Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

UNKNOWN: I would like to testify in Afrikaans.  In the light of the time limitations Mr Chair, members of the Commission, I have probably been invited to testify because for 15 years I was a member of the SABC from 1972 until the beginning of 1987.  Bishop Tutu this morning referred to the drunkard crossing the street and was very surprised that he found himself on the opposite side and to link up with this image the street involved here is a very broad highway and I found myself on the one side of the street and now I find myself on the opposite side. The paradigm shift that I underwent in the process is a very large one. To link up with what Mr Pretorius said I must say that in one respect and only in one respect do I agree with him and that is that it is not easy to summarise the events of the past 40 years as far as the SABC is concerned, to place it in a proper context.  However I will also try my best to give this kind of perspective.    This morning it was rightfully said that the SABC for many years was the propaganda arm of the SABC and there can be no doubt about this.  However, I would like to qualify it in the following manner.  The SABC not only acted as the propaganda arm of the National Party but the propaganda of consecutive National Parties because every new prime minister came with a new kind of approach and policy and had a need to legitimise himself to justify his position of power and the SABC was repeatedly used to play a very important role in all of this.   Initially I could perhaps say that in my own academic work, in the very close past I have been very interested in how power functions, the interaction between ideological and political and economic power and how propaganda can be used to perpetuate and legitimise power and I think the interaction between the National Party and the SABC is a very good example of how this happens.    I would like briefly describe what I think the five consecutive National Parties were.  I will have to say something about the '50's, just to get my story organised. In the '50's the National Party's biggest propaganda point was that the Afrikaner was that part of the whites who, because of the second Anglo Boer War and British capitalism had been done a great wrong. It was built up, a whole psyche was established from the '30's and on the basis of this a National Party came into rule. For 11 consecutive elections and three referendums they were the winners. That must be something of a world record I would suppose and the SABC played a definite role in establishing this world record.   Then after the National Party came to rule, this psyche of the people who had been wronged and of being victimised and the threat posed to the Afrikaners and the Afrikaner culture was something that had been firmly established.  During the '50's the SABC was apparently not used as a very important instrument, apparently Doctors Malan and Strijdom thought that Die Burger and similar papers were adequate unto their purpose, but in 1959 Dr Verwoerd realised that the SABC had to be used and in 1959 in a very unceremonious way by means of getting rid of Dr Gideon Roos, and he appointed Piet Meyer his good friend as chairman of the board. Dr Verwoerd at the end of the '20's studied in Germany. Dr Meyer during the '30's studied in Germany and it was general knowledge that they were both admirers of Hitler and the concept of German social nationalism.    I will say something about Dr Meyer just now but during the period of Dr Verwoerd which was important, was that the policy and more an ideology than policy, of separate development was established and refined and as was repeatedly the case, he misled his support to some fantasy land.  He misled them into some giant lie and that was that South Africa, the Afrikaners were the victims of British colonialism but it was blown up out of all proportion.  During the '60's Dr Verwoerd saw the dangers of a process of democratisation, the dangers of the so-called American Melting Pot and he established the idea of separate development.  The idea that 75% of the population could really live out their political freedom in a limited space of the South African surface area.  We cannot over emphasise how effective that Verwoerd propaganda and ideology was, particularly after the UDI in Rhodesia then, Zimbabwe, in the 1966 elections the National Party had a great victory and drew many English votes.  After the murder of Dr Verwoerd and the period of Mr Vorster this idea of separate development, as a fair solution to South Africa's political problems, continued and this lie was perpetuated, but as you know Mr Vorster was a super policeman and during his period the problem in South Africa was diagnosed as one of an internal uprising which could overrule the white rule.  A security system was developed which was really feared and I have the idea that Mr Vorster did not really interfere much with the SABC but was quite happy with the Piet Meyer rule that applied within the SABC.  However, and I don't have concrete proof hereof, that as part and parcel of this police state which was built up at the end of the 60's, in that period security people were also either in official or an unofficial capacity, they also had an influence on the SABC.    Now from the mid '70's till the Mr Vorster's period, the ideology underwent a very important shift to that of a spinola where this government had to have a grip on things. Where there was the ideology of a total strategy as a counter measure for the total onslaught.   For many years this propaganda was unbelievably successful as a propaganda which carried everything in its wake along with it and for many years I've seen that this total onslaught was held up as a total onslaught from Moscow orchestrated, organised and financed by the communist regime and totally inspired thereby and that it was aimed at white civilization, at the Afrikanerdom, at Christianity, at Western values, capitalism etc.   That there was something of a total onslaught cannot be denied, I suppose, but it was not a total onslaught against the things that I am pointing out now and referred to just now, but it was a total onslaught against the racist regime, the apartheid era in South Africa.  And the propaganda was twisted very deftly and was held up to be part of Communist expansionism.  The invasion of the Cubans in Angola was in a manner of speaking a God-given opportunity because it made this propaganda that much more effective.    