Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

JOHAN PRETORIUS: Thank you once again for allowing me or affording me the opportunity to address you.  As you may or may not know I was not very keen to be here today, not because I have a problem with the TRC, on the contrary I think it is a very necessary exercise that all of us have to go through to achieve true reconciliation.  My problem is just that I cannot see how you can get a true picture of the SABC's role in those years if you only have three of us here, and I know you have been experiencing logistical and other problems, but if I don't say what I'm saying now I'll be untrue to myself and my fellow SABC journalists, because I honestly thing you won't be getting a full picture. And one of the reasons why I say this is because many of us went through very, very difficult times and I want to mention one name, because I think I have to do it, and that's the late Christo Kritzinger.  We shared a lot of his experiences and he would have expected me to have been here.  In my humble opinion if you really wanted a full picture of the SABC's role in the apartheid years, the number of ex-SABC people appearing here today may I say is woefully inadequate. Although, as I said to you, I was editor-in-chief of the TV news of the Corporation for five years leading up to 1994, and at one stage I was also radio news head for about 18 months, I was a relatively small cog in the machinery of this massive organisation. I was the fourth head of news in 30 years.  The others are all alive and well and living in Johannesburg. I had other senior news colleagues whom I know personally who would have been willing to appear here today had they been for instance asked timeously. And then I asked myself, this is the one question I asked myself, where are at least one ex-chairman of the Board, or at least one previous director general and at least one of the ministers responsible for the SABC in the past?  I think they could have told you a few choice bits.  Now can you really form a true picture of exactly what was going on without these people, and believe me I feel kind of lonely. So that's the reason for me being here and I'll try my best.  You have my assurance, I'll try my best to give you the best obtainable version of the truth in these circumstances.  Now just to stress why I'm here and under what basis I'm here, I'm not here to speak on behalf of the SABC, I cannot do that, it will be pretentious for me to do that.  I'm here to give you an honest impression of what happened in those years when I was editor-in-chief from '89 to 1994 and then also as a more junior staff member as for instance, political correspondent of the SABC, and as you will know in those years a political correspondent was on the interface, at the interface, whatever the word is, of the political scene.    The way I understand it the TRC wants to find out whether the SABC, and in particular it's journalists, attributed to human rights abuses during the apartheid years, and if you ask me that question, my answer would be with the wisdom of hindsight, yes it most probably did.  Don't ask me when and how, but it doesn't take somebody with a crystal ball to deny that, I know it must have. But the details I cannot tell you.    If you ask me whether the SABC and it's journalists helped to keep the policy of apartheid going, the answer will be at certain times definitely yes.  I have a big proviso though, and this is part and parcel of the above two answers, and I know it sounds hackneyed and I know people start laughing when people say this but for what it's worth to you, you must judge this issue in the historical context and against the circumstances of the time, and if you then come to a certain conclusion, fine, fine.  All I'm saying is don't deny the contextual or the historical context.   Without the hindsight I have now and the personal insight knowledge, I would also have been tempted to condemn and say the hell with the prevailing circumstances, they were apartheid puppets and I have the fullest understanding for that viewpoint.  Mr Chairman I'm not saying the SABC never erred or never failed in its duty to the people of this country, of course it did, nor am I trying to pass the buck or look for excuses, and I am fully prepared to accept full responsibility for decisions of my own or my subordinates which may have led to human rights abuses. What I am saying, however, is that there was never any conscious intent to abuse human rights.  Now at the risk of boring you, but I think when one comes to conclusions on this matter one cannot lose sight of the following and these are the stipulations of the Acts or Act under which we had to operate, and if you picture this as a journalist you can understand how difficult it must have been.    In terms of Section 12.2 of the Broadcasting Act of '76, the responsible minister imposed under Section 7(2)(b) of the Radio Act the following conditions on the SABC:  With due observance of Section 2 of the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act of 1961 and, subject to the provisions of the Broadcasting Act, the SABC shall broadcast it's programmes,   a.  to afford all the national communities of the RSA the opportunity of achieving full self-realisation within their own cultural and social spheres,  b.  due regard for the prevailing conventions and customs of the different communities, to encourage and promote cordial and sound relations between these communities.  