":{"rendered":"SA marks National Press Freedom Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>South Africa (SA) marks National Freedom Day on 19 October, commemorating the apartheid government&#8217;s banning of newspapers and the detention of journalists in 1977.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Press and media freedom are fundamental to democracy, enabling journalists to inform the public, expose wrongdoing and hold those in positions of power accountable.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The day recalls the banning of\u00a0<i>The World<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>Weekend World<\/i>\u00a0newspapers by the apartheid government.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The editors of the publications, Percy Qoboza and Aggrey Klaaste, were detained amid the government&#8217;s crackdown on reporting about the aftermath of the 1976 student uprisings and the death in detention of Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Journalists in various parts of the country were also detained as the apartheid government intensified its efforts to suppress dissent and restrict the flow of information.<\/div>\n<div>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16671,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-48390","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"SA marks National Freedom Day","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48392,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48390\/revisions\/48392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=48390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}