Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

TSELISO RALITABO: I really need to, upfront, start by complimenting Comrade Juby on the UBJ side that she has presented so well.  I had to highlight here that the purpose of our submission is actually two-fold.  One it is to highlight the plight of the journalist, particularly starting with the black journalist as UBJ has been formed and we need to focus at that time on, one, the apartheid system or the self-censorship which prevailed in the newsroom then and we also need to highlight the media and the State.	Now firstly the union was formed as a result of the black journalist who was not accommodated or whose aspirations were not accommodated in the then white journalist organisation called SASJ. There were members of, there were black journalists who were members of this organisation but unfortunately at that time black journalists were not considered to be workers at that time and therefore their membership in the organisation would not help much.  	As the black journalist walked out of the SASJ, there was a liberal white journalist who opted out with this black journalist and they formed another organisation which was called South African Journalist Association, but unfortunately this organisation would not take long as well because of the black membership in it and that has seen to the establishment of UBJ in 1972.	Having said that, it is therefore important to highlight here that the UBJ was a black organisation but a black organisation that has ensued purely because of the current forces at that time which would not allow the black journalist aspirations to have been accommodated in the existing white organisation. 	There are two purposes why the organisation was formed.  It was basically to redeem the dignity of black journalists which has been clearly undermined by the system at that time, and secondly the purpose of establishing the organisation was to protect and promote the free flow of information without any distortions which we thought was very important at that time. 	We have alluded to the self-censorship processes and systems in the newsroom and by these all what it means is the black journalists were meant to be very inferior to their white counterparts in the newsroom in the sense that all the news that would have been written by the black journalist would have been news which would be seen to be inferior.  No news that would have carried any political substance would have been given to be recorded by the black journalist.  And in most cases, in those cases where the black journalist would have been given the opportunity to go and cover such stories, those stories would still be used by their white counterparts where suitable, in most cases for international media.	We come to the point of media and the State.  Here is a very clear indication of what Comrade Juby has alluded to. From the inception of the establishment of the UBJ in 1972 we have realised that after about five years of existence of that organisation, there has been massive confrontation between the organisation and the State and that has seen to the banning of the UBJ in 1977. 	We have also come to note that in line with the media and the State, with all those confrontations that I'm not going to be mentioning, the names of the people who were harassed, the journalists who ended up leaving the country, those who were killed, those who were detained, I'm not going to go into that list, but there was also a notorious section of the then government which was called Section 205 of the Criminal Act which has really been a section that has been established to suppress the information,  the flow of information and this Section 205 has really been a menace to the black journalist in particular at that time. We wanted to reflect here that the whole list of people who fell victims of this Section 205 have been black journalists.  It is, however, still a section that exists even in today's government.  	Most people are arguing that Section 205 is a section that has been put together to make it possible for the government or for the State for the benefit of the citizens of the country to get people to give evidence on first hand information on what could have happened at that time, but our argument as MWASA still is that, be that as it may, we only have got a list of journalists who have been victims of Section 205 and nobody else has really been a victim of this section.	We need to highlight what happened in October 19th, 1977 where UBJ was banished with a lot of other alternative newspapers and where a host of journalists who were both members of this organisation and non-members have been detained and banished and banned and all sorts of brutality has been reflected against them.  The leadership of UBJ at this time was really in serious confrontation with the government. 	We have heard from Comrade Juby that UBJ had to put up a publication which was a very secretive kind of publication which would have been used otherwise to communicate to the international society on the developments in this country.  Those developments which would not otherwise be carried out in the local media streams.	In November 30th there was a white election and we would realise that it was a couple of months after UBJ has been banned and all those leaders of the UBJ were still behind bars. The journalists took upon themselves at this time to gallantly continue their struggle and they therefore marched, contrary to what John Vorster had said then when he has just patted his ministers on the shoulders, to have said they've done good work in terms of closing down those publications and UBJ, so the journalists marched and wanting to see the release of those detained UBJ leaders and general membership. And this was in November 30th of the same year.	And we have also seen government introducing a lot of laws and regulations, and the state of emergency was one such measure that the government has used to suppress free flow of information and also to keep the journalist at bay in terms of monitoring the kind of information that the journalist would have wanted to disseminate. 	We would not have done our duty if we would not reflect on the submission that the other focus of this is to really communicate a tribute to the journalist like Comrade Juby and all those journalists who never relented in their fight to see to the free flow of information that would not have been distorted against all the odds, that have already been reflected in that report which were loaded against the free flow of information.  	And in this tribute we really need to also highlight here that it would not have been possible without the input that we received and the support of international organisations like ICFTU, IFJ and many international organisations which really stood by ourselves.	Having said this we need to really come to highlight the other fact that MWASA has taken over from UBJ, and MWASA has since continued to keep the media workers in the same boat as the purposes of UBJ, that of fighting to maintain quality journalists in the country for the benefit of accurate dissemination of information for the society, and we have in an endeavour to try and see to the free flow of information put together or being founder members of various organisations like Campaign for Open Media which has been established to see to the freedom of the press in this country, the CIB, which has campaigned for independent broadcasting, and we continue to fight and support for the freedom of the press in this country.	That is in a nutshell the print media side of our submission.   Thank you.