Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

JON QWELANE: Thank you Mr Chairman.  I am a South African citizen, I turned 45 years old exactly a week ago today and I am a journalist.  I have been one since my first days as a freelance reporter on the Mafikeng Mail back in 1972.  At present I am the Editor In-Chief at Mapuga Publishing which is a black owned publishing house.  I joined the full time staff of The World newspaper in 1975 and since then I have worked for just about every major newspaper in Johannesburg.  In the time that I have worked as a journalist, did the media render themselves guilty of human rights violations and do I have examples to back up any such charges.  	I think at the outset, Mr Chairman, it is not only important, but also a necessary act of honesty to acknowledge that the media in this country, particularly the English language newspapers, performed some noteworthy tasks in attempting to keep the South African public informed.  It is also important to acknowledge, with honesty, that those newspapers, in the main, stood out by supporting the families of journalists who were imprisoned without trial.  This they did, for example, by continuing to pay the salaries of the detained journalists and, thus, not falling into the trap of finding them guilty without charge.  In one instance the Sunday Times even payed for the Supreme Court defence of their journalist, Enoch Duma, who was charged under the Terrorism Act.  	Yet, curiously, these same media turned very angrily against us in 1977 when 27 of us, all black journalists, marched in protest against apartheid and were arrested.  They did not care that it was a march of conscience and sparked, largely, by the banning of newspapers the month before and the murder of Steve Biko by the security police in the same month.  Ridiculous comments denouncing our march and our motivation were printed by the white editors.  Notably, in this regard, the white editor of Post Newspaper, which was then owned by The Argus company and editors, generally, instructed those of us on the march to choose between forfeiting pay for the time of our arrest or signing leave forms for that time.  	Of course, the contradiction did not touch them at all, that our march was against the very things they purported to denounce in their eloquent editorials, but I must, Mr Chairman, also acknowledge, with honesty, that it was the English language newspapers whose journalists demonstrated periodic flashes of courage and brilliance by exposing the gross injustices perpetrated by the system of apartheid and, I guess here, one has in mind the reporting on the inhuman conditions in South Africa's prisons, the info scandal, the unmasking of the CCB and the expose on the Vlakplaas dirty tricks network and, of course, as I have already stated, these editors on these newspapers often waxed eloquent in stinging editorials condemning the apartheid system.	Yet again, as shown by our anti-apartheid march, which they never supported, those editorials were in retrospect acts of shallow self-righteousness which were very rarely matched by practice.  The only conclusion I can draw in the circumstances, is that they were playing to the international gallery and they opposed apartheid only to the extent that our oppression must be made more comfortable.  	Mr Chairman, I am going to charge the mainstream newspapers with denying people information and, therefore, violating one of their basic rights.  There will be other violations which I will highlight, but denying information to the public will service now and again as I go along.	Black journalists of my generation were not given any training at all.  Indeed, anything and everything that I, personally, know about journalism and in journalism has all been learnt by trial and error.  I have never once spent a single day, not a single hour in any course in journalism organised by anyone.  I supposed in every sense of the phrase, I could describe myself, truly, as a self-made bloke, but, then, so are many other black journalists.  In very many cases the lack of training was used as a convenient excuse to deny black journalists promotion on the newspapers on which they worked.  It was the policy of job reservation and practice, not withstanding the eloquent condemnations and editorials against the policy of job reservation itself.  It often, of course, depended on the goodwill of the particular editor to correct what was evidently wrong in denying blacks promotion.  	Nearly every single one of the liberal establishment English language newspapers had a so-called extra or so-called Africa edition.  Whatever the rationalisations, these editions, Mr Chairman, were apartheid editions intended for blacks and intended to segregate news on racial lies.  Typically what passed for news in these editions, was often regarded by news editors as being unfit for white human consumption.  Conventional newsroom wisdom held that blacks loved to read about sex, soccer and crime.  Indeed, these were normally the kind of stories that found themselves placed in the extra and Africa editions.  What was common to the so-called extra and Africa editions was that their inside pages were otherwise the normal business or finance pages would be located were dropped and these pages were filled with just a load of trash about townships.  In other words, apart from changing the front and back pages of a newspaper to give it the so-called black feel, important finance and business news was dropped altogether in additions destined for the black areas and you can go to any newspaper library, you will find what I am talking about.  It is there.  	White newspaper editors and their apologists always claimed to be the custodians of the public's right to know, but I think the example of the extra and Africa editions with no finance and business coverage gives the lie to that spurious claim and, of course, the right to be informed, Mr Chairman, is a basic human right and in misapplying themselves in the manner which I have just described, the mainstream liberal newspapers were guilty of violating the basic human rights of black people through denying them information and there was more to that.  