MyBroadband’s Myles Illidge a finalist for Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award

MyBroadband journalist Myles Illidge has been selected as a finalist for the 2023 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards for his reporting on the Department of Justice ransomware attack.

The Sikuvile Journalism Awards, organised by the South African National Editors’ Forum, recognises excellent journalistic work.

Illidge was shortlisted for his body of work related to the ransomware attack.

While the attack occurred in September 2021, the awards limit entries to articles published during 2022.

The articles MyBroadband published last year about the incident include “South African justice department clueless about hacked data” and “Department of Justice fails to renew IT contracts — gets hacked“.

The latter article reported on justice minister Ronald Lamola first revealing that the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DoJ&CD) had cancelled important IT contracts in the months before it became the victim of a ransomware attack.

These revelations ultimately led to the Information Regulator slapping the DoJ&CD with an enforcement notice in 2023, as it later emerged that due to cancelling the IT contracts, it had failed to renew critical software licences that could have prevented the attack.

Illidge is up against Norman Masungwini from City Press and Noxolo Sibiya from Sowetan.

Masungwini was shortlisted for his reporting on government vehicles worth R480 million standing idle after the Rustenburg Local Municipality procured them in 2018, and a report on South Africa’s slow electoral reform programme.

Sibiya is in the running for her report on pedicide in South Africa, with a focus on the 549 children murdered during the first half of 2022.

The winners will be announced at an event in Johannesburg on Saturday, 24 June.

In addition to Illidge’s work on the DoJ&CD ransomware attack, MyBroadband also entered Hanno Labuschagne’s report on Ryanair’s Afrikaans test for “South African-ness” and Jan Vermeulen’s body of work around the arrest of Mirror Trading International CEO Johann Steynberg in the hard news category.

MyBroadband was the first news outlet to confirm that the Afrikaans test was real, despite radio silence from Ryanair, DIRCO, and various foreign and South African diplomatic missions.

News of Steynberg’s arrest first came via Brazilian-Portuguese outlets. MyBroadband had the sources professionally translated, and obtained confirmation from the Hawks and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority that the reports were accurate.

The finalists in the Hard News category for the 2023 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards are summarised in the table below.