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

MARY BURTON: Sorry, I don't want to interrupt you completely, but I just want to say to you that we will be having a particular focus on the media at a later stage on the media hearing.  So if you would like to just complete what you were going to say, then I would like to bring you back to the Trojan Horse if I may.

WILLIE DE KLERK: Okay.  What I wanted to say here, am saying is that we had to battle and this, even with regards to the Trojan Horse, I mean we had to battle to get it done, and that is why I am telling you this now.  I know that you are coming back to the media section, but the thing is just that
this was a struggle that we found ourselves against.
 Now with the Trojan Horse, again I say to you that was premeditated murder.  I did not see them go up and down as many times as the other people had seen them, because I too arrived there something like twenty to five.
 Deposited my colleague's tape there and by that time it was ten to five.  About five to five this thing happened.   Again they jumped out of boxes and the boxes did not have tops, they were open boxes.  That I realised by it being so easy for them just reaching out with their rifles and pumping those bullets into those children.

MARY BURTON: Could I ask you - we've noted that you have said earlier that there was no pause between the coming out of the crates and the firing.

WILLIE DE KLERK: Would you just repeat that please?

MARY BURTON: Yes, you have said earlier in your statement that when the officers came up out of the crates, they were firing almost immediately, they did not have a chance to look around?

WILLIE DE KLERK: Immediately, yes.

MARY BURTON: I would like to ask otherwise, could you tell us what the extent of the damage to the windscreen was?  Would the driver for instance have been able to continue to see out of the windscreen?

WILLIE DE KLERK: The driver would have up to the stage of stopping, would have been able to see, but because of the stoning had veered the truck from the left to the right and had come to a standstill and then they started - from there onwards they started firing.

MARY BURTON: Can you describe if you noticed any other damage to the truck besides the broken windscreen?

WILLIE DE KLERK: Well, I was standing on the verandah and I was looking at the truck head on, so the right hand side, the frosted glass was more to the right than the left.  I did see those men on top of the truck firing from those boxes.

MARY BURTON: Thank you.  I don't have any other questions, Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Any other questions?  I am going to ask a question from Dennis Cruywagen.  If you could tell us you know, your experience in working in high activity areas, I would like to call it combat areas, what did you feel like working in these areas, reporting and covering the events?

DENNIS CRUYWAGEN: It is very difficult.  You went into a situation day after day and I think at the end of each day as Chris had said, you sometimes wonder how you managed to get out of there and stay alive.
 Life was just tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammunition and funerals.  And a newspaper whose editor did not care.  I think just like the people who were in combat, we shell shocked, so were we.  And Ii think quite  a lot of us are suffering from it now.  We didn't realise it at the time, but we were reporting at a war and we were there every day.  And many of us are still struggling to cope with a normal life, so that in short is my answer.

CHAIRPERSON: I think added to those struggles, you had struggles internally within your papers and you presented a picture of challenges that is different from what Chris presented in a way because for him, it seems he had the support of his organisation, but you seem to be suggesting that you did not have that much support in your
organisation.

DENNIS CRUYWAGEN: Not on the newspaper itself, as I said I mentioned four colleagues.  I should like to include the name of someone who have just joined us, John Held.  We were together and we supported one another, that was the only way in which we could go on and of course there were the organisations outside where people supported us and trusted us.
 But on the paper no.

CHAIRPERSON: Would you  make a comment about the nature of the legal situation governing the publication of events of the nature of the Trojan Horse?  How would the editors for example, how would they have been effected by that?  How would their decisions or their appraisal of your work, would have been affected by this?

DENNIS CRUYWAGEN: I think the choice was quite clear.  There was no state of emergency in the Western Cape at the time, so nothing prevented them from publishing the pictures.
 That was it.  You know.  It was up to an editor to decide this is the news and this is what happened and therefor I am going with it.  A few years after that I was in Guguletu, near the Methodist church, and the Archbishop had negotiated with police - children that had a meeting in the church, that they could leave the church.
 And I filed, saying look the Archbishop is going down to Pinelands and negotiate with the police.  As I was filing, they tear gassed the church and they tear gassed the Archbishop.  If you can imagine the culture of denial and the lack of boldness on the Argus, the photographer Rashied Lombard who had taken the picture, offered it to the Argus on that afternoon, and the Argus declined to use it. 
 Despite the fact that the editor wasn't there.  The next morning the Cape Times used that same picture, it is probably one of the struggle pictures and the afternoon the chap who was then acting editor of the Argus, decided that is the picture, we need to go with it.  And then there were press restrictions.  That chap decided to hell with the press restrictions, this is what is happening, if they want to prosecute, let them prosecute.
 And I think if one looks back to the Argus of those days and to other newspapers, if newspapers wanted to be respected by the people who read them and showed that they cared and that they stood on the side of justice, they would have run with those pictures of the Trojan Horse even if we had emergency regulations in the Western Cape.
 But as I said, we didn't.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much Dennis and thank you Willie.  We really appreciate your coming.  As Mary mentioned earlier, there is going to be a much more focus hearing on the media submission/hearing where these issues will be explored a little bit further.
 We appreciate your coming and thank you.

DENNIS CRUYWAGEN: Thank you.

WILLIE DE KLERK: Thank you.