c.  to disseminate information and to educate and to,  d.  report newsworthy current events in the Republic and abroad clearly, unambiguously, factually, impartially and without distortion.  Mr Chairman the legislation further stated that the Corporation shall broadcast nothing which and I mention four relevant points out of eight.  "a.   may inflame public opinion or may directly or indirectly lead to any contravention of the law or may threaten the security of the state,  b.  may cause unrest or panic,  c.  may hamper any government department in the execution of its duties, or   d.  is calculated to damage the Republic's image abroad".  As you know the SABC had a minister responsible for the SABC who had to report to Parliament. The State President appointed the board of the SABC who in turn appointed the DG, the director general as CEO.  He exercised control over and supervised the staff of the Corporation and performed functions and used powers assigned to him by the Board. This very Board determined the policy which had to be exercised by the SABC in general and the journalists in particular. Examples of these policy directives via a previous director general-  1.  The SABC supports the view point that there can be no negotiation with leaders or parties who use violence to achieve political aims, therefore the SABC will not provide a platform for these people to air their views.  2.   The SABC distances itself from the so-called new order media who are in constant confrontation with the State.  3.  South Africa is the target of a revolutionary onslaught.  The SABC must fight this with all the means at its disposal.  In addition we had our journalistic ethical codes which echoed journalistic values but obviously were influenced by the preceding guidelines and also the Acts.    To complicate our lives further there were many other Acts regulating many journalists in South Africa.  We all know about them, and obviously being the public or State broadcaster we run a greater risk of being taken to task, so we had to tow the line.  As you can see Mr Chairman, not an easy ride.   Another important factor which affected the lives of journalists before 1994 was the constant pressure on us from politicians. Although in all fairness I must say and I must say this, after 1989, the NP pressure dropped dramatically.   When I say political pressure I mean all parties, sure, but obviously the NP pressure was greater than all the others put together. SABC journalists were harassed, verbally abused face-to-face or by telephone at all the hours of the day or night. A few of us were even informally sentenced to death by a rightwing organisation.  I received these sentences by post twice and when I arrived home on the evening on those two occasions shady characters sitting in a car outside my gate staring at me.  I am not saying this to drum up sympathy, I'm just giving you the facts to sketch the circumstances that we had to work in.   The fact is Mr Chairman politicians in those days had a totally naive, simplistic, and one dimensional view of broadcast journalism, in particular TV.  And I'm sorry to say some of the NP politicians were the main culprits. They utterly confused publicity value with news value and the other way round when it suited them.  They were virtually paranoid about what was termed exposure for subversive elements or exposure for political opponents to the right.    Now be that as it may Mr Chairman the problem was not that we were harassed, that comes with the job as you all know, but the test lies in how we handled this pressure. This is the crux of the issue and here the perception is that we failed. The fact is we had to manage these people. And can you imagine how difficult it is for a senior person in a new set-up to manage a politician and manage his own staff at the same time. Sometimes we had to give two steps backward to move three forward the next day, we had to live to fight another day.  In the process we did make mistakes, yes, we made many mistakes but we also had untold successes which people don't know about.  I'm just pointing it out because as with aircraft you hear about the one that crashes but about the 9,276 that take off safely every day.   You will ask me as journalists why did we even listen to these people?  To give you but one example.  In the 80's during the emergency there was serious talk, in those days I moved in those circles as a journalist, there was serious talk in political and security circles about putting the SABC and it's journalists under some kind of military control. As you know in those days in the security or under the state of emergency there were many security laws in place and there was serious talk about this. So we had manage the situation whereby something like that would not happen.   And Mr Chairman do you remember the SABC Deputy Minister who took us to task in public because we were hoaxed into broadcasting the then fictitious death of Dr Andries Treurnicht.  He was actually convinced that we had all turned CP and did that to drum up sympathy.   The fact is Mr Chairman these  were realities we had to contend with.  It is fine for board chairmen and others to say that they were never given any orders, maybe they weren't but we are journalists as I said just now, we were at the interphase and we bore the brunt.  