Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

JOHN HORAK: Thank you Mr Potgieter.  I had hoped that I would have more time because you yourself spent about 30 hours with me, so you should know.  Sir I want to thank the Commission for the opportunity to be here in fact, because I had for a long time wanted to appear here.  I also want to thank you personally and Mr Lewin for the relationship we have built up during this time and for the way you treated me.	And I am glad to be here.  I am the only senior police officer who ever stood up to the police while a serving officer and challenged them.  In the end, they issued a statement to say that I did speak the truth in all matters and gave me indemnity.	That is while in, there were other policemen over the years who did challenge them, but they did it because of other reasons.  They either had criminal charges facing against them or something like this.	I served roughly 27 years in all on newspapers and in 1985, when I wanted to leave the police, the rug was pulled from under me because by then I had become a committed journalist in fact.  And the police saw a danger in this and they asked me for time and on a Saturday morning I was phoned and said that they had found the answer and they would announce that I had been appointed Chairman of the Strategic Communications Committee in the State Security Council and that effectively killed my newspaper career.	My job in newspapers was different from anybody else in a similar capacity.  I was not there in a very secret capacity.  I was basically, I had to establish myself as a type of listening post/drawing board/sounding board.  I will explain what I mean by that.	Many people, many journalists, many Editors knew the story or they might have known and not known, if you understand what I am trying to say here.  My job was to inform the establishment in the Security Establishment on thinking in newspapers, on what was happening in newspapers.  I had a specific instruction not to be an informer on journalists.	And the reason for that was they did not want me to be caught out in that respect and journalists' informers came two a penny.  There were many and there was a reason for that.  One of the main reasons being that people were not well paid at that time, another reason was that people were split along ideological lines, another reason was that there were straight prostitutes and many journalists came to me and approached me in fact, from the rank of assistant Editor of the Sunday Times, for instance, asked me to introduce them to the Intelligence Forces so that they could work with them.	I could give you many similar examples of reporters and over the years, I probably introduced 40 to 50 people to the Intelligence Services whom I had not recruited, but who had approached me because of the position I was in. And then at various occasions over the years, Editors and senior people approached me for help while I was in the newspapers.	There would be the case of, there would be certain instances here which I would, could mention and there are others which I, in line with our discussions, cannot mention where people for instance couldn't get a passport, where I was approached to assist.  I will go from the sublime to the ridiculous here, where a non-political individual, that is why I will give his name, but just to illustrate what I am saying, like David Mollet, as a young reporter came out from the UK, addressed a meeting of jockeys at Newmarket, encouraged the strike which was then totally taboo in the country and they wanted to put him out.	I was asked to see what I could do and I changed it.  I had it changed, he stayed in the country.  I played such a role when Arthur Ash was refused a visa to this country.  A newspaper individual approached me and again I approached certain people and a few days later he was granted a visa.	There was a news Editor at the time when Don Mattera was banned and a month before the time, I told this news Editor that this was the date and place and they were totally amazed by this.  There is the question where General Coetzee called me and said who should write the Craig Williamson story.  I selected Ken Owen and General Coetzee, who had a direct lead with Mr Tertius Myburgh, who was very well connected to the Services, asked me to go and ask Myburgh whether Owen could do this story and he then told Owen that he, Myburgh, had selected him.	But when Owen got to Security Branch Headquarters, Coetzee told him that he was very glad that John Horak had selected him to do the story.  There was the relationship where I introduced Craig Williamson to Ken Owen and it resulted in Craig being able under another name, during the Tricameral parliamentary elections, writing a column in the Sunday Express, in the paper that Ken was editing at the time.	There was the question of an article I've got here where Mr Rex Gibson in a column in the Star newspaper, on the 16th of August 1987, he wrote there were occasions and they always knew the spy in the newsroom and he said, actually there had been occasions where we knew who the spy was.	One who outlived his usefulness was suddenly transferred from journalism to an officer's desk in some police headquarters somewhere.  I am the only guy that was ever transferred from a newspaper to a police headquarters.  After I had come out in 1985, which I did not want to do, Mr Rory Wilson who was General Manager of the sound group, told the Beeld newspaper on Friday, August the 30th, 1985, that they had suspected me, the Editors, for eight years and that they had adapted an internal new system, so that I wouldn't have entry to it.	