Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much Mr Proctor.  I know it's extraordinary difficult to try and summarise a long document and there are many aspects which you simply haven't had time to refer to, but the full document will be taken into account by the Commission.  I just have a few questions which I would like to put to you.  Firstly, Bophuthatswana was regarded by, as has become very apparent, by the majority of people as an illegitimate regime.

JONATHAN PROCTOR: Yes.

DR BORAINE: Can I just ask you, did you have any feelings of ambivalence of heading up a broadcasting service of a country which claimed independence against a background of an overwhelming number of people who saw it as illegitimate and yet these were the very people you were trying to serve, how did you reconcile that for yourself in taking that position?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: Well I think firstly the prospect of being put into the army with a rifle in my hand and receiving superior orders to kill a fellow citizen was certainly far more severe a concern for me than sitting in charge of a broadcasting organisation funded by South African taxpayer's money, and not only Bophuthatswana's money, but South African taxpayer's money I felt that if we could shift what we were doing positively, it was the best of the worst.  So I wasn't ambivalent to it at all. I was extremely aware of it.  And I think that the - my actions ultimately landed up in a - if I had been ambivalent I would probably still have been sitting there right to the bitter end but I think the fact that I felt as strongly as I did about what was happening and took the actions that I did in order to dilute my complicity meant that that was why I was eventually removed.

DR BORAINE: Thank you.  In that connection in the Mail of the 28th of March 1991 they make this statement and I would like your comment.    "Jonathan Proctor argued that Bop TV needed to become a 'national competitor as an open broadcast channel for the people'".I think those were your words.  And they go on -      "His argument to de-politicise broadcasting framed within the global trend of liberalisation appeared to speak out against government control of broadcasting..."And then this is the contentious bit -    "....while in fact it was an argument for Bop Broadcasting's national independence in Southern Africa".Do you want to comment on that?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: I think all of that ties in very clearly with the fact that to a large extent we were the only alternative environment in which people could work that wanted to be in television and stay in South Africa outside of the SABC.  Our argument certainly wasn't to become an extension of the Bophuthatswana communication system for the rest of South Africa and I don't think any of us believed that was possible.  In fact what we had been doing at that stage was having quite far-reaching discussions with a number of the black unions and federations such as Nafcoc and Fabcos about how it would be possible to include more and more of South Africa while at the same time introducing some level of balance and accountability to the new viewers that we would gain by that, so that we could limit the level of dependence on the fiscus by increasing the revenue stream from a commercial audience, shift the balance power.  And to a large extent I think you'd be able to -somebody like Gaby Magopo, the past president of Nafcoc, would be in a better position than me to explain how Nafcoc saw their way through to actually achieve that.  I didn't have any particular masterplan in mind.  I just felt the further we shifted the organisation away from government the safer it could become.

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much.  You obviously had a lot of problems which you haven't even gone into about being under house arrest, losing your job and all the rest so you must have been doing something which aroused the opposition of your political masters as it were.   Mr Andrew Kotswana, who died some while ago, he was the director of the Bop Library Services according to documentation in front of me he complained of censorship and actually wrote to you about that, was this a pattern?  Was this something that you had to face all the time or was this an isolated situation?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: I don't know if I recall his particular correspondence, we had quite a large complaints division where the complaints - we actually received more congratulations than complaints, but obviously the issues that concerned me most were the complaints and certainly there were complaints, not only from individuals like Mr Kotswana but also from politicians who felt that they weren't getting sufficient air time.  In Bop there was this sort-of we have an opposition party type of game going on and obviously if you want to play that game you have to make sure that opposition parties get as much time on air as ruling parties and so we received many complaints from various politicians who felt that they weren't getting a fair slice of news time.  They were not ignored but the amount that you can do to correct these things in a short space of time is limited without removing - you know if you are stopped from removing the head of news from his job you have to rely on the other newsmen to manage the situation as well.  So you have to manage it from your side and they have to manage it from their side.

DR BORAINE: I have only one final question and then I will hand back to the Chairperson in case my colleagues have additional questions.    You must have had to - some dealings with Mwasa and in a submission they make the point that you were replaced by Eddie Mangope and had a great deal of problems with Minister Masilo.  I think you yourself referred to that, but they say that the staff salary incremental negotiations with you, prior to you being replaced, were to use their word "fruitless", and I am just wondering about your relationship with Mwasa.

JONATHAN PROCTOR: In terms of the law operating in Bop at the time there was absolutely no recognition of any trace union whatsoever, so the very fact that I entered into discussions with them put me at risk as the head of an organisation.  In fact it was illegal for me to sit down and even discuss salaries with them.  Suffice to say that I was completely satisfied that the salaries paid at Bop were way ahead of the salaries paid at the SABC.  Our basic minimum wage for anybody was R1 200 a month when similar posts in the Homeland were like R200,00 a month.    So while discussions may have been "fruitless" and they were "fruitless" by design, and not my design, by a legal systems design, first of all we made sure that our conditions of service were way ahead of conditions of service operating anywhere in South Africa.  We had maternity leave before anybody else had maternity leave.  So we tried to make - in the absence of us being able to negotiate officially with Mwasa what we tried to do was create an environment where we over-compensated I suppose.  So I accept that those discussions perhaps were fruitless from Mwasa's point of view, but certainly I am satisfied that the salaries were way ahead and the working conditions were way ahead of those that were apparently expected in the work place.

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much.  I did say that I had no more questions, but there is just one more.  You received a number of very worrying threats around the time when you were under incredible pressure and that stayed with you for quite a while, these unseen forces, I am not asking you to specify as to who you think they were, but they were there and I am just wondering have you had any problems with those unseen forces or threats since you have left, or has life returned to a little more, a normal situation for you