Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

TAU MATAU: We were hardly even formed into a staff association.  I remember at that time we approached management from sections, different sections.  I was working in the newsroom so we made presentations to our head who took our presentations to management.  So there was no formal organisation.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now you have heard Mr Proctor's testimony, especially in regard to the question that was put to him where an opinion identified with Mwasa was expressed that negotiations with him were fruitless.  He has given a reply thereto and he has actually indicated that the contrary should be the case, but what are your comments with regard thereto?

TAU MATAU: It is true that salaries were better, benefits were better at the BBC at the time, but we were into a situation there where people were used to a certain level of remuneration and there is always this natural expectation that 12 months down the line you are going to get an increase, and these are the kinds of negotiations we were engaging management on at that time, not that our salaries were comparatively better than the SABC but simply that at what we are earning now this is about time for an increment.

MR NTSEBEZA: Do you know more-or-less what the year is that you were engaged with Mr Proctor in these sort of discussions?

TAU MATAU: I think '92, sometime mid-'92.

MR NTSEBEZA: And was Mr Proctor aware that he was engaging those who had been in negotiations people who were officials of Mwasa or was he negotiating with individuals?  I just want to see in what way Mwasa as Mwasa started to engage, never mind officially, officially being Mwasa from a law point of view?

TAU MATAU: He could not have suspected to be talking to Mwasa because we definitely were not Mwasa at that time.  He was just talking to staff members.

MR NTSEBEZA: I see.  Now I accept that unions primarily address issues that are intended to improve the working conditions of workers, bread and butter issues, but there is also a view, and especially in those days, struggle days, that unionists were perceived, not only by their bosses but also by the security forces, as having a political agenda.  Now did you understand in those days, nineties, to be the view of management in BBC that you were also furthering a political agenda?

TAU MATAU: It was a very known fact just to show an interest in union matters you will be branded, you will branded anti-government, you would be branded a security threat.  We understood that only too well.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now were there any workers in BBC who, as workers, were subjected to security police surveillance and/or detention during this period?

TAU MATAU: I do not know of direct cases of incarceration or surveillance.  There may have been surveillance on certain individuals and I am sure at the time I was one of them, but we carry no proof of that.  But there has been incidents of harassment, particularly of the Broadcasting premises.

MR NTSEBEZA: In what way?

TAU MATAU: The security forces then were over-confident.  They knew they had a blank cheque and some of us have been met and told you've got to watch your step or you're going to burn yourself.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now in your knowledge, either from those years, the nineties, and then also at that stage that Mwasa became officially recognised were there any instances where the Corporation was forced, as a result of human action, to call in security forces?  And were there instances where security forces acted against workers?

TAU MATAU: The one case that stands out is the one documented in our submission.  I think that was the 8th, 7th or 8th March in '94. There had always been threats of that eventually occurring within the Corporation but not until that day, and that was a brutal assault that ensued.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now are you talking about the assault that took place in the context of the march ...(intervention)

TAU MATAU: Yes, during our industrial action.

MR NTSEBEZA: Yes.  Now can you just give a brief, brief account of the issues that were involved and why the brutality ensued as a consequence, very briefly?

TAU MATAU: The general issues surrounding the industrial action or of that specific day?

MR NTSEBEZA: Well just background and then the specific day.

TAU MATAU: Thanks.  We actually grouped ourselves, in preparation of negotiations for salary increments with the Eddie Mangope management, into a workers representative committee.  We met clandestinely at the Bop TV flats one evening and elected a ten member committee.  The following day we introduced that committee officially by letter to Eddie and proposed to him that we meet at his earliest convenience as worker representatives to discuss seven points of grievances, including salary increments.    At the same time we requested of him permission to hold a meeting on the premises with the rest of the staff and we reported the establishment of this ten member committee to staff and a resolution was taken to beef up the committee to 20 and seven names out of the 20 were proposed to become the negotiations committee on behalf of staff.    This was duly reported to Eddie and we again asked for a meeting with him.  It was difficult to secure that meeting with him but ultimately he agreed to meet us, no in fact he refused - we proposed a date to him and he decided to go vacationing in the Cape, and we decided to go slow in order to pressure him to come and meet with us.  It took two days of hard bargaining with his secretary there until we decided to go on a full-blown strike on a Friday unless he came to meet us before the end of business that day.  He was forced to come back to Mmabatho that Friday afternoon but it was too late because most of the members had left, so we proposed the following Monday for the meeting.  We held the meeting.  He returned seven "no's" on all our grievances, no agreement reached and we declared a dispute and went on strike.    It was the following day on Tuesday that he tried to get people - because we were conducting our action at one of the studios, the (...indistinct) studios on the premises, and he wanted to get people out of the studios, out of the premises, he had the forces surrounding the Corporation already....(intervention)

MR NTSEBEZA: No, excuse me, just there, when you said he had the forces, was it the State security forces or was it security by the Corporation?

TAU MATAU: State security, the army.  And he approached me personally as chairperson of the workers committee and ordered me to get everybody off the premises within ten minutes.  I tried to reason with him to say you've got 2,000 odd people in there, almost 40% of them quite elderly, this is a massive, massive yard that the Corporation has, there is no way we are going to evacuate this place in ten minutes, give us twenty.  And he said if you are not out in ten I bring in the forces.  And that is exactly what he did.  So we barricaded ourselves in that studio and stayed in there for the rest of the day with teargas and all.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now - and a lot of people got injured and affected by what took place thereafter.  Now for the record Eddie Mangope, what was he to the then President Mangope of Bophutatswana?

TAU MATAU: He was his son.

MR NTSEBEZA: Was his son.  Now, do you have a sense that your action, legitimate as it was in the context of it having been a worker protest for worker related issues, that it may have been perceived by the regime as yet another furtherance of a political programme of the liberation movement by workers and that's why it was brutally oppressed, or do you have some other views?