| Time | Summary | |
| 11:46 | Mrs. Botha heard that something about Russia would be broadcast and the programme was prevented from being broadcast and we were told that something had gone wrong with the soundtrack of the programme, because there was time required to convince Mr. and Mrs. Botha that this programme really had nothing to do with the total onslaught. | Full Transcript |
| 12:15 | SABC did not mince words. SABC made it very plain, contrary to what newspapers are doing in an attempt to duck and dive, SABC made it very plain in written form that they live to support the government of the day. If therefore you would reflect anything on the screen that does not lend itself to this type of an ideal you would be in for it. | Full Transcript |
| 12:51 | It is easy for Professor van Zyl to point to those old programmes and talk about the war psychosis. We were in a war, whether we deny it or not; there was a cold war, Soviet and Communist spheres of influence were applicable. | Full Transcript |
| 13:05 | Mr. Chair it is already public record knowledge that I was a member of the ‘Broederbond’ for approximately five years until 1990. | Full Transcript |
| 13:18 | We made our mistakes, yes I admit. If you ask me whether there was an institutional bias in the organisation against the liberation movements and other parties in favour of the NP government it would be futile to deny it. Of course there was. Was the board not appointed by the president? Yes. Would he appoint board members that would be anti NP on majority? No. Who appointed the DG? The board. Would the DG be somebody, in the olden days, anti NP? No. And did the DG not execute board policy within a broad NP sphere of influence so to speak? Now, I come to another point. The following step. Is today’s board not appointed by the president and the same system not followed? Under the broad ANC sphere of influence? Then I want to ask, what makes the new board Zwelakhe Sisulu and Alistair Sparks better equipped to handle institutional bias than the old board? | Full Transcript |
| 14:14 | They didn’t wear dark glasses, hats and raincoats. They looked like journalists and they talked like journalists, but gathering news was not why they were in the newsroom. Their priority was not the front page but police headquarters in Pretoria. They were South Africa’s media spies. | Full Transcript and References |
| 14:33 | Journalists because of their access and because they have reasons to ask questions are targets of recruitment by both intelligence agencies and revolutionary movements. | Full Transcript |
| 14:56 | [There were policemen that infiltrated and established themselves as journalists. I had paid agents.] | Full Transcript |
| 15:06 | And journalists / informers came to a penny. There were many. | Full Transcript |
| 15:14 | [And then there were journalists who were unaware that they were used by us.] | Full Transcript |
| 15:20 | There could be no normal journalism in an abnormal society. | Full Transcript |
| 15:28 | John Horak, Vic McPherson, Craig Williamson and Craig Kotze were all media spies. They’re all guilty of manipulating South Africa’s print and broadcasting media in a clandestine propaganda war during the apartheid years. John Horak worked in South African news rooms for more than two decades. He was a paid journalist spy until he went back into uniform. He claims to have recruited between 40 and 50 of his colleagues over the years. | Full Transcript |
| 16:05 | Many journalists came to me and approached me in fact from the rank of assistant editor on the Sunday Times for instance asked me to introduce them to the intelligence forces so that they could work with them. | Full Transcript and References |
| 16:20 | Former intelligence officer Craig Williamson told the TRC how the state’s information gathering network had infiltrated all levels of the news room. | Full Transcript |
| 16:31 | You have to see the state’s relation with the media as a macro continuum. It goes right from the owners of the media, the people that own the newspaper, the editors who control the policy of the newspaper, right down to the chap who can clean the dustbin at night and stuff it all in an envelope and give it to you. | Full Transcript and References |
| 16:55 | Williamson handed the TRC a copy of a propaganda video designed to discredit the ANC internationally. | Full Transcript |
| 17:08 | For example, during Oliver Tambo’s world tour I think in 1987, wherever he went in the world the propaganda videos and publications got there before him. | Full Transcript |
| 17:23 | ‘One of the growing number of countries plagued by terrorist atrocities is South Africa. There organisation principally responsible is the African National Congress. Its present leader is Oliver Tambo.’ // ‘ANC: VIP’s of Violence’ // ‘The answer is that the ANC is a terrorist organisation, an international terrorist organisation, exactly the same as organisations such as the IRA, the PLO, the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. It is an organisation made up of people such as the Joe Slovo’s of the world, people who have been trained in the Soviet Union as international terrorists, have been trained in Cuba and have been trained in the Middle East to carry out the most horrendous acts of violence that I have ever seen in my life.’ | Full Transcript |
| 18:25 | Vic McPherson, former unit commander of covert strategic communication, claims to have used moles in media offices throughout the country. | Full Transcript |
| 18:37 | Sunday Times, Pretoria News, the Rapport, SABC TV, SABC Radio, Beeld, Citizen, The Star, Citizen, SAPO, Reuter, BBC News, Huisgenoot, Rooi Rose, Republikeinse Pers and Insig. // You said these projects were presented at the highest level; they were presented basically to the cabinet. // It was a State Security Committee in the cabinet. // And this was chaired by Mr. De Klerk? // By Mr. De Klerk. // So you would say Mr. De Klerk both knew about the projects and approved them. // Yes he approved the … this fell under the counterrevolutionary project and he approved it in principle. Of course he wouldn’t know which journalists are working for us, all the detail. What I would like to state is that some of these journalists still have prominent positions in the media world and some of those who have left are still in good positions. | Full Transcript and References |
