Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

MR NTSEBEZA: Maybe before we put questions to you.  Maybe so that you can also speak on the video footage, we would like sections of that video footage to be screened.

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, I think it is a very good example of the use of propaganda.

MR NTSEBEZA: Yes.  Yes, the cameras must give way to the monitors.  The video must stop until you are in a position to look.  When there is no sound, they must replay it, there must be proper coordination.

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: .
		 "In recent years a new phenomena has entered world politics. Political organisations in many parts of the world show increasing readiness to resort to violence in the hope of achieving what they have not been able to achieve through negotiations. These terrorist groups are inter-connected. They train in the same camps, and receive support from the same governments. Even the slogans and phrases they use are often identical. Many of their atrocities are committed deliberately to attract media attention. The revolutionary groups, the more murderous the deed, the more certain the coverage. For the media, the more sensational the event, the more certain are high ratings.  It makes no difference if the event was created simply to attract media attention.  By such means extremist groups are able to publicise their causes before world audiences while more moderate groups are largely ignored.  One of the growing number of countries plagued by terrorist atrocities is South Africa.  There the organisation principally responsible is the African National Congress.  It's present leader is Oliver Tambo"		" The moderate Blacks were not selling the peoples, we were presenting a non-violent strategy, a strategy that did not say 'Burn  Baby Burn'. A strategy that said people must come together and sit around a negotiating table and this is not sensational stuff, it doesn't sell the papers."		"It's a tragedy that most Americans only sea or read about the dead and injured in South Africa. And terrorism, violence and repression for behind the terrible television pictures lies another truth, South Africa is a complex and diverse society in a state of transition."		"In the course of our research it has become abundantly clear that the situation in South Africa for example is very different.  In many important ...(indistinct) and contemporary media orthodoxy, would have us believe."		"We have seen a lot violence and a lot of  bloodshed in the past and I would hate to see a future South Africa built on violence and more bloodshed".		"The reverend Mr John Gegotchia is director of Operation Advance and Upgrade, a Black self-help association with two hundred and sixty thousand members.  I asked him about the ANC's role.  'The ANC is not the authentic leader or authentic voice of Black people in South Africa. It is one of the voices yes, and secondly the ANC does not represent the majority of Blacks in South Africa.  Unfortunately the Western Media and the Media biased media has made it that the ANC is the sole representative, it isn't and it does not represent the majority of the people in the country. If it did then there would have been no need for the ANC to embark on violence to win the hearts of the masses because they would have had the masses on their side anyway'.		What is the true nature of this organisation? I asked Craig Williamson a former South African Intelligence Service Officer who spent 10 years as a member of the South African Communist Party working closely with the ANC, many of whose leaders he came to know personally.  'Nicholas the answer is that the ANC is a terrorist organisation, an international terrorist organisation exactly the same as organisations such as the IRA, the PLO, the Red Brigades and the Bader Meinhoff Gang.  It is an organisation made up of people such as the Joe Slovos of the world, people who have been trained in the Soviet Union as international terrorists, have been trained in Cuba and have been trained in the Middle East to carry out the most horrendous acts of violence that I have ever seen in my life'		The honourable Ken Beasley is a former...."

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you Mr Williamson, if you can then resume.  Just a few questions.  It seems to me, and you'll correct me if I am wrong, that what you referred to as your operations, that is now the operations of the Security Forces, had basically two aims.	Not in any order of importance, certainly one of its aims was to attack the mind set of the Liberation Movements via the media and create a certain perspective, an otherwise perspective than that which was being there simulated by the Liberation Movement and it was also to gather Intelligence.  Would you agree with that?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, Mr Chairman.  I think as part of the political psychological aspect of war, the idea of propaganda was firstly to try and win the hearts and minds of the target community.  And if one could demoralise the National Liberation Movements in that process, obviously that would be of advantage, and secondly as I think I said in what I said earlier, the actual gathering of hard Intelligence through the media, through use of people in the media, was I would say that was where I was more primarily involved.	So those were the two key factors.

MR NTSEBEZA: And it seems to me that even though those words to win the hearts and minds of the people were popular, especially in this country, during the state of emergency, that those who were in charge of Intelligence Services in this country, the Security Forces, had had a long term view of what might be and they had prepared instruments and resources for the implementation of a programme of winning the hearts and minds of the people and that infiltration was one of these.  Would you agree with that? 	For instance, to give an example, early on in your career and I am talking about the 1970's here, you were removed from your post and you were placed in Wits as part of an infiltration programme so that you can gather Intelligence of views that were oppositional to the Establishment's views?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: That is correct.

MR NTSEBEZA: And your moving to Geneva as part of IUEF, was part and parcel of that long term strategy?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: That is correct, yes.

MR NTSEBEZA: And in fact SANA was set up by IUEF, was it not?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, it was funded.

MR NTSEBEZA: Funded, yes.  And in that way with you placed strategically within IUEF, you were legitimately able to gather and get authentic information from journalists who were in SANA, who themselves may have been thinking that they are doing work for a politically correct organisation IUEF.

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, Mr Chairman, that is called a false flag operation.

MR NTSEBEZA: In other words there were journalists who had been recruited or who had made to gather Intelligence upon false flag?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: False flag, many.

MR NTSEBEZA: You would find somebody within SANA, asked by IUEF to go for instance to an ANC conference in the Soviet Union, whatever it is, and that person would give as much information about what happened in those conferences as was possible, file it through to IUEF in the belief that it was for a progressive organisation, and via you, that information would get to the South African Security Forces?
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