Another factor which affected the performance of the news department of the SABC was the quality of its journalists. Not their inherent abilities, if you will excuse me for a moment, not their inherent abilities because there were some excellent journalists, the inherent abilities, but the training. Radio and especially TV, as people who are people who are involved in it will know, is a very, very specialised business and many of us, including myself were simply thrown into the water and we had to swim.  Some of us drowned.  I'm not too sure sometimes if I didn't pick up some brain damage in the process but the fact is we had a hell of a time, we weren't trained properly.  Professor Guy Burgers words the other day at a seminar ring true, he said many times editorial content, and he wasn't referring to the SABC, he was stating in general, cock-ups rather than conspiracies determined editorial content.  Many a time it was so, those words were applicable.    Nevertheless in the final analysis Mr Chairman, SABC journalists for what it's worth to you, and I know Professor van Zyl won't agree with me, but there are many things I don't agree with him either, are about which they performed admirably under these circumstances, given the circumstances they performed admirably no matter what anybody says.  The next point I want to mention Mr Chairman is the role of the SABC's journalists during the '80's and early '90's.  Journalists always, I think, tried to be fair, never mind objective, objectivity is not possible, but if you are fair you have to give credit where credit is due. As you all know after the introduction of the Tricameral Parliament the UDF declared publicly that its declared aim was to make the country ungovernable.  Now never mind the reasons why they did this, political reasons were there and I've got no problem with that, what I'm saying is that that was the declared policy. The country lapsed into a low-level civil war, we cannot forget this, we were in a low-level civil war, there was a state of emergency, whatever the reasons were that's beside the point, especially in Natal.   Moreover the so-called old world order was still in place then.  It's easy for Professor van Zyl to point to those old programmes and talk about the war psychosis, we were in a war whether we deny it or not, there was a cold war. Soviet and communist spheres of influence were applicable and I'm not a person, and people who know me, I'm not a person who looks for a Communist behind every bush, but these were realities we had to contend with. The Cubans were in Angola and our sons, for whatever reason, were fighting against the Cubans. Sure there was a war going on, they were being killed they were being shot to bits, bloodshed was all around us, necklace murders, security force action, in the midst of draconian security legislation which affected the journalists.  Now without the hindsight knowledge about possible third-force involvement, could anybody of sound mind have really have expected the SABC and it's journalists to have gone against the State, against the background of those acts in the '80's?   What we did do was and it was a conscious choice, we decided to work within that system and we tried to do our job within that system and for that I make no apology.  I took that conscious decision.  We pushed as far as was humanly possible, we pushed against those parameters trying to smother us, constantly.  Now seen overall, look at it from another perspective and with hindsight, I agree with hindsight and I didn't think about this before I could with hindsight, I say the SABC played a very important role in getting South Africa to where it is today. We all know that the fall of Communism and the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the fall of the Berlin wall etc etc, changed the world completely.  How can anybody deny that the new world order caused certain things to become possible?  The Cubans to get out of Namibia, the speech of the 2nd of February 1990.  If those things did not happen, I'm convinced the 2nd of February speech would not have been made at that time.    In the run-up the government realised that it had to negotiate with the ANC, it's a known fact and the ANC on the other hand that it could not overthrow the government by force.  Now surely in this process the SABC must get some credit if it helped to get the parties to the negotiating table?   And it was the SABC's public editorial standpoint and viewpoint that these parties should get to the negotiating table.  Then  Mr Chairman, the SABC's journalists also played a major role since '89 in opening up South Africa's society and preparing it for 1994.  Professor van Zyl again repeated his untrue statement that we never introduced debates. Debates started in '89. We opened up.  When we got the gap, we took the gap, because when the change of government came in 1989 a big wide gap opened up and we took it.  We opened up South Africa's society and prepared it for 1994.   When the change of government came in 1994 - ja sorry, we took the gap, we introduced those debates, we opened up the flow of information. A previous board of the SABC has claimed the credits for that.  I heard him say that in an interview once. Although the board or management did not stop us, and backed us, the initiative for this openness came from the journalists and the journalists alone, nobody else.   Why do I mention this Mr Chairman?  Now we're coming to another factor.  