Special Hearings — Trojan Horse Hearings — 1997-05-20

WILLIE DE KLERK: Thank you.  The incident of the Trojan Horse as told by Chris Everson, is quite cruel and I was one of those photographers that were present.
 In fact as my colleague has just mentioned, if it hadn't been for an Argus driver, his tape would never have been shown that same evening.  However, I too saw that tangerine truck coming up the road, bumper to bumper behind other vehicles who were making their way home, when the stoning began.
 It veered from the left hand side of the road to the right hand side of the road, it came to a standstill.  I saw one person in front, the co-driver and not the driver itself.  I take it that he in turn was taking, you know, he was hiding from the stones that was pounding on the windscreen.
 I did not see anybody shoot from that window, but what I did see because my camera was trained on them from the moment they jumped up, was on those policemen who opened fire indiscriminately from the boxes in which they were hiding.
 They could not possibly have seen people throwing the stones because they were in the boxes.  From the moment that they jumped up, they opened fire.  I did not see any of those that were shot, stoning that vehicle.  It is very funny that people who are in boxes could see out of this boxes and fire on the people that were so-called stoning.  I never saw those children stone.
 The one child that I had photographed was just outside on the path, on the garden path and there was a policeman,
I don't know whether khaki or blue uniform, because my pictures that I had taken was in black and white, he seemed really shocked after what he had done.
 I take it that he had fired on that child.  I am not sure, but he seemed in a very shocked state.
 I am not trying to speak up for any of the police, but he did seem bewildered.  If you look at photographs outside there, you will see that he looked very worried.  There was chaos there and I don't think I will ever forget it.
 I will never, ever forget it because I mean, I have seen death, I have seen a lot of death.  At night I can't sleep, I lay awake and I think about all these killings.
 Those in those boxes started shooting on the left hand side and on the right hand side.  There was a young Afrikaner, or White in a railway coat, and he was one of the main shooters because he had a double barrel shotgun, a pump gun, not a double barrel he had a pump gun and he had this long jacket on. 
 The person that sat in front, is the policeman, young policeman who was in a camouflage uniform and he rounded up the young boys and girls who we thought were responsible for the stoning.
 It seemed to me that they went there to arrest children and they did go there, this was premeditated murder because they planned it, they did plan it.  They knew where the stoning was going on, they were supposed to keep peace and order, they did not, they went there to kill.
 It seemed to me the South African Police employed people, even today, who enjoy you know this rioting that went on, for them it was a daily thing where they could get a lot of, it was enjoyment, it was excitement for them. 
They would go out and afterwards, I am sure some of the questions you asked the last speaker here, was what do you think of afterwards, he said, well we go for a beer or something like that, they probably did the same, and also probably went to tell and brag about the amount and the people they had killed.
 They probably still do so.  The cruelness, the arrogance, the absolute disregard for human life.  It is still going on.   We were made to feel in this country as if we were refugees in our own country.
 Some of us still feel like refugees in our country and it is not supposed to be that way.  The TRC asks what can we do to change this?
 I hope I am wrong by saying this, but I feel that you can do very little if you cannot change people's attitudes, it is inborn, it is inbuilt.  I don't know where you are going to start.
 But this inbuilt hate.  The Trojan Horse is one of the incidents that I photographed and was on the spot.  I had to rush back to the Argus, I made the pictures and thank God I made a set of land line pictures, which without the knowledge of the editor or the picture editor, I deposited with the night staff of the syndicated department who then land lined photographs to the outside world.
 The Argus has a system whereby photographs is land lined to overseas newspapers with which - you know agencies that they have that they work with, they use.  I sent those photographs.
 That was the 15th, the afternoon of the 15th and the evening of the 15th that I had sent those photographs via the land line systems, the morning of the 16th after the
first edition was published, I was shocked to see that the Trojan Horse had been relegated to page 3 and page 5 of the Argus.
 There was nothing about the Trojan Horse, no photographs whatsoever.  I enquired about it, it was just treated lightly as if, you know, meanwhile the rest of the world was up in arms over this killing.
 I couldn't understand how a liberal paper, or so-called liberal rather paper, could do this.  Could betray the citizens of South Africa, its readership.
