Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

JONATHAN PROCTOR: Well life has returned to normal until now and I sincerely hope that as a result of my appearance here it will stay like that.  I have no doubt that those unseen forces don't go away and it would be wonderful for us all working in the media if we could all really see who these unseen forces were, because we all suffer with these people that are unseen and make our lives hell when we do things that we think are right and they think are wrong. And certainly if they do reappear, which I sincerely hope they don't, you will be the first to hear about it. (Laughter)

DR BORAINE: Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  Any further questions - Denzil.

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you Father.  Mr Proctor you were actually, if I understand you correctly, a lecturer, an academic in the teaching department, was that your background before becoming the head of this corporation?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: Yes, that's true, that's correct.  Well I was teaching in a teaching department and then I started working administratively for John McKenney, the Vice Chancellor of the University, so my academic life was put on the back-burner as such.  The only reason that I managed to keep an academic post going for as long as I did was because I was reluctant to actually enter professional managerial life because I wanted to be an academic and I enjoyed the academic life, and I felt that this was going to be for a short period of time when I helped John, it landed up being much longer than I had expected.

<UNKNOWN>: And prior to that you had never really been involved in broadcasting at all?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: Apart from my specialisation which is in this type of environment, academically, but not in terms of actually running any organisation.

<UNKNOWN>: Would you, looking back at that, what would your comment be on that sort of thing happening, somebody with your background being put into this sort-of situation?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: At the time I thought it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened to me because I was just surrounded by all of this stuff, and it's incredibly intimidating, also by a staff who had never met me, didn't know me and looked on me - they just didn't understand where I came from.    However, I would recommend it because I arrived in the environment completely naive.  I was completely unaware of all these forces that flow around the organisation, so I opened cupboards and skeletons dropped on me.  And the less I knew about all this history the better it was because it gave me an opportunity to do things, naively, that nobody else would have considered doing because of all the forces and pressures.  So the advantage was that I landed up having an argument with de Klerk.  I mean had I come from a deeply sort-of ingrained media background I doubt whether I'd even have dared to get into a disagreement about something like a cross-border broadcasting agreement.

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you very much.  Thank you Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Hugh.

MR LEWIN: Mr Proctor if I could just rattle one skeleton briefly.  I don't think we have got time to go into it, but there's a fascinating piece in your submission where you are talking about the fact that you had spent a great deal of time resisting, in your march into Africa, resisting any agreement with M'Net.  Could you just indicate to us, possibly it's something that can be carried and rattled elsewhere, did you feel that, or was your resistance based on a feeling that the pressure that was put on you was not just say political, it might have been financial as well in relation to opening up channels for M'Net?

JONATHAN PROCTOR: I just want to understand this question, the pressure that came did it also come as a function perhaps of my resistance to utilising M'Net inscription technology?

MR LEWIN: H'n.

JONATHAN PROCTOR: It's always very difficult to know where these pressures come, and when you are working in a sort-of quasi political, commercial environment the commercial world has no compunction using political friends to lean on you when they don't want to get their hands dirty,  so it was very difficult for me to really dissect where the pressures came from.  The reason that I did not want to use the inscription system that had been proposed was because there was a more convenient, cheaper system available commercially on the open market, number one.  Number two, I felt that if we as an organisation that belonged to the people were going to endorse some commercially owned technology on the rest of the continent, which we would have done by going on the Urdeto(?) technology, then there should have been some pay-back to the organisation. If we were going to endorse a product that had no penetration in the rest of Africa, we had maximum penetration, if we were going to endorse this technology then there should be some commercial recognition for it.  And that was really the beginning and the end of my argument.    Whether or not the pressure that I came under had anything to do with it I really don't know, although I just found it amazing that within, literally within weeks of having left this marriage happened.  It was consummated at great expense to Bop Broadcasting, Bop Broadcasting paid a fortune to actually make this marriage happen.    And if we have a look at its effect today the very thing that was set up and what I warned would happen, that it would destroy this, it's been destroyed, so that whole system actually collapsed the whole of Bop TV's action in Africa.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very, very much.  As they say you can stand down, but I mean you can remain seated.  Dumisa.

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you Chair.    Mr Matau I don't know how you propose to proceed, whether you, like Mr Proctor, have a submission in the form of a summary of what you want to be saying to us?

TAU MATAU: Thank you.  I would rather just give a one sentence explanation, over and above the submission we have made, may I proceed to do so?

MR NTSEBEZA: Thanks, proceed.

TAU MATAU: My name is Matau.  I am a national executive member of Mwasa, and I was based at the BBC in Mmabatho.  I worked under Mr Proctor and later under Eddie Mangope.  The submission we have submitted to the TRC was actually submitted initially to the Tebbutt Commission and our thrust here was basically to highlight the injustices that were visited on us by the regime in Mmabatho throughout our stay there as journalists.  And we also needed to pay tribute to the workers in the Corporation because of the gallant actions they undertook up until the fall of the government there.  And primarily as a trade union we are forever and always trying to say to South Africa there needs to be an independent, just and free media in this country, devoid of any political interference, State interference, and that is basically what we are trying to say and bring to the attention of the TRC today.

MR NTSEBEZA: Thank you.  But maybe let's look at the period that you were engaged in Mmabatho.  When did Mwasa start to engage the organisation in Mmabatho?

TAU MATAU: As an official union structure that was only in '94.

MR NTSEBEZA: Before then?

TAU MATAU: Before then some of us had links, individual staff members had links with Mwasa, but we knew the difficulties and even the dangers of trying to establish a formal structure on the ground, so that we were never, before '94 under Eddie Mangope, we were never formally structured within the Corporation.

MR NTSEBEZA: Yes I appreciate that because I think that's what Mr Proctor referred to when he said there wasn't a legal basis for you to be operative.  Now what did you operate as, as a staff association when you entered into those negotiations with management before formal recognition of Mwasa as an organisation?