We were constantly criticised when we opened up, we were constantly criticised and sniped at by individual board members because we were perceived to be pro-ANC, what we did do was we opened up and reported news as it happened, sure the ANC got more coverage, yes but they made more news, they were just more adept at making news in those days than the other parties and for that we got criticised.  As a matter of fact three of us at one stage were called into the board room and we were read the riot act because of this. Now what, Mr Chairman that brings me to what is referred to as the myth of objectivity and I am watching the watch, so don't worry.  Now this is something I feel very strongly about, and whether you agree with this or not, it's not a big issue but I pledge with you to see whether there is no valid statement in this. Sir Alistair Burnett, a British newscaster once said, and I quote,     "The very selection of news involves bias.  There is some bias in every programme about public policy.  The selection of the selection of the policy to be discussed and those to discuss it means bias." - Sir Alistair Burnett.Andrew Boyd the well-known British journalist and trainer says,     "Complete impartiality is like perfection, an ideal for which many strive but none will wholly attain. Even the most respected journalist can only be the sum of his or her beliefs, experience and attitudes. The product of his/her society, culture and upbringing.  No one can be free from bias however hard they try to compensate by applying professional standards of objectivity, for objectivity itself subjectively appraised must by nature be an unreliable yardstick.  The journalist's responsibility is to recognise the inevitability of bias without ever surrendering to it".  I say Sir, that is what we as journalists, and in particular myself, tried to do under the then prevailing difficult circumstances. We made our mistakes, yes I admit.    If you ask me whether there was an institutional in the organisation against the liberation movements and other parties in favour of the NP government, it would be futile to deny it, of course there was.   Was the Board not appointed by the President?  Yes.   Would he appoint Board members that would be anti-NP on majority?  No.    Who appointed the DG?  The Board.   Would the DG be somebody in the olden days anti-NP? No.   And did the DG not execute Board policy within a broad NP sphere of influence, so to speak?   Now I come to another point, the following step, is today's Board not appointed by the President and the same system not followed under a broad ANC sphere of influence?  Then I want to ask, what makes the new Board, Solaki Sisulu and Alistair Sparks better equipped to handle institutional bias than the old Board, Wynand Harmse or myself?  Seeing Mr Sisulu has a very strong political background and Mr Sparks was even on the ANC's parliamentary list, and what about Mr Dr Ivy Masepe Kasaburi, an ANC cadre who was re-employed after becoming chairperson of the Board?  Not my words, the words of an ANC minister.  Now what makes today's new SABC journalists better equipped to handle institutional bias than we could, when some of them openly backed the ANC in the past, were MK commanders, some of them in Botswana are card-carrying members of the ANC, have strong struggle credentials and have direct communication amongst the powerful figures in government?  Now I'm not saying they are not coping with institutional bias.  I'm not saying that, all I'm saying is if they are, so did we.   There is a perception that SABC journalists in the apartheid days were white Afrikaner males, all members of the Broederbond and a collection of rightwing English-speaking whites. Not so.  From the early 80's TV news and radio news, even before that, had staffers from across the demographic and political spectrum.  Now granted, this is now the bad news, not nearly in the correct proportions, yes. The simple fact is nobody wanted to work for us.   But still we had a basic system of checks and balances for what it was worth.  It wasn't only one-sidedness or one-sided, no the decisions weren't only taken one-sidedly. For this very reason we had many fruitful and sometimes heated discussions on editorial issues. Some of us differed drastically on how a certain story should have been handled. We weren't always ad idem with how we should handle these stories, but in the end a decision had to be taken and abided by and it's when those decisions were taken when the unhappiness occurred.  In the process we took wrong decisions but we also took many correct decisions.  Another untrue perception Mr Chairman is that most of us were content to accept instructions from a group of Broederbonders who met in the mornings to scheme about the news control of the day.  No, we had normal broadcast organisational editorial meetings where we coordinated the day's input and production.  There was now way in which the news could have been manipulated as we have been suspected of.  Anybody who vaguely knows a radio and TV-news system,  and I think Alistair Sparks will agree with me, will realise that it is simply not possible to manipulate it in such a way, it's not physically possible.   This brings me to the monitoring actions of the SABC and to Professor van Zyl's and with that I conclude,  to Professor van Zyl's outfit which evolved into the Media Monitoring Project, and I must say I've been waiting a very long time for this opportunity to state this in public. This was overseen by a man, and Professor van Zyl knows me, I like him as a person, but I think he will also agree he likes to see his name in neon lights now and then, and I think that is part of the reason for the Monitoring Project, and it was run at that stage, and you agree Professor, that she was barely out of her teens, at that stage she hadn't even seen the inside of a newsroom.  