Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

MR LEWIN: Gentlemen, thank you very much and I would like to thank you, also, for the frankness and openness with which you have made your presentation this morning.  I think we are in much the same sort of difficulty as you, because we were not there either.  So, but we do have a number of queries and, I think, a number of puzzlements which we need to sort out.  Maybe I should start the most recent and at the top.  Mr Ramaphosa, how do you feel about your new baby?  How did you feel, can you think back, ten years, how were your struggles at that stage covered, as you saw it then?

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: I thought you meant the other baby, but you mean TML.  Well, reflecting on the role that, say, TML newspapers played and, more broadly, English newspapers played, I would agree with the assertion that, in the main, English newspapers played a very courageous role.  They were out there to impart information when the Government was trying to restrict the impartation of information to the general public and, in the role that I was in, a number of years ago, certainly in the union movement and later in politics, I found in the union movement that the struggles that were being waged by workers, out there in the small outlying countries, were largely being reported on by English speaking newspapers in Johannesburg.  	I remember the role that The Rand Daily Mail played and some of their reporters, people like Steven Friedman, people like, a number of others that played, Phillip van Niekerk, played an important role in concentrating their attention on the struggles of ordinary people out there in the small countries of our country and I thought they were being very courageous.  Up to points where they would even infiltrate mine hostels against the restrictions that were being put before them by mine security and the police, generally.  In terms of politics, I think some of the inputs that were made or the submissions that were made by some of the earlier people, Jon Qwelane and the others, think they are right in the way that the publications tended to approach news, particularly, as news related to black people.	I think that is something that has to be changed.  That is a mindset that needs to be changed and I believe that the criticisms that have been levelled here, the issues that have been raised here are not going in one ear and going out the other, they are being internalised and we are highly sensitive and responsive to some of those and we will make sure that we are more careful and I am glad that our editors or some of our editors are here.  They are internalising much of what is being said here.

MR LEWIN: Thank you Sir.  Would that include, I think it was Mike Tissong's comment, that things were being run exactly the same way now as they were 15 years ago?

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: Well, I had wanted to respond to that towards the end and actually say that I welcome, may I say as Chairman of TML, I welcome the criticisms that have been levelled against us by, you know, Mike Tissong and Jon Qwelane and all of them who spoke this morning.  I welcome those, because this gives us an opportunity to have a much closer introspective look at our selves.  Clearly, everybody wants to see transformation blooming in these institutions that were previously owned and control by white people.  We are, essentially, saying that the replacement of control structures should not just mean a decoration of black faces.  It has to result in thorough going transformation and we are going to be moving and it is early days yes, but major steps are going to be taken to change and to transform those institutions.	Fortunately, Mr Chairman, at TML's level we have adopted it as our intended strategic objective to transform our company so that we have a fair, meaningful representation of the true demographics of our country in the makeup of the company.  It should not just result at Board transformation, but throughout, including in our news rooms, including in our management structure.

MR LEWIN: Thank you very much.  If I could just raise some of the questions that have been put to us, because we, obviously, have to try and analyse and put these things together and then make our final report with recommendations.  One of the points that you have mentioned today, which I am very pleased to hear, because it is not actually in your submission, is the question of the firing of the editors and, in fact, we have a fairly lengthy submission from one of the former very well known and leading reporters on The Sunday Times, Maggie Smith, Margaret Smith, writing from London, where she reports how, after 34 years, she was summarily fired when she was in London under great stress.  	Now, none of you, presumably, were part of that and there is not a great deal that can be done other than, possibly, write a nice letter to her saying sorry, but how do we explain, using your phrase now from the, from the report, the commercial imperatives as against the editorial imperatives thinking, for instance, about not only the way the editors were fired from The Daily Mail, but the way in which The Daily Mail was closed.  You say, again, this was a commercial decision.  We heard yesterday that it was very definitely a political decision.  Can you advise us on that?

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: I think I will hand over to someone who came in soon after it was closed.

LAWRENCE CLARK: Yes, Mr Chairman, I certainly was not party to the decision, but I, as I said earlier, I have come across nothing other than individual perspectives, particularly from the editorial side that indicated that some of those decisions were made for political reasons, but I have seen nothing and I have heard nothing on the management side, nothing in any official records which indicate that that was so.  Certainly, the closure of The Mail, I saw the mess, the financial mess that SAAN was in at the time in 1985.  It was on the verge of insolvency and desperate action had to be taken to save it even then and if they had not actually closed The Mail down, I believe the company would have folded and collapsed and that would not have been in the interests, I believe, of the rest of the publications. So, I can only confirm my perspective from where I sit.

MR LEWIN: And does that include a perspective on why there were so many firings before The Mail was actually closed?  Were they, all the firings an attempt to get, to prevent the paper being closed?

LAWRENCE CLARK: I think that The Mail found itself in a very difficult commercial position where it had attracted a vast number of readers, but it was not being well supported by advertisers for reasons which one can go into in a, at length, but to try to summarise, effectively, the advertisers were saying that the readers were not part of their target market and, therefore, what the, the publication of a newspaper is a difficult thing at the best of times and The Mail found itself in a very difficult position in the market.  The more readers it gained, in fact, the more it cost the company to produce, because of the cost of news print and distribution and it was not being supported by advertising.	Again, this happened before my time, but I have certainly spoken to some of the managers at the time and I have no reason to doubt that that was the way in which they perceived it.

MR LEWIN: Could this have then been seen as the advertisers saying you have got too many black readers and not enough white readers and, therefore, we are not going to support you?

LAWRENCE CLARK: I do not think that is the way advertisers behave.  I think advertisers are driven by the economies of their advertising.

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: Response.

LAWRENCE CLARK: Yes, by their response.

MR LEWIN: Really?

LAWRENCE CLARK: By the direct response.  Yes, I genuinely believe so.  I have yet to see anything that indicates to the contrary.