The Life of Vida Heard: A Journalist’s Journey

Vida HEARD, recognised as South Africa’s first female editor, passed away in Cornwall, England, in November 2001 at the age of 96. Born on 05 August 1904, in Dulwich, Surrey, she was the daughter of William Norman STODDEN, a lace curtain buyer and merchant, and Margaret Jane HAZLITT, a descendant of essayist and critic William HAZLITT. The family resided in Wilmslow, Cheshire, in 1911.

In August 1922, Richard Roy Hazlitt, Vida’s brother, who was born in 1906, almost drowned while attempting to swim from Porthcurnick to Portscatho. Vida had a happy-go-lucky nature but was also a strong-willed, independent and ardent feminist. She was one of the first women in London to own a motorbike after World War I and learnt to ski while working as an au pair in Austria.

In 1926, the family lived at 52 Parkhill Road, London. On 08 October 1926, they sailed on the Kenilworth Castle from Southampton to Cape Town. They hoped the thinner air would help Richard recover from tuberculosis, which he did.

She was 21 when Thomas William MacKENZIE, the managing editor of The Friend newspaper, was impressed by her arrival on a BSA motorcycle. He subsequently appointed her editor of The Homestead, an insert in The Farmer’s Weekly, with its target audience being farmers’ wives and daughters.

Upon leaving The Friend newspaper, she embarked on a solo train expedition throughout Canada. It was there she met and fell in love with a Mountie. Her clattering typewriter woke him, but his displeasure transformed into admiration as he met the gaze of what was famously referred to as “the bluest eyes in Bloemfontein”.

On 09 September 1929, Vida arrived in Southampton from Cape Town aboard the Armadale Castle. She applied for a US temporary visitor visa, which was issued on 14 September 1929 in London (visa no. 20968). On 27 September 1929, she boarded the American Shipper in London bound for New York. The ship arrived in New York on 07 October 1929. Her address in London was listed as 23b North Hill, Highgate, and her occupation as journalist. She gave her place of permanent residence as Bloemfontein. She was also noted as being 5′ 4″ tall, having brown hair and blue eyes, and being of fair complexion.

Vida was in New York on Black Thursday, 24 October 1929, when Wall Street crashed. While in New York, she worked for Bernarr McFADDEN, the owner of McFadden Publications. He was the first of the physical-fitness gurus. On his 83rd birthday, he made a parachute jump into the Hudson River.

On 10 January 1930, Vida arrived in Southampton from New York aboard the Berengaria, en route to South Africa. On 24 January, she boarded the Armadale Castle at Southampton for South Africa. While in London, she stayed at the Kingsley Hotel. Back in Bloemfontein, she was married on 23 January 1932 at St Augustine’s Anglican Church in Bethlehem to George Arthur HEARD, a reporter on The Friend. He was an introverted intellectual who won her heart with an eloquent speech in support of women’s rights. They lived at 14 Fort Drury Mansions in Bloemfontein.

George was born on 28 October 1906 in Bloemfontein to Arthur Henry HEARD and Millicent Agnes ELLIOTT. His father worked as a carpenter, then as an inspector of works. George attended St Andrew’s School and earned a BA in Economics and Politics from Grey University College. He started at The Friend newspaper as a reporter in 1923. In 1933, he moved to the Rand Daily Mail, reporting on Parliament annually in Cape Town. He later became assistant editor of the Rand Daily Mail and a political columnist for the Sunday Times.

His foremost scoop was the premature disclosure of the 1937 Budget. This resulted in charges for non-disclosure of his source, culminating in a ten-day jail term. Although his appeal against the sentence failed, it was subsequently dropped when the court order was rescinded.

In September 1939, South Africa’s declaration of war on the Allied side passed Parliament by a narrow margin of 13 votes. George actively campaigned and lobbied to ensure a pro-war outcome. As a prominent anti-Nazi advocate, he publicly identified individuals with pro-Nazi affiliations holding positions within state institutions. George’s public speaking skills came in handy when he addressed gatherings supporting the war effort.

In 1942, while attending a wartime dance in Johannesburg with Vida, the Commissioner of the South African Police informed them of a death threat against George, ranking him fourth on an Ossewabrandwag hit list. Later that year, the board of directors of the Rand Daily Mail presented George with a stark choice: cease his public speaking engagements or tender his resignation. George ultimately chose to resign.

Upon enlistment in the Navy as an able-bodied seaman (service number 70727V), he served on coastal minesweepers. During periods of leave, he would visit his family located in Kensington, Johannesburg. In 1944, he travelled to Scotland with the Navy to oversee the acquisition of three frigates gifted to South Africa by Britain. Subsequently promoted to Lieutenant, he served as Signals Officer and Captain’s Secretary aboard the frigate HMSAS Good Hope.

Following a brief period of leave with his family in Johannesburg, he rejoined his vessel in Cape Town prior to his discharge from service. On 04 August, Vida received a birthday greeting via telegram from George. The Good Hope was docked in Table Bay, undergoing installation of anti-aircraft weaponry. George had authorisation to stay ashore at his mother-in-law Jenny’s residence, situated in a row of terraced cottages on Blackheath Road, at the base of Signal Hill. On 08 August 1945, he committed to having dinner with Jenny. Earlier in the afternoon, he was late for his meeting with a Cape Argus journalist.

Three able-bodied seamen spotted him that evening under the clock at Cape Town railway station. He rode a bus from the docks with a fellow officer, refused a drink, and started walking up Rhine Road towards Jenny’s house. Lieutenant C.A. PERKINS last saw him on 08 August at 17:45, walking along the main road in Sea Point near the London Road junction. He was in full uniform with a greatcoat, carried about £4 10s, and his personal belongings were on the ship. He never showed up for dinner.

