Mark Gevisser and Stefaans Brummer
AS acting Agenda head Nico van Burick’s career hangs in the balance following Weekly Mail & Guardian disclosures about his military past. It has emerged that the citizen force unit under his command, Saltie, was involved in “dirty tricks” propoganda.
Van Burick responded to the disclosure that he headed Saltie while working at the SABC by stating that he was merely doing his duty as a national serviceman and that Saltie’s role was simply to put out the army newsletter, Uniform, and to supply the army with journalists where needed.
He said “there was no way that myself or any other member of Saltie was involved in cloak-and-dagger activity”.
In fact, while he was commanding officer of Saltie in 1989, members of the unit produced material for the South African Defence Force, specifically to “smear” Swapo. This was during the independence election campaign in Namibia, at a time when South Africa had committed itself to playing an impartial role.
Van Burick confirmed to the WM&G that members of his unit did work of this nature, but claimed that he, as officer commanding, was not involved in “dirty tricks” – – and merely supplied personnel on command.
A former Saltie member, who worked in Namibia at the time, has confirmed that Saltie had a video unit in the territory at the time of independence and was the only army unit doing this kind of propaganda work.
Van Burick maintained, however, that “before the elections, the army approached us and said they wanted teams of journalists to work on their newspaper, Pergamus, and they wanted camera teams to do documentaries. Our only response was to call up available journalists in teams. What they did once they arrived had nothing to with me. I just placed people in Namibia, from there it was out of my hands.”
Acting Television News Production editor Joe Thloloe said: “We are discussing Van Burick’s situation with him and with top management.”
A senior SABC source said, however, that a directive had come “from the top” that Van Burick either had to step down or would be demoted, as his “continued presence in a leadership position is having a destabilising effect on the work of TNP”.
As well as being acting Agenda head, he was appointed, last week, to the three-member Management Task Group responsible for guiding current affairs through the transition until a new management is appointed.
This week TNP endured a fresh round of staff protest — over the fact that Van Burick and other “old-guard” managers have been appointed to the Management Task Groups.
Because of dissatisfaction about the MTGs –and the unilateral way in which they were appointed by Thloloe and his colleague Bob Kearsley– TNP underwent two days of stormy meetings. Ultimately, a majority of staff agreed to accept the MTGs if staff members were appointed on to them.
Thloloe countered that “Bob Kearsley and myself, as TNP’s acting senior managers, needed people to assist us as we implement the transformation proposals developed by the staff. So we took the layer of middle management currently in place as an interim management group to assist us in running the place, and clustered them according to discipline in the task groups”.