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Jonathan Ball, an eminent South African book publisher, died on April 3 at his home in Cape Town. He was 69 years old.
Born in Johannesburg to a Catholic family in 1951, he was educated at Highlands North Boys High before completing his national service with the South African Air Force in 1970.
He landed his first job with Collier-Macmillan, spearheaded by Ad Donker, who went on to found Ad Donker Publishers and who would become a formative influence in Ball’s life.
In 1972, he joined Macmillan Publishing and was soon promoted to Director of Sales.
It was from this point of view that he observed the political changes that were taking place in South Africa.
In June 1976, a watershed year, Ball made the decision to start as a freelance publisher.
Short of capital, and without the benefit of much more than a suit and a nice brother – David, who supported the company in the beginning – he set out to “publish books of liberal sanity” that would stand up to the establishment and challenge the oppressors. political climate of the day.
In the backyard of David’s industrial workshop in Selby, Johannesburg, Ball was soon joined by Alison Lowry, who became his editor-in-chief, and Jonathan Ball Publishers was launched.
Jonathan Ball
In 1978 he published the book that, in many ways, would make his principles public and permanent.
The super Afrikaners, written by journalists Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom, first exposed the Afrikaner Broederbond and listed the names of members of the ultra-secret and powerful society that loomed over every aspect of South African life.
The book was an instant best-seller, so much so that Ball and his assiduous sales director, Nick Britt, worked day and night on the printed binding line because anyone within Broederbond’s reach had refused to bind the book.
They eventually found a broken line and nearly bankrupt, but they needed their help to bind the book.
The post caused a sensation and culminated in threatening visits from the security police.
This would not be the last government, nor the last thugs, to visit Ball’s door.
The decade ended with a blow for Ball when he jumped on the rights to publish Thomas Pakenham’s distinguished book, The Boer War, In South Africa.
He forged lifelong friendships with Pakenham and his publisher, George Weidenfeld, establishing Weidenfeld & Nicolson as a permanent feature of the JBP charts in South Africa.
It was also the beginning of a larger business that encompassed not only self-publishing, but also representation as agent for UK and US publishers in the country.
This, at a time when the economy was increasingly challenging.
The 1980s were painful for Ball. He struck a deal with British publisher Hodder & Stoughton that fell through and ended with his exit from the joint venture.
A year later, he restarted the company with new support, buying back its catalog and name; a move that would be decisive for the future.
By the end of the decade, with his credentials as a liberal book publisher intact, he published not only to a wide audience, but landed the most important political books of the day.
Opposition leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, staunch liberal Helen Suzman and many more joined his stable.
He also bought Ad Donker, adding not only a splendid listing, but closing the loop from where he started.
In 1992, Ball sold the business to Naspers. With complete editorial and broad executive control, he was able, for the first time, to exercise his residual ambitions. After acquiring HarperCollins, which were being sold, he ran one of the largest commercial publishers in the country.
The famous transition in South Africa changed little in its publication.
Ball soon discovered the flaws in the new political establishment and published with the same vigor, sticking to its principles.
Andrew Feinstein, former ANC MP After the party, which focuses on the arms deal as an example of how the ANC’s internal decline began.
Jonathan Ball
He would go on to publish the definitive political books of the time, ranging from Thabo Mbeki’s Mark Gevisser biography, A dream postponed, to the devastating exposition of Jacob Zuma, Zuma exposedby journalist Adriaan Basson.
He released Jonny Steinberg and published all of his books, garnering two Alan Paton Awards along the way.
At times, exercising his volcanic fury, albeit short-lived, but more often entertaining humor, Ball lunched and dined on celebrated authors, celebrities, and staff with equal enthusiasm.
Witty and fiercely cultured, he presented any table with a smorgasbord of subjects that very often, but not always, involved a dark aspect of his increasingly broad reading.
Ball despised social media and found the sound bites offensive. He asked her to participate in a discussion, present her case, and defend her ground.
When he formally retired in 2015, after 45 years in the publishing industry, he had not only defined political publishing in the country, but created the leading publisher and book distributor in South Africa.
And, after just a month’s vacation, he continued as general editor, a position he held to the end.
His wife, Pam, died in 2018, leaving an undeniable void in her life.
In the end, Ball just enjoyed the things he had done his entire life, and he continued to do so.
She is survived by her stepchildren, Belinda, Jamie and Jono, and two grandchildren.
– Eugene Ashton is CEO of Jonathan Ball Publishers.