Vida flew to Cape Town as soon as she got the news. She walked everywhere that George would have walked and questioned many people. She offered a reward of £100, and later one of £250, for any information as to his whereabouts. The Navy sent out search parties to search and drag the seashore. Divers went down beside the Good Hope in case George had fallen overboard. Vida left no stone unturned trying to solve the mystery. She even consulted a clairvoyant, at whose prompting the newspaper editor and future Member of Parliament John COPE began digging in the sand at Llandudno.

George’s disappearance was widely reported, and a full police investigation was conducted. In 1947, the Navy posted him as “missing on active service”. The mystery of George’s disappearance has never been solved. Many believed that he was abducted and murdered by members of the Ossewabrandwag, who regarded him as an enemy for exposing them and describing them as Malanazis.

Vida was left with no income, two young boys to support, and not knowing what had happened to her husband. In January 1947, she applied to the Supreme Court to presume her husband’s death. Justice STEYN granted a rule nisi, calling on all parties to show cause by 20 February 1947 why an order presuming the death should not be granted. In her affidavit, she stated that she had a happy marriage and George was a very good husband and father. She was in need of financial assistance and was entitled to pension benefits. George’s estate file was only lodged in 1947 and stated his place of death as Table Bay Harbour.

The South African Mutual Life Assurance Society objected to the application on the basis that evidence was not clear. Under Acting Justice Joseph HERBSTEIN, the application was refused. In March, Vida petitioned for a pension in the House of Assembly, via Joseph Richard SULLIVAN (Labour Party MP for Durban Berea). In 1948, Harold Augustus TOTHILL (United Party, Bezuidenhout Valley) found a possible section in the War Pensions Act that could help Vida receive at least temporary assistance.

The petition was on the House of Assembly’s Order Paper in August 1948. It was referred to the Select Committee on Pensions. In January 1950, Sullivan, now with the United Party, presented the petition to Parliament. In May 1950, the Select Committee on Pensions did not recommend the granting of a pension to Vida. Sullivan again petitioned in January 1951, but in May 1951, the Select Committee again did not recommend it. A second application to presume death was made in December 1952. This time it was granted. In January 1997, Vida finally received a government payment of R46,000.

In 1952, the Minister of Justice, Charles Robberts (Blackie) SWART, moved the second reading of the Presumption of Death of Soldiers Bill. The Bill was as a result of a request by the Department of Defence. The purpose of the bill was to enable the courts to obtain certain information in Defence files where the court had to decide on the death of missing, presumed dead soldiers. During the Korean War, South African pilots were missing, and there was no doubt that they had been killed, but there was no evidence that could be placed before a court. The Bill did not help Vida’s petition as the court had already received all documents pertaining to George.

Vida was living in Durban. She sent her sons to boarding school at Treverton College in Natal, and later to Durban High School. She edited the women’s pages of the Natal Mercury newspaper. Once, the editor was outraged when she got the art department to fit stylish hats onto pictures of racehorses in the run-up to the Durban July. Added to the emotional turmoil she was already in, this was too much. She had a nervous breakdown and left. In the 1950s, she was made editor of Femina magazine. After three years, she was told it was company policy to only have men as editors, and she promptly resigned.

Vida was the first to spot the potential of freesheets carrying paid-for advertorials and started publishing them in Durban and Cape Town. She sold her company and teamed up with the founder of the Silwood Kitchen cordon bleu school, Lesley FAULL, to publish cookery books, including Cookery in Southern Africa: Traditional and Today (1970), ABC For Cooks (1973), and Our Best Traditional Recipes (1975). She also published her own books including Let’s Win the Cookery Game (1977), and Cornish Cookery: Recipes of Today & Yesteryear (1984). She moved to the seaside town of Portscatho in Cornwall. At the age of 93 she wrote her life story – My Touch and Go.

George and Vida’s sons pursued careers in journalism. Raymond, an alumnus of the universities of the Free State, Witwatersrand, and Harvard – the latter attended under a Frank Knox Scholarship – began his professional life at The Friend in Bloemfontein before serving as a political reporter for the Rand Daily Mail. In the early 1960s, he emigrated to Canada and joined the Montreal Star, for which he served as a White House correspondent during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. He was also a correspondent for The Observer of London and the South African Morning Group.

In 1973, he was appointed editor of the London Observer Foreign News Service. Following his return to the Montreal Star in 1976, he remained with the publication until its closure in 1979. Subsequently, he served as vice president of news and current affairs at the Global Television Network until 1987, after which became a political strategist and advisor. Raymond was married first to Susan Leonore LEWIS and later to Gillian COSGROVE, a Canadian journalist.

Anthony Hazlitt HEARD (1937–2024), known as Tony, embarked on his journalistic career as a junior reporter for the Cape Times following his matriculation. He pursued part-time studies at the University of Cape Town, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and honours in philosophy, complemented by shorthand and typing training through Pitman’s College, London. He was appointed parliamentary reporter in 1958 and later served as political correspondent.

From 1971 to 1987, he served as editor of the Cape Times, succeeding Victor NORTON upon his retirement after a 26-year tenure. Following his departure from the Cape Times, Tony worked as a freelance writer before serving as an adviser in the Presidency from 1996 until 2010. Prior to his death, he entrusted the final manuscript of his third book – an account of his family’s search for George – to his daughter, Janet HEARD, who is also a journalist and editor.