Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you for your answer in this regard Mr Raubenheimer.  We would like to gain an idea, an impression of what the situation was.   We know there was a certain statutory framework of legislation within which you had to work and the idea is to determine how the Corporation reacted in that milieu and  against that background.  As you stated you can only talk about those sections or divisions where you personally were involved.    You were the head of the actuality programmes on radio, could you perhaps give us a more concrete idea of whether there were guidelines which you as head implemented and applied?    Could you give us some stories which you would have refrained from using according to those guidelines in your programmes, just to give us a general feeling of what the situation was like?

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: As I have stated  I have given you the broad guidelines, I had no other guidelines which were applied in the section for which I was responsible,  except perhaps additionally when the country itself applied emergency measures and legislation to which the media as a whole were subjected, in other words the electronic media as well as the press, my work as head of actuality programmes boiled down to the fact that for two hours each day, not it was substantially more, an  hour in the morning and later on - let's say a total of three hours on Afrikaans and three hours on the English station where we broadcast programmes which involved news, hard news, first phase news bulletins, but then also contributions sent to us internationally and from our local representatives in the regions.  It was naturally so that these contributions dealt with the current news events of the day or the day before.  I remember only two instances, two very specific contributions which on the basis of current legislation  at the time  I had to censor and had to place an embargo on the broadcast of those two contributions.  In both cases, both cases it was a matter where banned  organisations in terms of the laws of the country at the time were quoted on meetings which had been held,  particularly made certain statements and in this particular instance the ANC.    In the case of sensitive contributions I was phoned in the morning, the editors of those programmes had the right themselves to compile those programmes as they saw fit, it was only in the mornings or in the course of the afternoon, as far as the afternoon broadcasts were concerned, when there was a doubt regarding the sensitivity of a certain contribution that they phoned me, this happened on a daily basis and there were normally one, two or three such contributions which were played to me over the telephone or I had to go to the specific studio and listen there.  In the course of those few years during which I filled that position I remember two contributions which I had to prohibit from being broadcast in terms of the laws of the country at the time and they concerned meetings which had been held by ANC members which in terms of legislation of the time were banned.

<UNKNOWN>: I understand.   Would you have allowed those contributions to be broadcast in the programmes what in terms of your personal experience have been the reaction of management or of the Corporation at the time should you have done something like that?

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: I think it's quite a hypothetical question and it would naturally have depended on how the authorities in the country would have acted on the basis of the broadcast of the item which was contrary to the legislation at the time applying to the circumstances.  I could well imagine receiving  a call from my  immediate superior asking me if I weren't aware of the legislation and the regulations within which we had to function at the time and I would have had to respond to this question.

<UNKNOWN>: Well that raises another issue and that is the matter of manipulation of censorship or whatever you wish to call it, interfering, the possibility thereof within the Corporation, what was your experience in this regard, regarding this type of issue?   In other words what I am referring to is political intervention or interference within the daily business of the Corporation.

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: Mr Chair I am in the ironical situation that in the previous SABC I was not in a senior management position and in the new SABC I have landed in such a position, I therefore did not form part of the highest tier  of meetings that were held and discussions that were entered into.  I was on middle management level and in that respect I was an executive officer carrying out policy rather than a formulator of policy at the time.  I at times could cognisance of calls that had been made to the SABC, the most famous incident, obviously, is that where Freek Robinson was involved, but I was also aware of other discussion where the head of news of the SABC at the time, Mr Jan van Zyl received call from government officials.  And I think I will be forgiven if I say that Mr van Zyl, in many instances, differed from the people who approached him with these requests.    Here, for example, I have a document which gives a good  indication of the type of difference of opinion that existed under those circumstances between the news division of the SABC and the government of the day.    With all respect I don't think it's the end of that type of scenario which I will sketch to you now.  This concerned whether the SABC's news division did justice to all the initiatives which the government had launched and developed at the time, in other words whether the SABC gave enough publicity to that which the government of the day regarded a noteworthy information which the public had to take cognisance of and a specific request was addressed to the SABC to accommodate Parliamentary broadcasts in the actuality programmes of the day which followed after the eight o'clock news in the evening, and the SABC's point of view, and it happened to be  that of Mr Jan van Zyl, the head of news at the time that that sort of programme, a review of the Parliamentary activities of the particular day was not justified or justifiable for accommodation from a  news point of view in the news actuality programme, but that it should be accommodated later on in the evening by way of a Parliamentary broadcast programme.  And I don't think it's an over-statement to say that it was a very intense debate at the time, that is the kind of discussion of which I was aware at the time.  Simultaneously I could state to you that during all the years when I worked a the SABC, from 1972 to the  present, not once did I receive a call from a politician in a prominent position who required from me or who tried to instruct me to give a certain point of view, reflect that,  or an argument or to express it in the commentary.  I was involved, for example, in the labour reform  initiatives which were carried out at the time  of  the  Wiehahn Commission.  I had quite a number of discussions in the course of my work because my so-called beat at the time was labour legislation, I had quite a number of discussions with Professor Wiehahn himself and with the then Minister of Labour, Mr Fanie Botha.  I think it would also have been true to say that he sought as much publicity as possible for those initiatives which the government had taken at the time to reform labour legislation and to bring collective bargaining into the market place as a system but an instruction or even a strongly-worded request, in all my years at the SABC I never received directly from any high up politician.

<UNKNOWN>: Are you aware of any of your colleagues who received such a request or instruction?