the rollback of south africa's biological warfare program

To support their position that much of the information in the bail hearing was
already in the public domain, FIX prepared and presented a summary of the
TRC hearings that included all information that had already been disclosed to
the public. 199
The Supreme Court ruled that most sessions of Basson's upcoming trial
would be held in public. An agreement was reached among the parties to the
legal action that the bail application, with only a few deletions related to
potential defendants in future legal cases, would be made public. When the
Basson's trial opened on 4 October 1999, the room was filled with South
African and foreign reporters. The result was a flurry of press reports during
the opening days of the trial. However, as the drama of the opening sessions
waned, few reporters bothered to show up to cover the trial on a daily basis.
The verbatim transcripts of the trial are recorded in Afrikaans and few
individuals outside of court officials can afford the high cost of these
transcripts. 200 Most of the major South African newspapers are not giving this
case a high priority because they feel it is no longer newsworthy among a
public suffering from “TRC fatigue.” This means that only a few local papers
are sending reporters, while the larger ones only send reporters when there is a
high profile witness. Only one independent reporter who works for a South
African NGO, the Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR) has been taking notes
of daily proceedings.
The CCR has posted weekly and monthly summaries of the Basson trial
on their web site, several weeks after the proceedings have been held. The
summaries have become the primary continuous record of the case. South
African and international observers must now rely on a single source for most
of their information on perhaps the most important case under the new
constitution. It has become evident that the CCR is developing a sense of
ownership of what is obviously public information. The presence of additional
NGOs would produce a broader and freer flow of information.
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