CAN a newspaper be disciplined for writing an article in which none of the significant facts are proven wrong? That is the question facing the Press Council in a fascinating case that has not drawn much attention, but that says a great deal about where we are headed and the presiding values of the African National Congress (ANC).
The article appeared in that feisty little Eastern Cape newspaper, the Daily Dispatch, which under editor Bongani Siqoko continues a tradition of publishing brave and important investigations.
The Daily Dispatch ran a front-page splash earlier this year revealing a crooked R600m tender in the Eastern Cape’s Amathole District Municipality.
The tender to build toilets for poor communities was granted to four companies, but after it was finalised, the four were told that a fifth company, which had not bid for the contract, was being brought in.
The Siyenza Group was not registered as a company nor with the Construction Industry Development Board, yet it was imposed as the lead contractor.
It was later reported to have submitted a forged tax certificate.
The district council said it had short-circuited tender processes because the Development Bank of Southern Africa, one of the financers, had imposed strict time frames. The bank denied this.
The Daily Dispatch discovered, as it investigated Siyenza, that the company had links to what it called "politically connected individuals": Nolwandle and Buyambo Mantashe, the wife and son of ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe; Lonwabo Sambudla, President Jacob Zuma’s son-in-law; and Boitumelo Itholeng, Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu’s son. Hence its headline: "ANC faces behind toilet tender scandal" and its use of the photographs of Mantashe, Zuma and Zulu.
By all accounts, the story was correct and of grave public importance — the kind of thing that might lead to heads rolling in the local authority, and win the paper national and international awards for investigative journalism.
The Amathole council, or those who made the tendering decision, did not object to the Daily Dispatch article.
It was the ANC, led personally by Mantashe, who took the matter to the press ombudsman to complain that linking him and other ANC leaders to the story was "misleading, malicious and damaging to the standing of the ANC leadership".
Mantashe also complained that parts of the article were unproven and the headline was unfair, but the nub of the complaint, according to the ANC’s own submissions to the Press Council, was that the article had "deliberately and mischievously" linked them to a process "that had nothing to do with them individually and collectively and had no relevance on their perceived role on how the tender and its process was handled".
"The article did not present substantive evidence which warrants the parading of faces of ANC leaders," the party said.
"The ordinary reader would readily come to the conclusion that the ANC and/or the individuals referred to were implicated with corrupt practices."
Mantashe also complained that the newspaper had failed to obtain or publish his comment. But as the newspaper had interviewed Mantashe at length and his comments appeared in the article, it seems he is objecting that it failed to come back to him a second time.
The Daily Dispatch listed a number of other people it had spoken to or attempted to speak to, including Zuma and Zulu.
Mantashe is quoted in the article as saying that he saw nothing wrong with his family members working on the project and the ANC did not rule on such tenders.
"I really do not understand the issue here," he is quoted as saying.
The story had hit an ANC sore point: the frequency with which the media finds and likes to play up links, sometimes quite distant, with the family members of prominent politicians.
In the hearing, according to the ombudsman’s report, Mantashe said the article "perpetuated the idea that black and African politicians were only successful because of their ‘links’ to the ‘right’ people".
He queried why the paper had questioned his wife’s professionalism, but the paper denied that it had done this.
The ombudsman held a hearing and ruled in the ANC’s favour. The Daily Dispatch is now appealing that decision and it went before a full hearing of a Press Council appeal panel last week. Retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe postponed the hearing.
and then they are wondering why 'their people' are turning against them, and choosing others.