By Ed Herbst*
On 23 August a full-page and defamatory article by unknown authors was published in all the major INMSA newspapers of which Iqbal Survé is the putative owner and which are controlled by the Sekunjalo consortium.
Its essence was that a foreign-funded, ‘highly orchestrated, well-resourced and strategically planned’ ‘dirty tricks’ campaign to undermine these newspapers had been carefully planned and executed by myself and in Christian-name alphabetical order, Alec Hogg, Allister Sparks, Donwald Pressly, Gill Moodie, Glenda Nevill, James Myburgh, Marianne Thamm, Paul Vecchiatto, Rhoda Kadalie and Terry Bell. The article was reminiscent of a similar 2013 accusation by Survé that the Mail & Guardian was funded by the CIA.
All of the above-mentioned people were denounced as racist, ‘propaganda journalists’ who are opposed to transformation in general and intent on maintaining ‘white privilege’. Also involved in this campaign, according to the article, are ‘nominally-neutral’ organisations like Sanef.
To quote the article:
‘This wave of propaganda by journalists of a particular generation is aligned to or led almost exclusively by individuals, institutions and publications which represented white domination of the media and broader business, and the protection of white privilege at media houses, including Independent.’
In its attack on respected human rights activist Rhoda Kadalie the article descended into crude racial invective. Kadalie was described as “a joiner of the ‘white boys’ club who has finally found her spiritual home in the belly of the last apartheid president, as the deputy chairman of the De Klerk Foundation”.
No evidence is provided to support this contention of common purpose among a group of people who, in some cases, have never met or communicated with one another and the article is, in its entirety, a massive contravention of articles 1.1 to 1.3 of the Press Code.
The article is also, in its entirety, a classic example of censorship by omission because it fails to mention that Dr Survé has, through his ownership of these newspapers, consistently utilised them to promote his own image and his business interests in ways which generated many of the critical news articles and headlines which the article mentions. It is these ongoing scandals that have served to keep his name in the news while the owners of competing newspapers keep a low profile and avoid controversy.
Read also: Terry Bell: Why Surve “lost it” – the story behind his full page propaganda
On 15 June 2015 the Daily Maverick at its annual think tank, The Gathering, held a panel discussion on the media. One of the panellists, Fatima Hassan, executive director of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, said:
“But what is unique to South Africa is that something happened 12 or 18 months ago when Alide Dasnois, the editor of the Cape Times, was fired. It was clear to everyone why that happened. Don’t talk of transformation as a ruse. That shift forced people to think. Journalists have been pushed out of newsrooms and everyone is quietly accepting of this. We are not challenging those in power.”
She said several things had happened around the dismissal of Dasnois. “We saw the politicisation of the media coupled with the commercial under the guise of transformation, the demanding of editorial content and the introduction of self-censorship,” Hassan said.
Eleven days later, the respected journalist, columnist, author and documentary film maker, Max du Preez, posted the following comment on his Facebook page:
Reading the Cape Times every morning the last few months was like watching a huge train smash in slow motion. I have never in my long career in journalism seen such a deliberate attempt at destroying a newspaper. My suspicion is that the new owners are using the paper to fight the ANC’s battles for the 2016 local elections for them, and afterwards it will be closed down and incorporated into the Cape Argus. The last few weeks the newspaper’s main theme, dominating the front page, has been the middle-aged poo-chucking UCT student Chumani Maxwele’s fight with the UCT administration. This morning’s banner headline was again: ‘Apartheid-style UCT lashed’. On several occasions the reporting on the matter completely twisted the UCT management’s statements. The reporting is generally poor and the decisions on what to cover and what not and what to give prominence to are bizarre. What a tragedy to see such a once proud newspaper being killed off.
Among the events which have generated such critical comment are:
- What Business Day columnist Gareth van Onselen described as a ‘Tourette’s-like outburst’ in August 2013 when the Mail & Guardian published an online recording of what must rank as one of the most bizarre interviews in South African’s press history – an attempt by reporter Craig McKune to conduct a telephonic interview with Iqbal Survé.
At times McKune cannot restrain his incredulous mirth at Surve’s rambling harangue.
McKune seeks clarity on what role will be played by the Chinese consortium which part-funded the purchase of the Independent Group by Sekunjalo – this after the Competition Commission had raised the question.
Survé refuses to respond because he says that Sekunjalo is a private company – despite the fact that the PIC might have put up as much as 70% of the purchase price of the Independent Group.
