Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

MIKE TISSONG: And my experiences in the media started in 1981 when I joined The Argus Company working for The Star  newspaper and, as I say in my written submission, one of the first things I noticed when I joined The Star was that there were no black people in positions of authority at the newspaper and there were very capable journalists working for The Star at the time, like Don Mattera and Jon Qwelane, among others, who will be giving submissions here today.  I discovered several years later, when I had an opportunity to be on a TV programme with Raymond Louw, that this was actually a conscious thing by the media houses at the time, not to promote capable black journalists into positions of authority in the newspapers, because they would then, necessarily, give orders to white journalists and the media houses did not want to give an excuse to the Government of the time, the National Party Government, to clamp down on these newspapers.  So, without telling us, who were the journalists working there, that there were no prospects for promotion in The Argus Company and Sun, at the time, they just kept us in lower ranking positions, covering the townships, covering the homeland beats and things like that.	Another thing I also mention in my written submission is that the editorial managements of these media houses use to get their cues from the security police.  That they would check up on our backgrounds to see whether we were okay to work in the media and my particular experience here was that the deputy editor of The Star within three months of my employment at The Star, called me into his office.  His name was John Pitts.  He called me into his office and gave me a dressing down from a very dizzy height, that I should leave my politics in the street if I want to continue being employed in the newspaper.  I asked him what was going on, because I was very new to the newspaper.  John Pitts and I hardly knew one another and I did not know what he knew about my background, but I also subsequently learnt that he got, probably got information from the security police of my involvement with organisations like the South African Students Organisation, among others, before I got employed at The Star.  The security police probably gave him some sort of background on me and this was used in him attacking me.  	Because of the conservative environment that The Argus Company created in news rooms, where there was no progress for black journalists, there was also an attitude among our white colleagues that they could come into the establishment and within a few months or a few years be our seniors no matter what the capability levels were between us.  I had this particular experience where there was a clash between myself, the person who was assigned to the news desk and her senior, where for a week I had written lead stories on a page, on the courts page, where I was covering a case of a African National Congress guerrilla who had detonated a bomb in the Nedbank Building in Doornfontein.  The only creative input by this white young journalist to my copy, to my story was to remove my name from it.  	After three days of my, this big story appearing in the newspaper and my name being removed from it, I approached the person who did it and asked her why did she do this.  Then she did not respond to me, she just gave me a glaring look and then this was followed by a memorandum, very aggressive memorandum from her senior, Andrew Walker, who I understand is still employed at The Star, where he said that if I have a problem with the way my stories are being handled at the newspaper I must take it up with him, but because of the way I construed his very conservative attitude as a person and in his dealings with the black staff at The Star, I did not bother to take this up further with him, because I expected no sort of comfort from any discussion with him.  	One of the complicating things about Andrew Walker, that I experienced, was that he had a very close relationship with Craig Kotze, who was here yesterday, and he was very protective of this person.  This got me very worried that I would prefer not to have dealings with people like Craig Kotze and Andrew Walker.  	Another complication that I experienced in working at The Star was that a lot of the stories that we would cover regarding activities of the liberation movements would not get treated with the respect they deserved.  That, for instance, I was involved in covering a story, I cannot remember what year it was, 85 or 86, in which a group of youngsters had their heads blown off in Duduza township.  I, when I got into work that morning I received a phone call from my contacts in Duduza township, because I had established, at the time, a very extensive network of contacts all over the place.  They called me to say that a lot of their friends had just been killed that morning and their suspicion is that a security policeman had infiltrated their cell, their cell of activists in Duduza township.  He had given some rudimentary training to these youngsters in the use of hand grenades and had told them that he was an MK operative who was there to train people to further the struggle.  	On this particular day when he said particular targets should be hit in the townships, he dispatched these youngsters to different, about seven different venues, with the instruction that at the stroke of midnight, or whatever the time was, they were to pull these hand grenades and hurl them at these targets.  Unfortunately, for these youngsters these were zero time hand grenades, that when they pulled the pins their heads blew off, their hands blew off and stuff like that.  My contact in the township gave me this graphic detail and described the person who was involved, who they suspected to be the security policeman involved in this deed and I wrote the story that a security policeman was involved in infiltrating the cell in Duduza township and he caused the death of all these youngsters. 	It turned out later at hearings, very recently at the TRC, that this was Joe Mamasela.  When I wrote the story about this security policeman infiltrating this cell in Duduza township, that was treated with a pinch of salt by my seniors at The Star, because of what I suspect to be their very strong conservative atmosphere, viewpoints and the kind of atmosphere that was prevalent at The Star at the time.  This story was given over to our crime desk which was headed by Craig Kotze and Chris Steyn and the story was completely twisted, that the story was turned into these being mystery blasts and the involvement of the security police was toneddown.  	There was no recourse for us when we wrote stories like this.  That once we had written our story, handed it over to our seniors, they would give it over to people like Craig Kotze for it to be doctored and this is why true perspectives of what was, what actually went on would never reach the public.  This frustrated us a hell of a lot in the news room.  	I would also recall, not my personal experience, but the experience of another colleague of mine, Themba Molefe, where he had also written a story about security force operatives wearing balaclavas in the townships who were involved in killing people.  He was jumped on from a dizzy height at The Star for writing this kind of story, but some of it did eventually get in and the police came back and wanted him held for, to account for the story in terms of Section 205, at the time.  He was actually saved when City Press published the pictures of these balaclava clad security force people with a corpse next to them and he got off the hook because of that.	I think I will take questions from you.