by General Johan van der Merwe
 A long night's damage: Working for the Apartheid State; by Eugene De Kock [Amazon] |
More than two decades after political negotiations were started and the ANC, as well as other revolutionary organisations, ceased the armed struggle, there is still large scale confusion and ignorance regarding the nature of the violence that raged in South Africa from 1960 to 1990.Read more »
The TRC, which unquestionably consisted overwhelmingly of ANC-supporters and sympathisers, laid the foundation for a propaganda onslaught in which the SABC and certain members of the media merrily took part.
One example of the manner in which this propaganda campaign was conducted is the Special Assignment program about the conflict of the past, presented by the SABC on 18 November 2008.
This program was presented in such a one-sided and distorted fashion that the Foundation for Equality before the Law found it necessary to lay a complaint with the Independent Broadcasting Complaints Commission. After conducting a trial, they found:“Taking all these facts into consideration, the Tribunal is of the view that one-sided impressions were created in the programme, which is to the detriment of the security force officers. This does not mean that we are of the opinion that these officers were innocent of any atrocities. They (or some of them) admitted to such atrocities. What we find is that there was not sufficient balance in presenting this particular programme, because a lasting impression is created in the mind of the reasonable viewer, firstly, that the security officers were the only people who committed atrocities during the armed struggle, and, secondly, that they then tried to prevent victims from giving evidence against them at the TRC hearings. In finding thus, it is not our intention to interfere with the editorial prerogative of the presenter. The presenter is free to take a particular angle or line and to emphasize aspects that he or she considers to be more important than others. However, when the presenter is dealing with controversial issues of public importance, he or she should treat all parties involved in the issue fairly, and see to it that balance is obtained in presenting different viewpoints. If this is not done, the broadcast can deteriorate into propaganda, a situation that cannot be allowed in any democracy.”
Examples of this type of propaganda appear in our Media daily and it is sad that certain Afrikaans newspapers, either due to ignorance or because of journalists with dubious motives, often take the lead.
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