Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

SAM SOUL: We may have two different views on that.  My own view is that the race of management in the end tends to count for fairly little when it comes down to it.  Management is interested in money when we get to the bottom line and I think the closure of New Nation for instance, which was run, had black owners, is an example of that.  And I think that there will always be a conflict between the interests of managers and the interests of journalists and their unions.  I am not saying it can make no difference and you know hopefully as media ownership changes we may get to see some of those changes, but in general I don't believe the race of the newspaper owners has had that much influence in what is in the newspapers.

PAT SIDLEY: Yes I am not entirely sure that I would agree with Sam.  The ownership has clearly made a difference over the years.  It clearly has to continue to make a difference until owners' views are felt on the newsroom floor.  In my company we have got effectively black owners.  It hasn't permeated down to the newsroom floor.  The effect on unions really would be minimal until there is a big shift in the way in which  the actual newsrooms are run I would imagine. I think the unions will continue to be polarised for quite a while, but ultimately I would say it's got to have a view down the line, the ownership and the management have got to land up being reflected in how journalist unions deal with one another and with issues.

MS MKHIZE: You touched upon the question of spies.  You indicated that we will be hearing from people who were suspected to be spies in the newsroom, but as the oldest union in this country can we get your views on that?

PAT SIDLEY: On spies?

MS MKHIZE: The situations which led to journalists being suspected of being spies and I am sure some of those cases were discussed in the unions.

PAT SIDLEY: Yes, well they were.  My earliest recollections of union meetings at the Rand Daily Mail in SAAN at the time was of being warned off a particular person who was speaking volubly and sounded like an alive and interested and active Union member, that was John Horak, later Major John Horak.  	The views that I knew when I came into it was, it was discussed widely among journalists who had a distaste for spies.  The problem was exactly how you would tell who they were, and then what could be done about the issue and then of course what they were doing and exactly who was reporting to whom.  For many of those years it was an issue - in your mind it would be boss of the security police, we didn't have the niceties of thinking about whether it was someone from Military Intelligence perhaps in there as well or Vlok had his own men in there at some point, one didn't know.  For most of us, through most of the years that I was involved in the Union and in the press it was a subject of great worry and of distaste and of total impotence.  We were not able to make our management share our discomfort with the fact that there were spies among us.	I hasten to add that there were also people working for other organisations among us.  Our fear though, and distaste was for those who were working for the security establishment in the government at the time.  But to make our managements understand that this is actually a workplace problem that it, at the very least inhibits your ability to do your job adequately, was very difficult to make them understand that, and we were also countered by this nonsense of they need proof.  The proof emerged always later like John Horak who came leaping out of the closet, I am a major in the police force.  He was.

MS MKHIZE: Mr Chair if I might just be quick.  The reason why I am asking that, I am just looking at this problem of polarisation, vis-a-vis all those issues that as the strongest and the most powerful one of my assumptions will be that also of interest to emerging unions who are reacting to the establishment will be an issue of not having confidence in the oldest union who could collude, so to say, with practices which maybe for them were fundamentally - were violating the thrust of what the media should stand for.  You mentioned that you just didn't know what to do with management which was in denial and that coming from a union it creates an impression ...(intervention)

PAT SIDLEY: Ja, if I can answer that.  I think that perhaps when you talk about the SAUJ as a union one perhaps has a - one puts it perhaps in the same bracket as those affiliated to Cosatu.  We remain always a union of journalists only and ...(intervention)

PAT SIDLEY: Of white middle class ones ...(intervention)

SAM SOUL: Editorial workers only, and that has restricted our membership to between 1,000 and 2,000 members over the years.  So the capacity of the union to really take on issues was very limited and as Pat said I think the leadership of the Union was also always in advance of its membership in terms of the kind of political position it was taking.	You know that said I don't think that you know anybody else really managed to achieve much.  On one of the occasions where we had suspicions we held meetings with Mwasa and we went jointly to see the editorial management and nothing came of it.  I think all the medial unions were in a position of crisis management continually in dealing with ordinary union issues and problems involving members, in dealing with press freedom issues, in dealing with issues around the state of emergency at the time.  The capacity actually to inflict change on the owners was very limited.    That said I don't think that the SAUJ leadership was ever seriously accused by other unions, black unions, over this period of collusion and of being tainted by issues of spying.  Certainly I never felt that they identified us with the spies in our midst.

PAT SIDLEY: But just to add to what Sam is saying and just to answer you perhaps a bit more directly, there's a great gap between how we were seen as dealing with spies and the other point which you appear to be making.  We were a conservative, largely white, middle class bunch of people. The impulse of people like that is not to turn the world on its head, so we were constantly in a position of trying to stay moral, ensure that we were moving in a political direction which we could live with, but trying to counter, not just within our members but within ourselves, the impulses for keeping the status quo, which is an innately conservative impulse.  Now if that led to the feeling, which it did, among our black colleagues that we couldn't be counted on for any great deal of support, that's perfectly true.  That was our great flaw, it continues to be.

CHAIRPERSON: I've got to unfortunately intervene at this stage.  Thank you very much for those insights and for the submission and for having raised the question of the separation.  I trust your colleagues have listened to what you have said in this regard that there could be ongoing discussions on that issue, and as you rightly say ideally it's a matter that should be dealt with within your industry.  	But once again thank you very much, we've got the full submission that you have made, thank you to our union for the work that you have put into this and for the two of you having taken time to come and present it to us this morning.  Thank you very much.	We are going to adjourn for tea at this stage for 15 minutes.  I want to apologise to Jolyon Nuttall.  We had hoped that we would take your testimony before the tea adjournment but unfortunately we have not been able to.  We will adjourn for 15 minutes and we will take your testimony immediately when we reconvene.  Thank you.
HEARING ADJOURNSON RESUMPTION

CHAIRPERSON: Can I please ask you to settle down.  The next witness would be Jolyon Nuttall who will be speaking about the NPU.  Good morning Mr Nuttall and welcome.  Just before we take your testimony I am going to ask you to take the oath please.
NPU