Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

CRAIG KOTZE: What I can do first Mr Lewin, is to just contextualise how this happened.  This story broke I believe it was near Nelspruit with the killing originally of four ANC insurgents.  If I am not mistaken?	Okay, yes, if my memory serves me correctly, this particular one came after other media prior to this, carried reports of some ANC members being killed.  Now, that is effectively means that we as a newspaper had been scooped.	Now, as any journalist will tell you, when that happens the race is on for a new angle and for additional information.  What then would happen is that you would try and trump the story that is already in the media, but try to get additional information.	So, this was exactly I think the process that happened in this particular incident.

MR LEWIN: So was it possibly the sub-heading at top which says Vlok warns of more terror groups?

CRAIG KOTZE: I think from a journalistic perspective, he said it and it was reportable.

MR LEWIN: No, it is just that in terms of, I think we've gone through, well you've got the pile of the cuttings there, we've gone through about 100 articles, which you wrote in the Star as crime reporter in the 1980's and between late 1980's and 1990.	And all of them follow exactly the same pattern.  It quotes the police, it quotes police sources, it quotes Vlok, it quotes Intelligence sources, it quotes nobody else.	You do get as far as referring in some of the stories to some opposition forces, spokespeople.  The closest you get to an opposition spokesperson is in fact the DP.	You have on occasion quoted Frank Chikane.  A few times COSATU, but the overall impression which is put forward quite clearly by the Star, because these stories were given great prominence, is of a total antagonism to MDM and putting forward one particular line.	Now, what I am asking as a journalist, is how can one begin to describe any of these stories as following factual and objective criteria?

CRAIG KOTZE: Mr Lewin, I think you will agree with me as being a journalist yourself, that and the point I believe is being often made in various submissions to this panel, on the superficiality of the media and the shallow reporting of the media.	I must agree with you on that particular aspect, yes, but there are situational factors that actually lead to that.  The enormous pressure on daily journalists, simply just to get hold of the news and to report it, I think is a valuable contributing factor to this process.	Yes, much was lost.  I don't think it is realistic to expect every article that I wrote, to have included massive background pieces, because first of all the process didn't require it.	And secondly, there was an enormous amount of violence and terror.  The mere recording of which was a super human task.

MR NTSEBEZA: But I think the point that is made here Mr Craig Kotze, I mean, there is no time, we must really get over this, I think what is being made, the point that is being made here, this was no abberation, you had a systematic pattern of reporting and this is what you are asked to comment on and it has nothing to do with having no time to prepare and what have you.	It has to do with a pattern that explains a certain set of mind, now was it your knowledge of being one of the members of the Security Forces that made you write that sort of fashion?

CRAIG KOTZE: No, it was the fact that I was a journalist employed to gather certain kinds of news, that made me write these stories.

MR NTSEBEZA: Yes, certain kinds of news inspiring informed by being a police informer or a police agent, is that it?

CRAIG KOTZE: Not necessarily.  Other people also got this.

MR NTSEBEZA: But why can, in over 100, that is what Hugh has being saying, approximately 100 stories that you have written, we are able to see a pattern of absolute non-objectivity, where you don't even pretend to make an effort to give the other side a view of or an opportunity to put their side of the story?

CRAIG KOTZE: As I mentioned in my submission Sir, that it was my job to focus attention on police successes.  I say that quite openly.  So I am not denying that in the least.	But I think it is - your perception is probably in the eye of the beholder, as is truth, much of the time.  So quite frankly I was run off my feet quite physically, as a crime reporter and I would just like to point out as well Sir, that on the same story that is now under discussion, you may or may not have it, but David Braun the political correspondent of the Star, in a later edition had exactly the same kind of story.	SA acts to crush threat of insurgency.  Now that approach was probably as much a result of my specific bent as it was of the Editorial policy of the newspaper I worked for and which was beyond my control specifically.

CHAIRPERSON: I am sorry, no please go ahead.

CRAIG KOTZE: No, thank you sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you done, thank you.  You see, we have to learn lessons you see.  We have to see how one should be approaching these sort of things, you know in future.	Isn't the difficulty and that seems to occur to me and that is probably where all of this comes from, is the difficulty not that one can't hold two positions.  I mean you can't be a policeman and a journalist and then you know be objective and actually be true to your calling as a journalist and there are very few people that I know of that hold two positions at the same time, so there has to be a conflict, not so?	There has to be a conflict of interest there and it has to be undesirable to have that sort of situation?

CRAIG KOTZE: I would agree absolutely with you Sir, in a normal society, but under the abnormal conditions, the question as much applies to those journalists who became MK members, who became active members of the revolutionary forces, was their objectivity not somewhat warped?	I would say yes, we all suffered collectively from the abnormalities of the Apartheid era, but when we want to take this through to the future, I would agree with you absolutely in principle, that if the inherent conflict factors are not there, then we can begin to start approaching a normal society in all spheres and not only the media.

CHAIRPERSON: I suppose that is why as you had put to us, the SAPS presently follows a policy of not recruiting agents at all in the media?

CRAIG KOTZE: Absolutely, and I might add Mr Chairperson, that it is the only security related agency in this country that has done so.  We haven't heard the same form the other official security institutions.

CHAIRPERSON: And inherent in that is the fact that I mean, it is a completely undesirable kind of thing to do, to have undercover policemen posing as journalists and then moving into the media and everything that goes with that?

CRAIG KOTZE: In a normal democratic society absolutely.

CHAIRPERSON: Were you actually a policeman at the time when you joined the Star?

CRAIG KOTZE: Well Sir, there is some operational detail that I cannot in this forum make available to you, but my sentiments were exactly the same.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't understand that.

CRAIG KOTZE: What I am saying is that in this particular forum, as a serving member of the SAPS, there is certain operational intelligence detail, that I can't discuss here in principle and those questions, suffice to say that when I left the Star, I was already a Captain in the police.

CHAIRPERSON: But have you ever before today, disclosed that fact that you were a policeman when you were serving on the Star?

CRAIG KOTZE: No, I did not.

CHAIRPERSON: Is that today the first time that you actually disclosed that?

CRAIG KOTZE: That I am disclosing it, yes.  Other people may have had, Mr Chairman, if I may add, their suspicions and I think it may even have been reflected in the media once or twice.  I believe this is the first confirmation.