Special Hearings — Trojan Horse Hearings — 1997-05-20

MAPULE RAMASHALA: Mr Everson, part of the Truth Commission's mandate particularly my Committee, the Reparations and Rehabilitations Committee, is to be concerned about the process of healing.  We frequently wonder about the dedicated troop of  reporters that follow us from venue to venue, listening to the reliving of this painful memories on the part of families, relatives and friends and all that.
 We often wonder what effect this has on the people who are recording the story, meaning the journalists.   And we can't dismiss it, and this is a question that refers to the Doctors also, we can't dismiss it by saying - cannot dismiss it by saying you know, it is part of their job, like Doctors are used to seeing the good, the bad and the ugly and journalists are used to seeing the good and the bad and the ugly.
 I know that all of you are affected by not only what you did then, but about the retelling of the story.  Particularly now that the victims and survivors are able to tell their story.  What would you ask of the Commission and I know it is an unusual question, I know my colleagues don't expect me to ask that, but as part of my Committee, what is it that we can do to help the recorders of our history?

CHRIS EVERSON: Well, I don't think there is anything you can do to help the recorders.  I, as you probably know, we just did a story on the TRC for our network and a show called 60 Minutes and I spent some time filming the work that you are doing, myself and I was just absolutely astounded.
 I was absolutely astounded by the testimonies I heard and that every person practically who was telling these terribly emotional stories and very often breaking down and then weeping and reliving it all and practically every single one of them without exception, I don't think there was exceptions that I heard, wanted only one thing and that was for their kids to be educated and for their kids to get the benefit of their loss and their struggles.
 And  I think if you do anything, that's what you would do.  Do would listen to that plea, I think.

MAPULE RAMASHALA: Thank you very much, Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mapule.  Any one else?  Mary?

MARY BURTON: You answered one of my questions which was how you got there for this event, I had been wondering, I know that you and many others like you would get to places incredibly quickly through the pager system, but to get there  beforehand, really seemed extraordinary.
 So I am glad to have had that understanding.

CHRIS EVERSON: We've been, it has been suggested that it was all done specifically for us which would have been pretty remarkable, but it did take a bit of explaining.

MARY BURTON: I think that is why it is important to have had it explained.  And you referred to something else which I think needs an answer, which you did give and that was the accusation that was made to many journalists at the time about instigation.
 Or perhaps not instigation of a new event, but recreating it with a little bit more glamour for a rephotographing and I think it is important to answer that allegation that was made.  If you would like to expand on that?

CHRIS EVERSON: It was something we lived through all the time.  I can recall at one stage I had a sound recordist, we went through a terrible time together at the KTC fighting that took place where George d'Arc, a colleague of ours was killed and he was a professional tennis player in his previous life.  And we had filmed that KTC fighting and what have you, it was a terrible scene.  There was shooting and there were bodies laying around and there was burning vehicles and at the end of the day, a huge contingent of soldiers went, and it really looked like a huge conflict.
 And we broadcast that on our show that night and a few weeks later I was in Port Elizabeth at an airport with my sound recordist, his name is Greg Shaw and Greg saw one of his old tennis playing colleagues at the departure lounge and they said hi, and his colleague wanted to know what he was doing and he said no, he is working for CBS news as a sound recordist.
 And his colleague said you know, I am based in the States and I always used to watch CBS but I will never watch it again and Greg enquired why is that and he said, well just a couple of weeks ago there was this article, there was this story on the evening news with Dan Rather, which is our broadcast which showed this terrible fighting and bodies and burning vehicles and soldiers everywhere and fighting and they said it was just outside of Cape Town.
 My mother lives in Cape Town, so I got on the phone immediately and I phoned her and I said, mom, are you okay, you know, are you all right, she said, yes, I am fine.  Don't worry, it is all lies, what these people do is that they set up these towns and these villages in the Karoo dessert and then they get all these chaps to go along there with their guns and their stones and they recreate these events so that they can have that piece on the evening news.
 And that is why he had said that he would never watch the show again, so it was remarkable what we were accused of on a daily basis.  We were accused of being terrorists ourselves.  I can recall on one occasion being in Guguletu and we were taking refuge in the house of a lovely lady across the road from a church in Guguletu during quite an active period and some kids ran through the house that we were in with rifles, with AK47's.
 They ran in one door, and saw us and kind of went hi, and went out the other door.  And we thought wow, what was that, did you see that?  We were sitting and just a short while later, ten minutes later, they must have been seen from the air in a helicopter.  A whole group of the strangest looking policemen that I have ever seen rushed into the room and surrounded us.  They were all dressed with balaclavas on and black uniforms that I have never seen before and never seen since.
 And they put us up against the wall with weapons underneath our throats and they considered us to be part of this terrorist guerilla army because we were in this house with these people with guns and I guess from then, we didn't have much credibility with them either.
 But we were accused of instigating all sorts of affairs.  We - I recall us in the morning looking for black smoke over the Cape Flats because that was always a sure sign of barricades burning or something burning and we always used to respond to that and almost always get there before the fire brigade or the police and we were always then accused of setting it up and burning the tyres ourselves or how did you guys get here before us?  So it was quite a - and at airports as well, for members of the public, just general members of the public.  I always used to have a sticker on the side of my camera which said CBS news and as did most foreign journalists have their organisation on their cameras so that it would be a little bit safer in townships.
 And we were often approached by members of the public and accused of setting things up and causing problems and sticking our noses in where they weren't really wanted.

CHAIRPERSON: I am not sure to ask his question, but the last comment you made, I think is very crucial in the way that the mindsets of White South Africa was and I guess I just want to kind of repeat what you said, that many White people in South Africa were abused by apartheid, if I may put it that way.
 They were really - apartheid used them just in the way of making sure that they didn't get the correct type of reporting about what was happening in the country and also in the way in which the media was protected by the security establishment in a way.
 So that what you reported for example abroad, you couldn't report here, is that right?  You had a certain freedom in reporting what you did abroad, then you did, than any one in your calibre would have had in this country?