TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 6

Subsection 5

■ THE MISUSE OF THE MEDIA BY AND COLLABORATION WITH THE STATE

67 Evidence given by state operatives at the hearing tended to support the allegations that the mainstream press was prepared to co-operate with government. Craig Williamson, for example, provided a copy of a confidential submission to the media, calling on editors to play down the UDF factor in South African politics. It stated clearly that this was the result of the decision of the State Security Council that the UDF, its officials and its patrons must be discredited.

68 Williamson gave information about another STRATCOM-type operation which involved taking senior members of the media to Special Forces bases on the South African border for a bosberaad² with the highest ranking officers of the military and intelligence agencies. The state’s relations with the media were, he said, seen as a “macro continuum” from the owners of the media, to the editors who controlled the newspaper, right down to the dustbin cleaners who cleaned the dustbins at night and stuffed material in an envelope to be collected by agents.

69 Williamson also provided a photograph, taken on the Angolan border in July 1987, which contained virtually the entire general staff of the defence force, various government ministers and staff and Williamson himself, together with a number of highly placed journalists. The focus on that occasion was how South Africa and the newspapers would respond to what the Soviets were doing in Angola.

70 Writing about the SABC, the Bussieks stated that the corporation “generally took a conveniently simplistic attitude towards what amounted to deliberate distortion and suppression of facts in its coverage of unrest, defiance and resistance”.

71 State agent John Horak related that, when he went to the SABC in the 1960s he did not do so as an infiltrator. The SABC knew that he was a police officer, having been told by General Venter that they needed someone on the premises. Horak also said that, technically, all who worked at the SABC were informers, because the Broadcast Act stipulated that the SABC had to support the government of the day.

72 Even more damning was the evidence of Vic McPherson, a STRATCOM head in the late 1980s, who in those days visited the SABC regularly. He said that, although the staff knew he was from the Security Branch and knew about the covert work he was involved in, he was accepted there. Agents were not needed at the SABC, he said, as most staff members supported the South African Police. He said the same applied at the Citizen newspaper.

73 The Mail and Guardian described how Jacques Pauw, engaged in researching for material for ‘Prime Evil’ (a documentary on CCB activities) in 1997, came across an interview featuring live footage of an askari (a guerrilla fighter 'turned' by the police) shot at Vlakplaas. “They [certain SABC journalists] denied its existence, but it is clear that some SABC journalists had access to Vlakplaas as early as 1987,” Pauw said.

74 The hearing was given two further important examples of the often tortuous relationship between the state and the media, particularly the so-called ‘opposition press’.

75 The first concerned the Newspapers Press Union (NPU), representing the major newspaper groups. The NPU came under considerable attack in both written and oral testimony at the hearing. One accusation from a prominent journalist went so far as to implicate the NPU in gross human rights violations. Jon Qwelane, speaking of the NPU’s army and police agreements with government, asked:

Did the media owners, by their endorsement of Botha’s madness, not help to delay the day of liberation? Can it be correctly said that the blood of those who were murdered by Botha’s police and soldiers, in the name of total onslaught, is on the hands of the media owners? I say it can.

76 This may be considered an extreme view, but it did encapsulate the feelings of many of those involved in or monitoring the media at the time. The Commission had access to a chronology of events involving the NPU, which was compiled and submitted by the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI). The chronology shows the stormy relationship that the NPU had with the government, simultaneously with its constant battle to appease it. It also reflects the degree to which publishing houses were prepared to go along with government thinking. (See Appendix 3 — NPU chronology)