Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much comrade Mattera for giving that very moving account, which virtually is a moving account of your own experiences, but then, also, a perspective which we, in the Commission, need to know in order for us to discharge our mandate, which is to present as complete a picture, as complete a picture as possible of the gross violations of human rights that happened in the period dictated by the Act, 1960 to 1994.  It is something to think about when one takes into account what your personal experiences were, not only in the news room, but as a consequence of your activity in the newsroom which led to your arrest, detention and torture.  Torture is defined in the Act as one of the gross violations of human rights.  	Now, can I have a sense of what you consider should be a recommendation that the Commission should make to those who are in charge to make sure that what happened in the era under consideration should never recur?

DON MATTERA: Yes, comrade, I accept that, there is one point I would like to make, a very serious point that Mike Tissong raised, no, the earlier, I think Mondli Makhanya raised.  I would just like to amplify, very briefly, on that.  When I worked at The Star I was made to understand, firstly, that I was a Coloured and these were blacks and that Coloureds receive a kind of treatment that blacks did not receive.  Coloureds could pee in the same toilets with whites and blacks had to go around the corner to the open door, where there were no doors, shower and pee in that place and so I had always fought against this Coloured thing, because I had rightly believed that I am an African and I am black, but the insidious thing about this was that in that situation at The Star, whites looked at each other, not all of them, I suppose, with the same awe and respect, particularly, a boy called Dennis who was a 32 Battalion member and who was feted and loved because he was a crackshot at The Star.  I cannot know Dennis' surname, but he worked with Battalion 32.	There were others, too, who were, had positions of Sergeant.  I do not know what other positions they had.  That point I would like to stress on.  They were in the newsroom and they boasted and they were feted about having been members of 32 Battalion and having been crackshots.  The Rhodesians, the Selous Scouts also bragged, the Walkers and his father and many others bragged about this and their photographer having been members of the Selous Scouts and having been part of that campaign to kill black people in their country.  In the same breath, those people found sucker, found comfort, found a place for themselves in The Star news room.  I just wanted to make that and amplify on that point.	Then there was a newspaper called The Alkalam.  Because it was a Muslim newspaper and Indians, Muslims, Indians were said to be Muslims there, nobody every covered their problems.  The Alkalam newspaper that I wrote for was banned because of my writing by the State.  The Alkalam was taken off the street, The Alkalam suffered, its editor was almost crucified and even in his own community he had been attacked for being, daring to put across the liberation perspective in his newspaper.  I just wanted to add that, because it would be a travesty if we forget that there were other small fringe newspapers, unknown to all of us, whose editors and journalists suffered the same fate on many fronts as we did.  So, Alkalam was that kind of newspaper and Alkalam was in the forefront of liberation journalism during its tenure.	So, I will come back and, to your point.  Sir, I think two things I have always campaigned for.  Having been in the African National Congress Youth League, we had a slogan "Freedom in our lifetime".  I always believed I wanted to see in my lifetime black people rule this country and really rule it.  Every facet of every way of life to be ruled by black people.  Then, those people who consider themselves to be Africans, who consider themselves part of this country should fall into place, should serve in this and if there were whites, let them go to their white countries where they came from.  	If they were, because I would like to add, that I have never a German say to a Frenchman, you know, I am white.  I have never heard an Italian say to a Swede, I am a white, but it is when they are here that they become to bear their whiteness down and their whiteness profits them.  So, I would like to see a situation in this country where true, true anti-racism takes place.  Not the wishy-washy kind that has one black guy as a manager, one black woman shunted into a corner and this is non-racialism.  We need to go and have a total catharsis and purge of this situation.  We need to understand that white people are here by our sufferance.  They are here by our sufferance not their sufferance and they need to understand that this is not Europe, that this is not America, this is not India, this is Africa and they must learn to fall into place and share, with black people, that which they have denied black people for so long.  	The newspaper is only one terrain, I am proud that I have Dr Motlane as my Chairperson, but if Dr Motlane does not raise my standard of living as a black journalist, he is useless to me.  So, we do not want meet and greet black people who own newspapers but cannot effect the changes that we need.  Lula Maloetie has got the potential to be the first black woman journalist in this country, but what happens to this child.  She has to leave the country to go and study further, because it will never come in her lifetime.  I am saying that the likes of Ramaphosa, the likes of Motlane, the likes of Dikgang Moseneke and many others must truly take the bull by the horns and transform this media and, truly, to represent the demographics of this country.	The demographics of this country are that black people have been denied their life, they have been denied their stay, they have been denied this for centuries and it is time that we spun the coin around.  Heads they win, tails they win.  Thank you, Sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for that and, unfortunately, we are running very, very far behind.  I do not know if there are any questions.  I will allow one question or two questions, one question per panellist.

MARY BURTON: (Speakers microphone not on).  I am very glad that you mentioned (indistinct) because I think that one of the, sorry, one of the responses, one of the reactions to the fact that so much news was denied to the public was the establishment of many other ways in which people communicated news and I think when we hold a media hearing we must remember that poetry is also a medium of communication, that in our country banners and posters and t-shirts were also media which carried important news and messages and, also, those many publications.  One might, perhaps, call them a femoral media, the pamphlets which appeared on our streets, the journals like, being a Capetonian, I know Muslim News, the Western Province Council of Churches crisis news ... (intervention).

DON MATTERA: Cross Roads.

MARY BURTON: ... Cross Roads publications.  One thinks of so many, Saamstaan in the Southern Cape and they were published quickly, they were disseminated quickly, they were one way in which people heard about what was going on and that is a rich tradition which grew out of that struggle.  I wondered if you would like to say something more about that and, also, how we incorporate that richness into our future traditions of media.