Forging unity : the story of the North-West University's first years

Abstract

News is the first rough draft of history. This saying is attributed to Alan Barth, who was an editorial writer at The Washington Post for three decades until he retired in 1972. Perhaps the words have become trite, even abused, as reporters invoke them as justification for incompleteness, inaccuracies or one-sidedness. But Barth probably wanted to capture another dimension of the journalistic endeavour: the difficulties, frustrations and dangers one has to face in a genuine attempt to get to the heart of a story. The point is this: as one sets off to tell a story yet untold, all the effort in the world can yield nothing but a first draft of history. This book should be viewed as the first rough draft of a journalistic history of the North-West University (NWU).