In the meanwhile also the homeland separate development propaganda continued, but it was only during Mr Botha's period that the total strategy as a counter- measure for the total onslaught really came into force. During his period of rule, almost following up on Mr Vorster, he had a period of so-called reform, new apartheid which also played an important role and I will indicate just now what the implications were for the SABC.   Both Mr Raubenheimer and Mr Pretorius referred to the fact that at the end of the '80's the SABC played a role in promoting reformation, change emphasising negotiation and Mr Pretorius referred to helping to open up the process, and perhaps I should refer to the beginning of the De Klerk period.   The de Klerk sort of ideology, if I could describe it as such, was one of negotiation, of reform and transformation but it is something that I must emphasise that this transformation of the late '80's never envisioned as prime objective black majortorianism and rule.  It was aimed at really reinforcing the period and perpetuating white force and rule.  It was a period as with all others of ideological misguidance and the argument was that it would be possible through negotiation to continue white rule.  As far as the SABC is concerned, during the '50's, the SABC was not quite as apparently used by the NP, but Dr Verwoerd can still be regarded as somebody who was a very excellent ideologist and who was very successful in perpetuating his ideology. And if we look at it very closely it is quite astonishing that it gripped so many peoples' imagination for so long.  I don't want to detract from Dr Verwoerd as ideologist but I must say that he never succeeded in his ideological propaganda.  He wouldn't have been as successful in that if it didn't have the assistance of Dr Piet Meyer.    I was elected to the Board in 1972 and until 1979 Dr Meyer continued as chairperson of the Board. During the '60's the radio was in particular used to promote this and to justify this policy of separate development and to sell it to people. There were many programmes, daily affairs, commentary etc which were tremendously propagandist, should one today listen to them again and analyse them.    During the Piet Meyer period, the SABC and its staff took a certain form and while I was member of the board later on we referred to the Piet Meyer establishment. Over a period of twenty years this Piet Meyer establishment found its being, and I must tell you it was a formidable establishment.  It was like a mafia in its functioning.   At the time the Cape liberal wing of the National Party, I don't want to go into how liberal it really was, but I was appointed to the Board by them and the informal instruction that I received as part of this struggle between the so-called verligte south and the verkrampte north, conservatives versus progressives, was that I had to form a counter-measure for Dr Meyer's ideological propaganda in the council.  I was young, it was a very grand instruction and I enjoyed, in terms of this, these terms of reference, to go against Dr Meyer's ideological propaganda to meet him head on.  But now with the power of hindsight, it seems as though I didn't really have any effect.  I said in the beginning that the SABC was not used only by the National Party but by consecutive national parties for its or their propagandist purposes.  But I must also say that there was a continuous struggle within the National Party to conquer the soul of the National Party. This internal struggle, to call it that, concerned a grip and a grasp on the SABC because all the factions within the National Party, the verligtes and verkramptes in this saw a very efficient instrument to strengthen their own position and establish it within the National Party during the Botha period, the period of so-called new apartheid, when I myself was misled into thinking that the new apartheid of Mr P W Botha could lead to something substantial.   And in particular after Dr Meyer retired in 1979 very real efforts were made, and I was part of this, in political circles within the SABC to negate the influence of the Piet Meyer establishment within the SABC and to scale down this effect, but this establishment was so well entrenched that it was impossible.   If I think back about what Mr Pretorius said now that they were under pressure from politicians, that it wasn't always easy, that might be true, but on the other hand, particularly during the period of the Piet Meyer era and with it's shadow being cast for many years after that, nobody really made any progress within the SABC if he couldn't prove that he had been given the green ideological lights and that he could spot them very carefully and describe them very well, if you will understand my imagery and I can continue to explain it a bit better later on.   But it was Mr Raubenheimer this morning who testified that politicians phoned Mr Jan van Zyl, head of news, and this type of thing happened very regularly, and that Mr van Zyl didn't want to succumb to his pressure. Well that was part of what happened, with all respect to Mr van Zyl.  It wasn't his bravery, it was simply a matter that he had grown up in another school and that he was part of another faction within the National Party establishment.  Oh yes I just remember, in my review of the '60's I forgot to point out that Dr Meyer was not only chairman of the SABC Board but he was also chairman of the executive committee of the Broederbond and the building as you know is just here next door.   For the record I also wish to admit that from 1969 to 1989 I was also a member of the Broederbond and all the struggles and fights within the National Party between the factions in the greater establishment also took place within the Broederbond and it was at times quite a hard and tough struggle that was continued there.      During the 50's through to the '80's from one state of emergency in the '80's to the next, the flow of information was very limited and the SABC, and I must emphasise this because during my last years there I did not have pleasant experiences, I was constantly pleading for better information to the public that should a revolution happen, and everything came to ruins, I often said in the council, people could not, when they investigated at a later stage, say that there was no proof that the SABC had told people what was happening in the country.  But my efforts all came to nothing.    But during the '80's in particular, the SABC played a very important role as a weapon in the arsenal of the total strategy against a total onslaught.  In the beginning of February 1987 I resigned from the National Party and in March the Council was recomposed, re-compiled and I was left out without any further ado, and perhaps that is the point at which I must stop and ask you to ask me questions.