Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

UNKNOWN: Thank you.  My presentation really consists of two parts, the first is an oral presentation which is a summary, brief summary of my formal presentation.  It will run for about 12 - 15 minutes and then what I would like to do is to screen three very short extracts from a mid-week programme of 1985 which I believe really do illustrate some of the points that I want to make verbally, and I also think that it's quite easy to forget exactly what a television programme, the mid-week programme or network programme looked like in 1985, and this might be quite a good little aid memoire.    I want to start this presentation by asking the same question that Daniel Goldhagen poses in his book Hitlers Willing Executioners.  It is in brief, how could so many ordinary Germans have participated uncritically even enthusiastically in the extermination of the Jews? And Goldhagen rejects the usual very commonsensical reasons like, the perpetrators were coerced, they had no choice, they had to follow orders; or, the psychological and social pressures were so strong that everybody had to conform; or that the perpetrators were simply petty bureaucrats, simply doing what they've been told; and fourthly that the perpetrators did not know what was going on.  If we apply it to the South African situation and we ask, how could so many ordinary White South Africans have embraced apartheid so uncritically and so enthusiastically and spied on their neighbours who were contravening the Immorality Act, reported blacks without passes to the police, accepted the endorsing out of communities or the tortures of prisoners, how could this have happened?  Let's see how Goldhagen would answer this question.  He dismisses these commonsensical reasons as not being sufficient explanation for the actions of thousands of ordinary Germans.  Instead he argues that crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights are only possible because of the beliefs of the perpetrators. Put another way, it can only happen if there is some sort of motivating ideology.   Now where does such an idealogy come from?  He says it stemmed in Germany from the intellectual, cultural and bureaucratic framework of the state and therefore he traces in great detail the role of the newspapers, films, we heard about Linie Riefensthal this morning, the radio certainly, the schools and other public institutions that together cultivated over time the notion that Jews were somehow not human, that exterminating or harming a Jew was a simple act in accordance with some natural law.   Now we might not agree completely with Goldhagen's rather simplistic account of the origins of Nazi anti-semitism but the point that he makes about the link between the horrors of the holocaust and the media is of the greatest relevance in a South African situation.    If we substitute the word racism for anti-Semitism in his argument, we can start to understand the reason why apartheid was so uncritically embraced by the majority of whites during the apartheid era.  Radio and television vigorously supported Christian National Education, the Department of Information, veld schools, the Afrikaans churches, Stratcom, and the whole nationalist culture infrastructure in cultivating apartheid.  Now what about the role now specifically of SABC? The role of the SABC during the apartheid era will be remembered in the history of broadcasting as one of the most obvious examples of the blatant misuse by a minority government of a public broadcasting service.   The SABC supported for most of its existence by public license fees and state financial support acted as the official mouthpiece of the ruling National Party from 1948 to the first democratic elections.  In fact even during the run-up to the elections in 1993 there was still resistance from within the SABC to voter education programmes on television by the old guard.  For instance the SABC insisted that organisations like the Vrouefederasie, Rapportryers and Landbouunie match or be equally represented to the 80 or so democratic organisations that made up IFEE, the Independent Forum for Electorial Education.    There can be little doubt as to the harm inflicted on all the citizens of South Africa through the many years of apartheid propaganda, hate speech and the neglect by the SABC of its human rights obligations as a public broadcaster.    In my submission I've given 30 or 40 examples of particular programmes that were positively racist, positively pro-apartheid, but of course the other more difficult things to measure is the absence of the human rights culture, or the absence of any sense of a democratic perspective.    Now what was neglected?   Well these things that were neglected where these obligations included the citizens' right to information, the right to freedom of speech, the right to education, the right to the environment, and arguably the self-imposed intellectual and cultural boycott that the SABC practised by banning all meaningful debate and discussion and refusing to open a window on the world did as much to harm all viewers, white and black as the conscious propaganda campaign to demonise the liberation movements.    It's not easy to forget the banalities and indignities and intellectual obscenities that viewers had to endure for nearly 16 years when the SABC actively supported the gross violations of human rights by supporting acts of state terror, cross-border raids for instance, covering up the truth about acts of torture and death in detention.   So the point I wish to move to now is the responsibility of the SABC for the gross violation of human rights as based on the following points.   The SABC was not an unwilling victim of a powerful government that overruled it's opposition to state interference. The SABC was a willing lackey of the government, on occasions even exceeding the demands of the state in propagating the policies of apartheid.  It's policies and those of the National Party were identical, although at times it's Broederbond hierarchy favoured positions further to the right than mainstream Nationalist thought.  It must therefore bear responsibility for its news bulletins that maintained and cultivated a mindset amongst white viewers that saw apartheid as being natural and inevitable.   It most certainly was instrumental in helping to create a war psychosis that supported the total onslaught myth through its manipulative news broadcasts, it's documentaries like Vys vir Vreede, Brug Viertien, Helicopters, one can go on and on and even its dramas like Rooi Komplot where within a completely unsuspecting genre like dramas, you always had the wicked communist agitator who runs off with the pretty girl.  And also in terms of the documentary department, the firing of Kevin Harris, the firing of Stuart Pringle, about 25 people one can think of, Francis Gerard whom we see now on BBC. Besides this it retarded the development of a South African culture by emphasising ethnicity in music, drama and the visual arts and by downplaying the contribution of any black artist, writer, musician or dramatist in a South African culture. I remember once wanting to do a documentary on black Jazz and they said yes that's fine but you can't show it on SABC 3 because it's white channel.   Through its self-imposed intellectual and cultural boycott of international thought, it helped turn South Africa into a parochial society. It shamefully neglected the use of radio and television in education at all levels. It deliberately retarded the advancement of black management, as we heard this morning,  and personnel in positions of independent responsibility in the SABC hierarchy. Also it condoned corruption in management in terms of awarding contracts to certain favoured Afrikaans production houses as well as condoning managers enriching themselves by awarding contracts to themselves.  Finally we must now ask, is the SABC, can one think about the SABC as being guilty of crimes against humanity?  The question of whether media practitioners can be accused of crimes against humanity is new, stemming from considerations of the genocide in Ruanda and the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Not only is it a new issue, it's a complicated one.  The deprivations, torture and death suffered by civilian populations have increased dramatically and visibly over the past few years, calling to question the issue of the responsibility or even the culpability for this phenomenon.    These newly visible crimes against humanity are usually massive acts of violence on large groups of defenceless civilians by murderous individuals or sections of the army or police force. Since few reporters or television, radio journalists have actual blood on their hands, unlike the perpetrators that have committed physical acts of violence, crimes against humanity have not yet been directly associated with media practitioners, but the mass media with its global dimensions are increasingly seen as having an effect on perceptions of history or political events like the CNN version of the Gulf War.   In addition the actual role played by the Hutu Miehl Colleen(?) Radio in Ruanda, that propagated hate speech against the Tutsis as well as the media that supported ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, and maybe the SABC maintaining apartheid, has provided new evidence of crimes against humanity.   So the issue of whether the cultivators and maintainers of ideology, like radio and television practitioners are as culpable as the perpetrators is now being addressed seriously for the first time. As civilians increasingly become the target of crimes against humanity in the forms of genocide, ethnic conflict and mass deportation it's argued that those individuals and media institutions that support or propagate crimes against humanity are just as guilty as the perpetrators.   I think that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission can exercise a decisive influence on a resolution of these questions through it's view of these hearings on the role of the media during the apartheid era.  And I also believe that many explanations are still needed from the SABC about it's memory of the role that it played.  Chairperson that's my presentation. If we wish to, we can have a look at the three extracts or do you wish to take questions before we do that?