The existence of separate apartheid style newspapers necessitated the demarcation of news rooms on racial lines even if it was not said so in words, in practice it was there.  	The staffing of the segregated news rooms was also on racial lines and I am speaking from experience, Mr Chairman, because I worked there on these newspapers.  Obviously, from this flowed the next logical step, that pay scales were miles apart for white and black journalists.  Again, paying different salaries determined by race for people doing the same job was blatantly discriminatory and was an obvious violation of our human rights.  Indeed, the pay grievances came to a head in 1980 when black journalists across the country mounted what became the longest strike at that time in South African labour history.  	Canteen facilities and toilets were also cruelly segregated.  By early 1976 I was working at the Sunday Times which was in the same building as the Sunday Express and the Rand Daily Mail with shared canteens.  blacks had a separate canteen from that for whites and when we protested those protests only elicited a third canteen. The whites only remain, the Blacks only remained, the third one was coyly named the International Canteen, while the fundamental rule remained of apartheid canteens and, of course, at The Star, where I arrived a few years later, things were much worse.  Even the food served by the apartheid canteens was not the same.  Where in the whites only canteen they used stainless steel knives and forks and bone cups and saucers and plates, in the Blacks only canteen, believe you me, Mr Chairman, the crockery was the type used in prisons and mental sanatoriums.  We were using zinc plates and zinc mugs.  The cook used a pick axe handle to stir the millie meal.  	Toilets were strictly segregated.  Whites had spacious facilities with wash basins and mirrors and three ablution blocks, cubicles for men on each floor.  I never really visited the white women's loos, but I have no reason to believe they were of sub-standard.  Toilets for Blacks, on the other hand, comprised one tiny cubicle at the top of the stairs on each floor.  Were these human rights violations?  Well, Mr Chairman, were they not?  	In early 1981 the apartheid regime tightened the screws on the Pass Laws and fines for employing a so-called unregistered worker were increased to R5 000,00.  What I am saying here I am deliberately, Mr Chairman, withholding names of people, because I do not want to unnecessarily embarrass people.  It has simply got to do with the submission, but the stir when the Pass Laws were tightened railed self righteously in condemnatory editorials while the newspapers own officers tightened the apartheid screws on the workers and I should know.  For not registering at the Pass Office the assistant general manager in charge of staff, at the time, withheld my salary unless I went to register with the Pass Office.  For three consecutive months I worked without pay until a senior white journalist working on the Africa edition, which white journalist, at the same time, was an official of the South African Society of Journalists, went upstairs to the assistant manager to demand that I be payed.  Mr Chairman, my human rights were grossly violated in that instance.	Explanations I was given at the time were that while the newspaper abhorred apartheid, it was still bound to obey the Law.  If that was so, Mr Chairman, why then did the editorials contradict the practice if the yawning difference between practice and sermon was not duplicity and, therefore, a violation of the gullible readers' human rights, generally, then what was it?  	Let me give you an example of the treatment of news by the liberal newspapers.  There was one rainy Saturday afternoon early in the 1980's, Mr Chairman, not long after the launch of the Sunday Star.  A call came in to say a man had stabbed his wife to death and then hanged himself, leaving there seven minor children orphaned and destitute.  I told the man in charge at the newspaper about the call I had received.  He was very excited and said it sounded like a good story and he told me to go for it.  A minute or two later he was back at my desk asking if the people involved were white and I asked him what their colour had to do with the story and he got angry and ordered me to answer him.  When he learnt they were Blacks he lost interest in the story.  	A few minutes later another call came in.  This time from a white woman motorist travelling on the Ben Schoeman freeway.  Near Midrand she had spotted a truck full of sheep stuck on the freeway.  She moaned about the plight of the animals caught in the rain and, of course, she also decried peoples' cruelty to animals.  Believe me, the same editor told me to leave the story I was working on and go with a photographer to Midrand.  The next day the photograph and tale of the stranded sheep made the pages of the white edition of the Sunday Star and the story of the seven destitute little children managed only page two of the Africa edition.	Such treatment of news, Mr Chairman, constitute a violation of peoples' rights to be informed.  At any case, the callous disregard for Blacks illustrated here speaks for itself, but, then again, the standard question news editors always asked was is the story of white interest, but, perhaps, among the worst cases of human rights violations practised by the media during apartheid, in this particular instance, was perpetrated by The Star.	In the early 1980's Ruth First, a prominent anti-apartheid activist, living in exile in Maputo, was blown to bits by a powerful bomb sent by the apartheid machinery.  The Star brazenly published a report stating that her husband, Joe Slovo, had arranged the bomb.  