Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

UNKNOWN: It's quite a big question and I think one should best handle it by putting it into two parts.   The first one is to look at the role of the TRC as a fact of life at the moment, as a social phenomenon and the fact that newspapers and television are reporting the work of the TRC and I think that has created a vocabulary which hasn't existed before.    In the research that we did in the Media Monitoring Project we looked, we did a search for the term, gross violation of human rights, and it didn't exist before the TRC was established.  Now I think that, if you read the Star on a Friday, then you have a whole page in which you look at - Max Du Preez's programme on a Sunday evening which goes a half an hour in which the very concept of human rights is being discussed in all its ramifications or its very subtle ramifications.   So in that respect I think that the mere existence of the TRC and it's various commissions has already exercised a profound on the way in which journalists, media people are observing the interactions between the various social groups, gender groups with in our society.   The second - you say where are we now, I'm still trying to answer this, the second part is I think must be a professional answer and many of us have just come from Grahamstown where there have been conferences the last two weeks talking about the education, the training of journalists and a lot of the crass reporting of events is, I think, due to poor training of journalists and there's an enormous amount of catch-up to do in training black journalists, and I think this is being addressed at the moment by various institutions, technikons, NGO's etc.   So my response to you is that I think we have come to a point that we really can never go back from. I think we have reached the point where human rights has a way of analysing or describing what happens in society cannot be lost, or can be lost with some difficulty.

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you, Professor thank you very much for the presentation. We know it's part of a much bigger submission that you and your project has made to us which we appreciate very much, and I should commend you for at least having kept your word that within 30 minutes you will be able to take us through all of the thought-provoking stuff that you have done.  Thank you very much for having come.  Thank you.

S A B C: COLUMNIST - THE STAR

<UNKNOWN>: Our next witness would be Mr Johan Pretorius.  Mr Pretorius, good afternoon and welcome, thank you for having made yourself available to come along and to make a presentation.

JOHAN PRETORIUS: (sworn states)

<UNKNOWN>: Mr Pretorius you have had a long career within the SABC, if I'm not mistaken it spans about 26 years, give and take. So we, in fact have you served after the democratic elections of 1994?

JOHAN PRETORIUS: ( speaker's mike not on)

<UNKNOWN>: Very good, so you have almost straddled both the regimes?

JOHAN PRETORIUS: Yes.

<UNKNOWN>: But would you mind just very briefly giving us your background that you - you know the positions that you've held before you get into your submission?  And can I ask you to just switch on the microphone, there's a red button, if you press that.

JOHAN PRETORIUS: Yes I started off in journalism in 1965, end of 1965, newspaper journalism.  I went to the SABC in 1968, radio.  1974 I became a news editor on the desk, TV.  1977 I went down to Parliament as a - now you see it's getting involved. I went down in '74 and '75 as a parliamentary reporter, then I became news editor.  '77 I went down again and I became political correspondent for the SABC in 1980.  1984 I came back to Johannesburg and then I became editor of TV news. In those days the TV news was different, the department was different, well separate from current affairs.    In '87 I went down again to Parliament as the so-called Tuinhuis correspondent, some people even called me the Tuinhuis muis.  I came back in '89 and then I became senior director news.  Eventually in '91, 1991, I'm not too sure, I became editor-in-chief of TV News and I remained that until September.

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you very much.   We are trying to get a better insight about the situation and the role that the SABC was playing during our mandate period and we're quite sure that given your background in that corporation you are able to at least give us some insights into that. So I'm going to ask you to please just give us an idea of what the situation was like during those years that you spent there.

MR LEWIN: Mr Chair sorry if I could just interrupt, Mr Pretorius will understand this, his jacket is giving problems to the cameras, is dit moontlik om dit uit te vat? (laughter)