 They misinformed the public by not carrying stories and pictures.  And they were certainly not laying to the Black, Coloured, Muslim, Indian, Asian whatever South Africans, they were laying to the White South Africans, by not carrying the news and that I told to the South African Society of Journalists of which I am a member and was a member.  This name has changed now.
 I told them that you are not laying to the Black and brown people, you are laying to yourselves by not carrying the news that you should have been carrying.
 I had a run in with the editor of the Argus months later when he had called the Argus photographic team in to tell us that our photography was not so bad, but he did think that we should take more newsworthy pictures.
 He went right around the table talking to the individual photographers who agreed and said yes, you know, sure, this is what we are going to do and that is what we are going to do.
 Until he got to a colleague of me who is now deceased, Daan le Roux, who said, no wait, hold it, you had been getting these pictures and you have not been using them.  He
then turned to me and said to me, how do you feel?
 At that stage he was still calm.  I said well I echoed the sentiments of Mr Le Roux.  The man became so mad, he became very upset.
 He said to me are you trying to tell me how to run this newspaper?  I said no I am not, I can't tell you how to run it.  It will be very silly of you to allow me to tell you how to run this newspaper.  He said to me prove it to me, prove to me about this incident, the Trojan Horse.
 I said well, on the 15th of October between ten to and five to five, 1985, there was an incident called the Trojan Horse which three people were killed.  Photographs you have and on the morning of the 16th, a casper travelling in Spine Road, overturned and whilst the rest of the world was citing the Trojan Horse murder in the newspapers, you had treated  an accident of a White South African soldier through his own negligence that had overturned this casper, as the front page story and basis of a picture on your front pages.
 But that is not all, let me tell you that I photographed the first necklacing in South Africa, which was the Kinikini killing whereby four people were necklaced.
 That was in KwaNdabutle in the Eastern Cape.  It took that same editor nine months to use that photograph which also was an international, there was an international outcry.
 They didn't want the outside world to see how bad the situation had been and was and had become.  At the Langa killing in Port Elizabeth prior to the Kinikini killing, there was an incident of 26 people that were gunned down from a casper which I also was the photographer.
 A few days after they were gunned down, there was a
Commission of Enquiry at the site of that particular killing and I must tell you that whilst we were standing there, a casper pulled up, the very same casper I was told, that was involved in the shooting, pulled up and which had an insignia on the side door written in bold, capital letters, it read BAD BOYS.  I have proof of that because I photographed it.
 I was also threatened by the South African Police about photographing that.  I was told a few days after that after I sent that photograph from the Eastern Cape to the Argus, and it was a Weekend Argus that carried the first run of that particular picture, that the picture had been sent, it was taken - processed and taken down to the works and that one of the editors, news editors on duty had the insignia BAD BOYS removed from that particular picture.
 The person who told me this was also acting as Deputy News editor and she had instructed that it be replaced.  What was the use, the machine was running and so many thousands papers were being lost without that insignia on it.
 Even after it had been replaced, and this is the type of journalism that we have in some cases still today and which we had in the past.  
 The only reason for me to have become a photographer was because I at a very early age, realised that if we, people of colour do not do things for ourselves, nobody else is going to do it for us and we should do things for ourselves, but in harmony with others.
 We must also realise that the importance of journalists are to inform and to do it impartially.  And those journalists that do not go out - there are a lot of
journalists in offices that write about these events, these killings and that - they have never been into a township in their lives.  They don't know what is going on there.
 But they write about these incidents, they write great editorials and it looks all fancy in the different lettering of souvenir and it looks great editor's name there, sub-editor, political editor, analysts, but some of them, they have never ever been to a township.
 They don't know what it is to be in a township.  I found out that for my role as a photographer, and I stayed out there day and night, and still went to work the next day without taking a break, because I wanted to get the news so that the people could see what was happening.
 And without disregard to Louise and Cris there, we were out there all the time, long before the international press came, but at the same time I want to make it clear to you that the local newspaper men and women were fighting against these newsmen inside those offices that could either hold or let go.
 Things were so bad ...