Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

DON BRISCOE: ...under which we were working certainly if you wanted to earn a headline in the Rand Daily Mail or in a newspaper you would go ahead and the next day be fired.  So it's purely a question of whether you wanted to do that or not.  I preferred, I was quite happy actually to sacrifice two minutes of the programme to put 58 minutes on the air, but I wasn't happy about the deceit from the producer.  I actually encouraged my producers at all times not to engage in any self-censorship.  Rather produce the programmes you want to make, bring them up to my table where I could actually view them and see them but the production must come from within, from us, and let those final decisions be taken by - at a higher level.

DR BORAINE: So the censorship took place at a higher level on politically sensitive....

DON BRISCOE: Yes certainly, that's correct.

DR BORAINE: Thank you.  You had a few problems with people like Kevin Harris, Stewart Pringle and Pat Rogers, was this all in the area of political sensitive material?

DON BRISCOE: As far as I know that is absolutely correct.  If I may say so Mr Chairman I did have, as I said earlier, very bright, very talented producers working with me.  Some were very highly politicised if I may say so and they saw their role as actually working in a sort-of fifth column within the Corporation.  Now I didn't see myself as heading a fifth column in the Corporation in producing political documentaries.  Even so we produced enough programmes to have the hierarchy on hot bricks all the time and in the media.  We were very seldom out of the media in terms of the programmes we were making.    And I felt at the time that my producers were somewhat unrealistic.  They would often come to me and say they wanted complete freedom to make the programmes they wanted to make and the programmes had to go on the air as they made them.  In my experience, when you go back to the times of the 1970's, when this country was subjected to the total onslaught and there was bubbling insurrection from within the country that freedom was a fantasy, was totally unrealistic.  In my view Mr Chairman there is no such thing as complete freedom.  If you have complete freedom you have licence to do what you like, so there had to be some sort of controls, when I say controls, in terms of quality and content at my particular level.  It was up to my judgement and from the information I got from higher up in the Corporation it was up to me to decide whether I should take certain programmes up for approval.

DR BORAINE: Mr Briscoe you prepared and broadcast quite a lot of material on the South African Defence Force, was that because you felt that in line with the total onslaught you supported basically the total strategy to offset that?

DON BRISCOE: The conditions at the time I remember very, very clearly.  Around about the mid-seventies the documentaries, the heads of department, particularly documentaries and news were called to the underground headquarters of the military in Pretoria.  During this briefing we were told what the Communist strategy was against South Africa.  We were shown in very graphic terms that international Communism was planning to take over Angola, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, cutting South Africa off from the rest of Africa.  Once that was accomplished the final onslaught will be against South Africa.  At no time was I, as head of department, told you shall make a programme about the military and our preparedness against this onslaught.  But of course there were strong hints and suggestions as to what we should do as heads of news or heads of documentaries department.  I actually didn't see anything wrong in producing a few programmes showing the country's military preparedness.  We produced two one hour documentaries, one on the South African Navy and one on military manoeuvres in the Kalahari and Northwest Cape.  Both excellent programmes and not particularly punting any point of view but obviously from my point of view I was happy to show the country that no matter what happened the country was ready.

DR BORAINE: Thank you.  Did you never worry or consider and perhaps now in hindsight, bearing in mind that the SADF was - consisted of the white South Africans and a great deal of their work was done inside South Africa rather than on the borders or across the borders, in fact I think you actually made programmes of this defence force demonstrating their capability, as you put it, inside South Africa, the Karoo and places like that, did you not ever wonder or now think back and wonder if this did not contribute towards the glorification of the government of the day's determination at all costs to protect their privilege and therefore incite the possibility of greater violence in South Africa?

DON BRISCOE: Mr Chairman that didn't occur to me at all.  I think at the time the South African public was under a barrage of fear reporting, in the print media as well, about the so-called total onslaught against South Africa.  It was a very, very real threat against this country, particularly if you went underground and had your commanders and generals telling you what was going to happen, very, very serious indeed.  I therefore decided that we would as a department make a contribution but it would be fairly neutral, in other words we would do a documentary on their military manoeuvres and we would show how prepared we were in the South African Navy and leave it at that.  We made two programmes only.    I was quite satisfied that we had done our bit for the Corporation in terms of its requests and regulations and so forth and I felt also that we had actually done our best in making the South African viewing public aware of the military preparedness in this country.  It didn't occur to me that we would be glorifying the South African Defence Force.  And of course you know one has to take into account that we certainly couldn't produce the documentaries that would seek to undermine the government of the day.  I don't think that would be tolerated by any network anywhere in the world.

DR BORAINE: My final question which tries to take this just one step further.  You will know better than most of us the, because of your own experience and skills and history, of the documentaries that were made in Germany by Riefenstahl during the thirties which supported the German regime at the time and in the minds of some, not necessarily all, assisted the Nazi regime which sought to overthrow the world, civilised world, the Western world, call it what you will, now were you using that as a kind of a model as to how you yourself would attempt to not undermine the government but undermine those who differed with the government?

DON BRISCOE: Not at all Mr Chairman.  We produced those two documentaries on the military manoeuvres and the South African Navy purely with a view of indicating to the public of South Africa that as far as the total onslaught against South Africa was concerned South Africa had some power to hit back.  That's all.  Linie Riefenstahl's documentaries are by the way are absolute classics and they are studied today very closely by every documentary producer, they are brilliant, absolutely brilliant, but in recent interviews with Linie Riefenstahl she made out that she was just a film maker, a documentary producer in love with the medium and doing her best.  She brought into her programmes elements of documentary that have never been seen before.  She was absolutely brilliant at her task.  She was doing her job and doing it exceptionally well.

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much.  I am quite sure you agree that in manufacturing films one is never, ever only the technician, there is always a message that's being conveyed.  Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  Further questions?  Dumisa Ntsebeza.