So I believe that there are dozens of examples I could come up with here, that it was a question we know, we don't know.  By the time I got to Security Branch Headquarters, because of my background, I had been suspected of having been out of touch and in the late 1980's, during the state of emergency, I was made Chairman of the Media Committee during the state of emergency in terms of those regulations.	I was removed from that because, and these things are available, specifically they wanted the Weekly Mail and the New Nation banned under those regulations and I stalled on this and they couldn't get a aye or nay out of me and I was then supposed to be weak and I was moved and an investigation was held into me and I had been told that I had been in the newspaper world too soft, I was no longer in tune with the government.	By 1988, I was in touch with the ANC and then things started changing for me.  And things became quite bad for me within the Forces.  I was stabbed with knives, which I know there was a lot of intimacy within the Forces because of my newspaper situation.  My car burnt, my house burnt, and so on, and I went until 1990, when this could no longer continue, and General Van der Merwe tried to keep me in the Force, but I had to leave then and I was - subsequently a contract was put out on my life to the CCB and I had to, the ANC, Patrick Lekota took me out of the country in 1991.	When I came back, by then I was forgiven by all, including the President, the present State President.  I made my peace with all people.  The only area of life where I am still not welcome in is of course the Press, because they normally tell other people how to conduct their lives, but they don't conduct it in terms of their own whatever they say they believed.	There are no hard feelings about that.  When I came back, three weeks before the 1994 election, there was a kidnap attempt on me by the military.  Mr Alfred Nzo took it up with the Transitional Council of the time and they admitted that the military was responsible.  They said it was an instruction that had not worked right through.  Including of course my own church chased me away, they said I had become a communist.	But now, why does one become somebody or why do you go into the way that I did?  I come from a very conservative thoroughly Afrikaner background home and in the particular environment of today, it was almost a Godsend if you got an opportunity to do something that was perceived to be the country.  By 1969, I knew I was no longer what the job I was doing, and I can prove this.	By 1974, one of the people I had befriended on the newspaper was Mr Benjamin Pogrund.  Now 1974 I was told to stay away from him because Security Branch Headquarters had come to the conclusion that I had become a friend and I had lost sight of my object and that my reports showed that he no longer was an enemy, but that he was in fact my friend, which he became.  He is today a good friend of mine.	There are many instances, he knows about this too and he has known about it for many years.  I went to see Ministers.  I think one needs to understand the times I went to see Ministers of Religion, whose names I can give to you and said look, I don't know, I've got problems now and they prayed for me, saying praying for strength from God to continue in what I was doing and then I would come back again, totally confused and I would go on again.	There were times in newspapers when I deliberately tried to give myself away and I actually told people things, knowing that it would be carried over, but I could never admit it openly, because then I would have been in rather serious trouble, I probably would have been wiped out.	I remember that in 1980 I got a  phone call one day, there was a journalist from the Sunday Times, Barry Rutter on the Mail too, and according to all newspaper reports he had committed suicide.  I got a call one day after dispute, pointing out to me that I'd better be careful of a Rutter will be done to me.	It was also done to me.  I have evidence and here I just want to bring in something else.  Before or just after I left the Force, Max du Preez was going to do a book on me.  And we had a lot of tape recorded interviews which still had to be edited.  When I disappeared from the country, he published those unedited stories and I can tell you today, that he in fact saved my life.	Because had it not been published, I would have vanished.  In the UK, the South African Intelligence Forces tried to kill me.  In Nottingham I drove a motor car which took fire and Scotland Yard determined that the fire started in an area in the boot where it couldn't possibly have started, but it did.	So for nearly my last 15 years in newspapers, yes 15 years in newspapers, I was in this sort of quandary and this also helped or adds to the statement that I believed that the Editors, those that didn't suspect, knew what was going on.	Mr Louw, Mr Raymond Louw who is present here, confronted me on several occasions.  I always denied it, but he had the ammunition to - to correct him my ammunition at that point in time.  So I think one drifted into it.	The first time I asked questions about what I was doing, seriously towards outside and to the police, was in 1970.  Roughly 1971, when the Timol situation developed.  Now you have to understand that your agent isn't closely connected, he doesn't go and visit the Security Branch Headquarters, so it was obviously a little bit of a waste and I asked General Coetzee, who was then a Major, I said I don't believe this evidence.	The next day he brought me a book, called the Penkofsky Papers, by Olaf Penkofsky in which Penkofsky describes how the Russians trained the agents that one of their methods was that they had to commit suicide by jumping from windows.	