Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

JOHAN PRETORIUS: I think there are elements of, you mention quite a few points and I think there are elements of each that played a role during those times. The fact is that we had to, when we went into these townships, our journalists and our camera people, and if I remember correctly that wasn't so often because of the nature of the situation, they tried their best to get what they could get, but in the end they could only go where they were allowed to go, so that was a major, major problem.   The other thing was, the other element that you mention, did we try hard enough with hindsight, no, we didn't try hard enough, we did try but with the knowledge we know and we have now, we know that we should have tried harder. To give an example, when these Vlakplaas accusations, not accusations, statements by Dirk Coetzee, I think it was in '89, when they surfaced through Vrye Weekblad, we immediately sent a reporter and I went myself as an observer to a news conference in Pretoria, and I remember that day, I remember it very very well, how we grilled Vlok the Minister,  Minister Vlok and some of his senior people. Some of my fellow journalists will remember that day.  How we really went for them and we could get nothing, they denied it from point A to point Z and the only newspaper in those days, the only news medium who had the story was Vrye Weekblad through Dirk Coetzee, and we ran up against a brick wall, the other people did as well.  It's only later that the story developed and people could loosen it up. So fine I agree we should have tried harder and we didn't.

<UNKNOWN>: I've got to intervene unfortunately, Mr Pretorius, our big enemy has run in on us again.  Our next witness has to return to Cape Town so we simply have to take his testimony unfortunately but I want to just take the opportunity to thank you for coming and being quite forthright in your testimony.  I want to assure you that we don't regard ourselves as armchair critics and with the benefit of hindsight wanting to look for people who are responsible and so forth. We are simply here to find out what we can and it's forward looking in its essence really to learn some lessons out of this and I want to assure you that we don't expect to get the full picture about the SABC in today's proceedings, it's simply just a way of airing that issue.  It's very much alive, we will carry on with it and hopefully we will get a fairly complete picture that will assist us in making the recommendations that we have to make as a Commission.  Thank you very much.

JOHAN PRETORIUS: And thank you to you too and best of luck in your sessions.  Thank you very much.

<UNKNOWN>: And I can I ask you just a final favour.  Is it possible for you to leave us a copy of your submission, it's going to assist us very much in getting it on to the record?  Thank you, thanks a lot.  S A B C
BOARD MEMBER

<UNKNOWN>: Professor good afternoon and welcome. We know that we have indicated that we would have taken you slightly earlier in the programme, but as things are you know time is always a problem and things happen, but thank you for your patience and we know you've got to actually get back. So without anymore ado I want to just ask you to take the oath before we take your submission.

UNKNOWN: (sworn states)

<UNKNOWN>: Ms Mkhize will lead you, thank you.

MS MKHIZE: Professor I will ask you just to briefly highlight those areas of your presentation which you would like us to talk to you about.