For the greater part of this exercise, ja she'd never been in a newsroom, never mind understood the mechanics.  Now I know there has been in the submission, now all I'm saying is when you look at that submission, take note of what I'm saying now and if you want to reject it, please do so but I have to say it.  Many more qualified people than I feel exactly the same way about this. There is a grave injustice about which I felt very strongly over the years, there is a grave injustice about this whole thing and that is the at DNP, MNP have been getting away with a lot of distortion for a very, very long time, and don't believe me, you needn't believe me, go and ask other people who know about these things.    Many of their findings were based on blatant verifiable untruths.  The statement of Professor van Zyl now that the old guard in '89 was against voter education. It's not true, it's verifiably not true.  And quite frankly Sir the reports weren't worth the paper they were printed on.  I concede, I concede they had valid criticism, yes, and Bronwyn and I spoke quite a few times and we discussed this, yes, there was valid criticism, but it was so infrequent that most of the findings varied from debateable to ludicrous, with the latter more prominent.    Many empirical researchers, and you can go and check, including Dr Daan van Vuuren of the SABC, Dr Skeen and Ruth Tomaselli of Natal University, Professor Pieter Fourie of Unisa in those days questioned the methodology of the BMP, MMP  The Natal Witness of the 15 December said, and I quote:    "Although quoted, the BMP's standing has been questioned.  This week it was described by a left-leaning academic as having no methodology, no argument, no evidence. All these guys seem to do is confirm their prejudices".  Dr Daan van Vuuren of the SABC's Broadcast Research Unit says, in his comments from research perspective on the '93 annual report of the BMP:    "The language used in the report is not academic an/or objective as usually used in research reports. It seems to fall more into the category of journalistic criticism from a particular point of view".  Ms Bronwyn Keen-Young herself, who ran the project, admitted herself in a written comment that,     "The Broadcast Monitoring Project had never claimed to be neutral or scientific.  Its research was by no means the definitive statement on SABC news coverage and researchers who adopt a different standpoint either to the left or right of them, might have different beliefs about how the SABC should operate and therefore come to different conclusions about its coverage".Now Sir, if ever there was an admission of bias in so-called research, this is it.    Professor Kean Tomaselli, the director of the Centre for Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Natal, a vehement critic of and by no means an apologist for the SABC, said in '94 and I quote, and this is my second last page, I'll be ending off.    "My centre has been involved in debates over monitoring TV since 1992 when the campaign for open media, COM, approached us to participate in the run-up to the elections. From that time on we have become increasingly alarmed at the nature of the scientifically untenable monitoring efforts by first, COM, then the Broadcast Monitoring Group, BMP, and lastly the MMG which arose out of the BMP.  An evaluative report commissioned for us by TNP, because we asked him to do it, to do the evaluation, indicated the total lack of any methodology in BMP's so-called reports, compounded by questionable claims at having secured the endorsement of local and international media experts, we were approached by one of BMP's European funders who once presented with our critique, agreed that BMP was incapable of conducting a credible monitoring operation. BMP which became MMP after being separated from the Independent Media Commission continued with its utterly discredited approach, notwithstanding similar criticism from the international community".          Mr Chairman the three distinguished international observers the SABC had during the run-up to the elections in '94 echoed these sentiments. As a matter of fact, Mr Stewart Rebo, the then chairman of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association actually burst out laughing, uncontrollable fits of laughter, when he read one of the MMP's reports on coverage on which he knew the full background details.  Forgive me for spending so much time on the subject Sir, but I was waiting for a long time to get this off my chest, but in the interest of justice I had to, if you will forgive me, because for too long gullible people have been taken for a ride.  To sum up. I know what I've said here today will be received and interpreted differently by different people, and I have full respect for their views.  Some will agree and some won't. These include current and ex-SABC people, many politicians and people involved in the struggle. As long as they and you accept that what I basically tried to do was, from within my limited perspective in the broader sense of the SABC, I tried to give an honest perspective from my side to help you to come to a finding.    Thank you again for affording me the time to address you and if there are questions I would be willing to answer them.