So it placates you for a little bit.  When I went to work overseas, there I came into contact with other situations.  And gradually by the time Craig Williamson, who is present here today, in roughly about 1982, he sent a message to people which he got from his own officers, that they no longer wanted reports from me, because these things were useless.	The final reason why I would tell you that the, why I can allege that the people knew was on a morning on the Sunday Times, I got a call from a man called Derrick Bruner from Parliament and Derrick is today one of Sam Njoma's bodyguards to the best of my knowledge.  And he told me that Coco, which was General Coetzee, it stands for Coco, Colonel Coetzee, when he was a Colonel, had said that I must go to Mr Myburgh and tell him that I must offer him all assistance possible. It was a shock to me, I said I couldn't take it.	A little while later General Coetzee phoned me personally and said I had to go to Mr Myburgh, he had troubles and I had to go and see if I could assist him.  And I said, but what must I do?  He is not supposed to know officially who I am.	He said, just go to him.  And I said how far should I go?  He said even if you blow your own cover, defend the man.  I then went down to him and I, think it is today common knowledge in those circles, I went down to him and I said what had happened and he said to me he knew I was coming.  I subsequently discovered that it was in connection with an Editor who had found out during the information scandal that Myburgh might have had links to the Security Establishment and that he was going to confront him during the no-confidence debate at the beginning of the year down in Parliament.	So I can certainly tell you that those people knew who I was and where I was connected.  And they helped me and I helped them to no end.  One of their reporters who subsequently switched to the sister publication had to go to the Thompson Foundation for training, he couldn't get a passport.  I arranged a false passport for him.	He went to the Thompson Foundation and came back.  They knew it because subsequently I had to inform that particular senior editorial person to tell this reporter, that when he wanted to renew this, he had to go back to the man who gave it to him, which was Andre Beukes who retired as Commissioner of Police in the Cape recently.	He in fact issued that passport.  It was a bizarre world those years, very bizarre in fact.  And on your newspapers you had great divides at any given time, probably half the people on a paper like the Rand Daily Mail, was given to be informers and the other half was given to be communists.	Divisions, there were these lines.  I could draw out the lines to you.  You would ask me one of the reasons about the Rand Daily Mail, a question you posed in your letter to me.  I would like to speak on that one.	It was important to the government of today that the Rand Daily Mail not die.  Because there was a strategy in fact that was used by the embassies abroad.  It went something like this, that here is this paper, internationally recognized as being vehemently opposed to the government, so how can it be a dictatorial situation within the country?	But in a nutshell was the line being taken. Your problem started more in the so-called liberal establishment that killed it.  The liberal establishment of today, or the so-called liberal establishment of today, wanted to give out this great picture of how they cared for the suppressed and the freedom movements and what have you, but at the same time, they were capitalists.	It suited them to paint those double pictures and they wanted to make money out of it and at that time, increasingly there was pressure on financial situations.  And that was the first time, because newspapers in this country for many years, were formed for ideologically and not profit, motives.	Many newspapers in this country never made a profit in their lives.  The Citizen has never made a profit, the old Transvaler has never made a profit.  Beeld went without a profit for several years.  There were other motives for this and when those papers were financed during those days by getting the telephone directories to print, and that type of situation.	A large percentage of the English press at that point of time, was in the hands of Anglo American through various types of fronts but with the exception I think at one stage, the Natal Witness.  It is a daily and the Citizen, virtually every other one had direct or indirect, it was the way they were manipulated.	And the Mail, it was not the wish of certainly the Intelligence Establishment, and the media committees within those, advisors within those establishment that the Mail should die.  It was not the government, it was seen by the government as a tool to be used for their own ends and Roodie especially in the days of the Information situation, saw in the Mail a very worthwhile partner.	In the end, it was people that had gotten shaky in this country and financial lines, the mining bosses and so on, they were no longer prepared to put their money there and they looked for other reasons.  I know of campaigns that people went to certain companies where the companies were told that by advertising in the Mail, you would be promoting communism.	And here I know of a specific motor firm that no longer advertised in the Rand Daily Mail.  There was such tactics along other lines happening in the country.  But they were not necessarily by the official establishment, it wasn't the attitude of the establishment at that point in time.