Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: Thank you, Mr Chairman, in absentia, to you as the catalyst.  Our presentation will be in three parts.  I will do a brief introduction to the presentation.  Thereafter Mr Lawrence Clark, the Chief Operating Officer of Times Media Limited, will give a brief summary followed, thereafter, by a summary from Mr Neil Jacobson, the Deputy Chief Operating Officer.  With us, as a delegation from Times Media Limited, we also have Mr Brian Pottinger, who is the Editor of The Sunday Times, who is sitting over there, Mr Rick Wilson, who is the Editor In-Chief of Times Media Limited, Port Elizabeth newspapers, Mr Neville Woodburg, Editor of The Evening Post and Prof Gavin Stewart, Editor of The Daily Despatch.  So, we are well represented.	Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure to present to the TRC today a summary of our submission.  This is a submission that has been commissioned by the Board of Directors of Times Media Limited on the role played by TML and its publications in South Africa during the period 1960 to 1994.  It is my understating, Mr Chairman, that your Commission's main objective is to foster and enhance reconciliation in our country, but that in this regard, you want to examine the role that was played by the media during a period of repression and turmoil in our country.  Essentially, to ensure that what mistakes and shortcomings the media committed during that ugly period in the history of our country, should never be repeated again.  	Also, so as to ensure that such practices that were described here in the eloquent submissions that we heard, such as discriminatory practices in media houses or institutions, things such as separate canteens, or as Jon Qwelane called it, international restaurants in and national restaurants in media institutions never, ever happen again so that we never, ever have separate toilets and we never, ever have conditions of employment that are different for both black and white employees of our companies and that we should see meaningful change in the representation of our people, as a whole, in media institutions.  	Our report or submission seeks to portray the context in which our newspapers operated during the apartheid era.  We will, Mr Chairman, in this submission not try to gloss over or to defend ourselves or to try and paint ourselves white in any way, white in that way, not in racial terms.  We will not try and gloss over the mistakes, the errors of judgement, and there were many, we will not try to gloss over our shortcomings and weaknesses.  We will, however, try to highlight our positive contribution to change in South Africa.  	We refer, in the submission, to TML and SAAN as being the same organisation as SAAN was renamed TML in 1986.  The submission seeks to assess the role that was played by TML and its publications in serving its various constituencies.  It is important that the Commission should keep in mind that while the editorial function is the public face of the media, media companies, in the main, serve a number of stakeholders and these include the readers who must be fairly and accurately informed and this issue was dealt with and many areas were pointed out.  Second one is the advertising paternity who must be provided a cost effective and responsive advertising medium.  Next category is the staff who are entitled to fair wages and decent conditions of employment and a fairly conducive environment in which they should work.  Many issues were raised about bad practices in the past which also impact on our own company.  The next category is the shareholders who require a well managed company that delivers a reasonable return on the capital that they, as shareholders, invest.  	It is a fact of life, Mr Chairman, demonstrated recently by the sad closure of The New Nation, that newspapers, like any product must be commercially viable if they are to survive at all.  Again, the Commission needs to keep this fact in mind as well as the fact that directors of newspapers, newspaper companies have the same vigorous duties and responsibilities to prudently and wisely manage and protect the capital invested in those businesses. 	We must bring to the attention of the Commission a series of practical difficulties that we experienced in preparing this submission.  There have been tremendous changes at TML in recent years and very few senior staff, editors or directors, from years gone by are still in the,  employ of the company.  In particular, the control of TML changed hands last year as a result of the National Empowerment Consortium, of which I am Chairman of, acquired a controlling shareholding in Johnnic.  Thus, almost all the directors of TML are new.  I am also new in my position and new in this company.  That should be borne in mind.

CHAIRPERSON: We are taking note.

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: Yes.  Most of the managers and editors who ran TML during the period under review have either departed or, sadly, deceased.  At current editors, in almost every case, are fairly recent appointments.  Therefore, TML, in drafting this submission, asked one of the past editors to prepare the submission as he was one of the people who was in a senior position during the period under review.  Former and current staff of TML were invited and asked if they wanted to submit comments to the editor, who was, the former editor, who was drafting this.  We have, thus, done our best to produce a meaningful submission for the Commission under fairly difficult circumstances.  	We have also tried, Mr Chairman, to answer the specific questions that have been raised by the Commission and we appear before you to give you a summary and I am going to ask Mr Lawrence Clark to give the first part of the summary of our submission and thereafter we will be happy to respond to questions, after Mr Neil Jacobson has made his input.

LAWRENCE CLARK: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: If you could, oh.

LAWRENCE CLARK: Thank you.

MR LEWIN: I think you were going to say, Mr Chairman, keep it brief.