Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

MS MKHIZE: Thank you.  I will just ask you a few questions aimed at seeking clarity on some of the issues which you have raised.  You will appreciate the fact that we haven't had time to look at your document.	If we look at the 1980's time and again, the South African Police took journalists with them on raids and into the townships.  Did you ever accompany them?

CRAIG KOTZE: What is your definition of a raid Madam, because if you are talking about police operations in terms of open crime prevention operations, yes, then certainly yes.  I have accompanied the police on, without putting too fine a point on it, probably thousands of operations or investigations during that period.  Yes, but not to the extent that other journalists would be excluded.	Many of these were done quite openly as exercises by the SAP then.

MS MKHIZE: In those missions, how would you see your role as being?

CRAIG KOTZE: As I intimated in my submission to the panel, I was expected to operate as a normal journalist and the police structures who would for example be
 in charge of organising those specific actions that you refer to, would not know that I was in fact a police Intelligence Agent.	So it would be more a case of the police informing all the media that such a thing would happen and I would go along.

MS MKHIZE: Maybe while you were reviewing that, do you think the media and the Security, it is appropriate for the media and the Security Forces, to have a close working relationship?

CRAIG KOTZE: It depends on the definition of close working relationship, but certainly from a media perspective I think you should utilise every single available source of information whilst at the same time, inserting the necessary checks and balances to obviously tell the reader that this is information from a specific source.	So if that answers your question, but certainly I believe in principle, there should be a healthy tension between the media and all official institutions especially today.

MS MKHIZE: When looking back, how easy was it for those journalists who were often in the company of the police, to report in an objective way?

CRAIG KOTZE: Well, I think what is very important is that everybody was receiving the same information at the same time.  Reporters from the Star, Beeld, Citizen possibly, theoretically under the same circumstances.  I think it was very possible, because you could say that the police said the following.	And in any case the final product of the newspaper was never determined by the relevant reporter.  I think that is very important when considering the whole principle or question of media manipulation per se because the final product, such as the headline, the space to be devoted to a specific story is not decided by the journalist involved.	It is decided by various other processes on the newspaper.

MS MKHIZE: Just based on what you have said to us, it is like you clearly took a position as to what was appropriate and inappropriate, looking at the role of the South African Police Services and what Liberation Movements were doing.	For the purpose of this hearing, how would you see the role of a journalist?  Is it to take a particular position and make sure that that line is pushed through reporting?  How do you see it?

CRAIG KOTZE: Ma'am as I mention in my submission, it is not possible to have normal journalism in an abnormal society, just as it was not possible to have normal sport, or political or diplomatic relations in an abnormal society.	But having said that, I personally believe that yes, there is a journalistic holy grail that has to be strived after, or striven for in a sense of trying to maintain a semblance of impartiality, not taking sides and at least trying to be objective, if that is possible.  I am aware of the philosophical debate that objectivity may not be possible at all, but nonetheless, one should strive for that, yes.	But to finally answer your question, if it were possible during the war years, to do so, I would have done so.

MS MKHIZE: Given the abnormal circumstances under which you practise as a journalist, what was your perception of the mass democratic movement?

CRAIG KOTZE: As I mention in my submission, I had no specific ideological bent, but what influenced me as an individual and as a crime reporter and as a military correspondent and as a Citizen Force soldier officer, being deployed in the townships, was the daily carnage being inflicted on the population, that I was exposed to.  I knew intellectually that our Forces intellectually, that our Forces must at some or other time, also be involved in atrocities because human beings are human beings, but I rationalised that in the same way that I suppose an ANC member would rationalise necklacings or the Quatro Camps and the other executions and assassinations of police officials.

MS MKHIZE: The difficulty which I would like to highlight, is that it is very difficult to think freely if you are constantly compare yourself with other people.  It is like you present an argument that I had to take a political position against somebody else and it makes it very difficult for us to follow through your reasoning about your role as a person in the past, if you constantly compare yourself to other people.

CRAIG KOTZE: My role Madam Chairperson, if I may just try and define it for you a bit more accurately, is that of a traditional policeman, to stop crime and violence.

MS MKHIZE: You have an interesting history.  You know, can you just tell us, you know, how you saw yourself developing either as a police or as a journalist?  It is like you seem to have interest in both roles.

CRAIG KOTZE: Well, I think I know where you are going, but the - do you want me to just physically describe my career profile, or do you want me to describe my personal feelings, which I believe I have already done.

MS MKHIZE: Based on what you have said and the report we have, it is like you had a commitment in wanting to make a contribution.  You said something like you didn't want to see the country becoming like Rwanda, you named quite a number of countries and you played two roles in preserving the identity of South Africa.	At a certain point you worked as a police officer and at a certain point you worked as a journalist.  So that is the relationship I was looking at.

CRAIG KOTZE: Is there a specific question, yes, that is common cause.

MS MKHIZE: A specific question really is whether you saw a relationship between the two in your own mind?

CRAIG KOTZE: Indeed Madam, I did see a relationship.  That relationship was that I was not necessarily ideologically motivated either as a member of the NP, which I never was, or a member of this or that political party.  I didn't see myself as I mentioned in my submission, as opposing legitimate aspirations of black people and oppressed people, which in my own fashion I recognised as being oppressed.	The fundamental issue for me personally was how would we replace the old order, through revolution with its accompanying violence and I had plenty of examples that I saw with my own eyes about how that revolution would proceed if it were allowed to proceed or through a negotiated settlement.	So quite frankly, I see myself as a soldier/policeman in that process, using journalistic skills to achieve that objective.

MS MKHIZE: You know, we have struggled since yesterday looking at, I mean we have heard journalists saying to us it is important for the media to be independent of the State for it to be able to play a professional role.	And just based on what you are saying it is like you see the media as an important tool of achieving whatever State objectives a person want to pursue.