Naturally, Slovo was very incensed, but because he was banned in exile in London at the time, there was little he could do to clear his name except by protesting it, sorry, his innocence, but, even then, The Star stuck to its smears.  Slovo successfully sued the newspaper in a British court for defamation and he was awarded damages, but in an editorial, The Star sneered at the outcome of the case, claiming it was not under the jurisdiction of the British courts and taunted Slovo to come back home and fight the matter in a South African court.  Of course, the newspaper also refused to pay the damages.	About a year later when the smear had firmly stuck that Slovo had, allegedly, murdered his own wife, The Star then meekly published a belated apology, but even then the newspaper arbitrarily chose to pay the damages it owed him to a charity, to a charity of The Stars own choice.  What does this say to you, Mr Chairman.  That our self-styled champions of fairness can behave in this despicable manner by using apartheid legislation, that is the banning of Slovo, to savage him with such impunity and get away with it. Was that not a case of human rights violations, I ask you?	I can even tell you, right now, as a Commission, that the Chairman of this very Commission was, in the 1980's, often described despairingly by news editors in private as a rouble rousing Bishop.  	The State of Emergency produced its own crop of contradictions and human rights violations.  While editorials, once more, pronounced piously on the evils of the emergency, mainly the curbs on the press, it seemed to me and other black journalist at the time, that some senior people on newspapers were only to happy for the curbs.  Otherwise, how does one explain the constant and angry admonitions towards, to tone it down and be objective, man, which news editors also voiced even though our stories were 100% true and correct.  Numerous stories were spiked which means they were completely rejected, because they highlighted police and army atrocities in the townships.  	At this time I was working on the Sunday Star though much of my time was spent in the newsroom of the Daily Star, for which I also wrote, because the flow of news at that time was such that most stories could not be held over for the weekend.  Even when one wrote about retaliatory by completely legal campaigns, such as marches or stayaways, one was not allowed to give detailed information of the times and places and routes of such marches.  One was use to the arguments by news editors that they did not want the newspaper to be accused of promoting or inciting boycotts.	I know the recent blockade of routes by white journalists is outside the scope of today's enquiry, Mr Chairman, but I bring it up only for comparison.  The campaigns which were denied space in the newspaper in the 1980's were by blacks opposing an illegitimate white regime.  The campaigns, nonetheless, were legal because they were not banned.  The recent blockade of routes, on the other hand, was given ample space in the newspapers long in advance and even routes as far away as the Eastern Cape and Natal were spelt out detail as targeted areas of the blockade.  Now, those calling for the blockade were a little known bunch of white journalists advocating law breaking against a legitimate Government which happens to be black led.  	What I am saying is this, the protest against a white and unjust Government were planned by blacks and they were denied space, despite the fact that those protests were legal.  On the other hand, the recent protest was staged against a black and democratic Government by whites and they were given acres of space to advocate the breaking of the laws of the land.  Now, what does this say to you?  Does this say to you anything about consistency or lack of it?  Is this not a glaring example of their violations of human rights?  One could go on, Mr Chairman, but I am also well aware, I am also aware of my allotted time. 	Finally, Mr Chairman, I want to charge all the mainstream newspapers, every single one of them, English language and Afrikaans language, with collusion with apartheid.  I also want to charge them, Mr Chairman, with having a hand directly or indirectly in the murder of thousands of black people by the apartheid army and police.  I am not off my rocker.  Consider, Mr Chairman, that the major newspaper owners of this country in the 1980's were all members of the Newspaper Press Union.  On at least one occasion they were summoned to a secret meeting with P W Botha just before the dictator embarked on his so-called total onslaught.  At that meeting the newspaper bosses agreed with the dictator and ratified the agreement to the effect that South Africa was facing a so-called communist total onslaught which could only be countered by a so-called total strategy.  	Now, having got the legitimacy he wanted for his designs, Botha then unleashed the emergency and a reign of unprecedented terror on our people.  That secret pact could have gone unknown except that P W Botha was not a very intelligent man.  At some public meeting he spilled the beans and the truth was out about the true nature of the emergency and who had fully supported it and in this case it was all the major publishing houses of this country.  They had signed a pact with the dictator that there was a need for a so-called total strategy to counter what they perceived as a total onslaught and the results are known to all of us.	The point is that if the media owners had been honest in their intentions with P W Botha, then why keep their pact with the dictator about a total strategy so secret that even their newspapers never wrote about it except with embarrassment after Botha's mention and that was long after the deed.  Was this pact not a tacit violation of our human rights?  Did the media owners, by their endorsement of Botha's madness, not help to delay the day of our liberation?  Can we not correctly say that the blood of those who were murdered by Botha's police and soldiers, in the name of total onslaught, is on the hands of the media owners?  Mr Chairman, I say it is.  Thank you.