Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

IVAN FALLON: I am going to make a very brief introduction, if I may, and just start off by saying that I personally arrived in South Africa in 1994, the end of 1994, following the response by Dr Tony O'Reilly and Independent Newspapers of Ireland to the call for international investment in the new South Africa and Independent invested in the old Argus Newspapers at that time.  I just want to make the point, but I make it quite strongly, it is a very serious point, is that that investment was actually made before the election.  It was seen outside South Africa as a very significant vote of confidence in South Africa.  It was seen inside South Africa even more so, as a vote of confidence in the new South Africa and your own Chairman has actually said that a number of times.  	It was, in fact, the biggest investment at the time and remained so for quite a long time.  So, it was a very significant investment, it was a, if you like, it was a high risk investment, seen from the outside.  Here it was seen as a vote of confidence and I make that point because, whatever has been said about the old Argus Newspapers today and before the Commission in the past few days and what we ourselves have said in our substantial submission to you, Tony O'Reilly and Independent Newspapers have, from the very beginning, indeed, from before the beginning, been significant friends, internationally, of the new South Africa and, as a company, we remain so.  	Now, my knowledge of the period under review is, obviously, simply because I was not here, is very sketchy and based upon hearsay, reports I read and what I have heard here.  So, with me I have got three colleagues, I will introduce Rory Wilson, on my left, who is actually one of the very few Senior Managers in our present company hierarchy who has any experience of the period under review.  He was, he is, did seven years with the old Argus Company, but five of those, in fact, were as Managing Director of Sowetan, which was sold during his time to Nail.  	On my right is Moegsien Williams who is the Editor of the, who was the Editor of, is the Editor of The Cape Argus now and was the Editor of The Cape Times, Pretoria News and formerly was Editor of South, which is the alternative weekly newspaper.  	On the extreme left is the group Editorial Director, Shaun Johnson, who in his short stay with our company, has already edited three newspapers and he, as is the case with several of our recently appointed executives at Independent, was a prominent member of the alternate press during the period under review.  In the audience here are a number of other editors and senior staff of Independent.	Now, at the outset I would say, for reasons I do not need to elaborate, the expectations about our company are far higher than other media companies, particularly, those who saw fit not to appear before this special hearing on the media.  We are the publishers of the most visible daily newspapers in South Africa and we understand why we have this high profile, but this, possibly, explains why we have been, I think, subjected to rather more criticism than other groups.  In the event, we accept that challenge that this high profile brings.	Because none of us here today has deep insight or knowledge of Argus, we rely heavily, in this presentation, on a report compiled by a retired Argus editor, John Patton, which you have in front in you.  This report was commissioned by our former chief executive, John Featherston and was submitted to the TRC in February of this year following Archbishop Tutu's call for media hearings.  Now, in an accompanying letter to the Commission, John Featherston said that the report was not definitive, he described it as an attempt at an independent and objective overview of The Argus Company from 1960 to 1993 and a means of beginning, within our company, a meaningful debate about the past which could confirm our efforts towards transformation now and in the future.  	He said it aimed to identify areas in which the company and its staff or rather victims or perpetrators of human rights abuses or played some part in allowing human rights abuses to occur, Featherston pointed out that the report emphasised shortcomings and achievements and he expressed the regret of the company for those failures.  Now, in our submission today we, too, use the Patton report as a springboard and we, too, believe that while there were many achievements at the old Argus, there were also too many shortcomings in the activities of that company from that 1960's through the 1970's and 1980's.  	We make no bones about those shortcomings.  They did exist, we regret them deeply and we associate ourselves with the apology already offered by John Featherston, but I would say in that like, that the company has changed dramatically not just in the past 15 years, but in the past three years.  I certainly reject, very strongly, the allegation made by Thami Mazwai that the apartheid mindset, as he described it, exists in this company today.  It, very definitely, does not exist.  The new Independent Newspapers has for some years been engaged in a process of transformation and reconciliation.  It is a very vigorous process.  It is our response to the types of imbalances and injustices which are highlighted in the Patton report and we will deal with that process of change and transformation in the transformation we make today.  I am going to ask Rory Wilson to pick up at that point.