Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Louw, how far are you from - you have covered the ...

RAYMOND LOUW: I am 25 minutes into the excursion.  Mr Chairman, I have here a list of the stories that I wanted to draw attention to. I think that what I will do is just talk on them, just by chapter headings, and I will get to that in about five minutes.  If that is acceptable or should Ijust hand it in?

CHAIRPERSON: You see, I think hand them in, because I am sure there are questions that need to be put to you. I have got a couple of questions, and we are in fact, I think we have already done the 30-minute period, 25 thereof, which was allotted to you.  Maybe you will, should hand in those because we already have a fairly detailed submission from your side. 	If I could then proceed to ask questions.

RAYMOND LOUW: Sure.

CHAIRPERSON: There is a submission that has been made by Margaret Smith, I don't know if you know her?

RAYMOND LOUW: The submission by?

CHAIRPERSON: Margaret Smith.

RAYMOND LOUW: No. I know Margaret Smith, but I don't know of her submission, Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON: Ja, okay.

RAYMOND LOUW: I know Margaret Smith.

CHAIRPERSON: I was wanting to know if you know her.  She has made several points but one of the points that she has made was that she was forced to resign from SAAN after 34 years of service, at a time when she was stateless, without a passport and when she was supporting a family.  She has the impression that this was due to an attack on her by Brig Johan Coetzee who was then Brig Johan Coetzee of the security police, at the Steyn Commission of Inquiry into the media, when she was accused, among others things, of being a Communist. She has a view that although she was told that her dismissal was due to financial problems and the need to cut staff, the London office staff was increased and functioned for many years and she therefore thinks that it was because the security police weighed heavily with management or the proprietors of South African Association Newspapers to an extent, that she was made a sacrificial lamb.	Now what would be your attitude to Margaret Smith?

RAYMOND LOUW: Margaret Smith is a good friend of mine or was a good friend of mine. I haven't seen her for a number of years. But I had nothing to do with her employment. She was employed by the Sunday Times. She went to London, I think, by arrangement with Tertius Myburgh.  She worked in the London office. I was then involved slightly with her because I was in charge of the operations in the London office for a while. I think - yes, the main thing that I had to deal with the fact that she had to have some readjustment to her salary at some stage, but I had nothing to do with her departure from the company. In fact, I think that may have taken place after my rather more precipitative departure from the company. I think the person you should ask that question of is Lester Walton, the managing director at that time of SAAN.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  There is the perennial question, what were the reasons behind the closure of the Rand Daily Mail?

RAYMOND LOUW: How many more minutes do you want to give me, Sir?

CHAIRPERSON: Whether it was for commercial reasons or for political reasons or for none of those?

RAYMOND LOUW: I think the stated reason, let's put it that way, yes, the stated reason was because the paper was losing money. I believe that the owners of the paper were got at by the Government, who said, which said, and I think it was a special emissary from the Broederbond that made the approach to them, which said that the Government was going to change its policies and change them drastically, but they did not want a newspaper like the Rand Daily Mail around to confront them when they did make those changes, in such a way that it would be embarrassing to them.  I think that the owners gave in on that argument, or at least that they accepted that argument. I believe now that it was a political closure and that it was done to enable the Government to get on with the job of whatever it was about to do in 1985.  	It should be noted that M-Net got its licence in the same month as they closed the Rand Daily Mail.  M-Net, as you know, being a - or was then a consortium of the newspaper ownerships. Although that has also been denied that there was any connection.  	I suppose the third matter is that the chairman of - the then chairman of Anglo-American, Harry Oppenheimer was given a special medal by PW Botha for services to the country, although it wasn't mentioned that the services had anything to do with the Rand Daily Mail.	Those are pieces of circumstantial evidence. But there were other factors that were at play. There was a concerted move within the company by several senior staff members, among them the advertising manager and the then managing director, to change the Mail from the kind of paper that it was into the specialist publication that it subsequently turned into, that is Business Day.  They felt that the company would be more profitable if the Mail was closed, because it was losing money.  But their figuring was wrong, because the Mail's overdraft as I indicated earlier, went up rather substantially.	 The Mail had only made a perfunctory attempt - when I talk about the Mail, I talk about the advertising department of the Mail, had made only a perfunctory attempt to gather advertising in the three years before the Mail was closed.  I got that from a very high-up person in the advertising industry, the chairman, in fact, of one of the big advertising companies.

CHAIRPERSON: Ja, finally from me.  There has been the criticism that newspapers, including your newspaper, had taken a position that was perceived by the black community certainly, as being anti-liberation movement, and that this was seen in the manner in which you referred to, you know, insurgents or guerillas or freedom fighters, that even though there were neutral terms like for instance, insurgent or guerilla, your newspapers as a matter of routine, referred to those people as terrorists.  What your comment be on that sort of thing?