Whenever McKune tries to gain clarity, Survé refuses to let him finish his questions telling him on 13 occasions in the eight-minute interview that his reporting is “bullshit” on seven occasions that it is “rubbish” and on seven occasions that it is “nonsense”.
Read also: Ed Herbst: Cape Times journalism compared + my response to its Walter Mitty
Constantly interrupting McKune, Survé says that he should rather investigate links between the CIA and Mail & Guardian owner Trevor Ncube. He says that he has “high level” “factual information” on these links and assures McKune that there will be a “follow-up” which, three years later, has still not transpired and it would seem that Surve’s “high level” sources have let him down.
You can hear McKune chuckling as he ends the conversation.
- The news that, in an unprecedented first in local newspaper history, Survé’s lawyers had written a threatening letter to Chris Whitfield, editor in chief of the Cape Argus and Cape Times and environment reporter Melanie Gosling ordering them to publish an apology for carrying an article about the Sekunjalo fisheries tender which was criticised by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela in her report, Docked vessels. The tender left our oceans defenceless for two years against poaching by foreign fishing boats inside our territorial waters.
- The dismissal of Cape Times editor Alide Dasnois who led the team which produced an obituary tribute to Nelson Mandela which Time magazine rated as one of the best in the world.
- The allegation that Survé had acknowledged that he had been a money launderer for Brett Kebble. Survé has not denied this and he attended Kebble’s memorial service. Here are the relevant references:
Survé, after all, also owed much to Kebble. In 2001, Kebble’s company JCI orchestrated a R70m rescue of Survé’s Sekunjalo, which had taken a beating from investing in Leisurenet. “Yes, I’m friends with Brett Kebble,” Survé told the Financial Mail in 2004.
What happened next was intriguing. After Kebble was gunned down, the liquidators who trawled through his bank records found nine payments to the ANC. It turned out the ANC payments were diverted through numerous accounts belonging to, among others, a certain Dr Iqbal Survé.
- The purge of columnists like Judith February and John Scott who were dismissed in two-line emails, the decision by Allister Sparks and Max du Preez to sever ties with Survé’s newspapers and the refusal by the Cape Times to publish the letters from readers in this regard.
- The decision by four editors, Chris Whitfeld, Moshoeshoe Monare, Makhududu Sefara and Philani Mgwaba to sever ties with the Survé-owned newspaper company which some saw as an unprecedented vote of no confidence in him.
- Survé’s disruptive and ill-mannered behaviour when he stormed out of a Sanef event spitting foul-mouthed expletives and, as always, accusations of racism.
- His high profile split with UCT, alleging that it paid ‘lip service’ to transformation and his call on 7 April 2015 at a meeting of the UCT Association of Black Alumni (UCTABA) hosted in the Kramer Building at the university when he effectively called for a purge of all white academic and administrative staff as reflected in the following YouTube
At 50 minutes and 11 seconds he says that UCT “… does not respect me as a black man.’
At 52:37 he says: ‘Frankly speaking it is a racist institution.’
At 56:40 he says: ‘If you want real change, I suggest you change the leadership of this institution, change it in its entirety.’
- The subsequent R1 million defamation suit he brought against Rhoda Kadalie which, a year later, seems to have come to nothing – perhaps unsurprising given the fact that a team of top lawyers has rallied to her cause.
- The high profile vendetta by the Cape Times against UCT and its vice chancellor Dr Max Price. This included publishing a deliberate lie to the effect that Price had ‘acted in bad faith’, a lie for which the newspaper refused to apologise and refused to take action against the reporter involved, Carlo Petersen. The lie remains on the IOL website. As R W Johnson observes, this campaign had a fairly ironic outcome for the ANC:
Thus Iqbal Surve’s Cape Times deliberately fomented the original Rhodes Must Fall movement as a way of embarrassing DA-led Cape Town but this quickly transmuted into Fees Must Fall, clearly targeted against government, and then into Zuma Must Fall.
- Subsequent to the start of this Cape Times vendetta, the RMF violence at UCT spread to other universities which now face a bill of half a billion rand for damaged and razed buildings.
- The open letter written by Helen Zille to Iqbal Survé on 18 January last year questioning the ethics of the way in which he was running his newspapers for his personal and political benefit. Zille wrote:
Newspapers are not about owners, proprietors, editors and journalists. They are about readers.
“Independent Newspapers” seems to have abandoned their readers to pursue a political project. If this is the case, then the Group must be honest with readers about this and not pretend to be anything different.
- The article by Helen Zille on 15 March last year challenging a Cape Times article which averred, falsely, that the tot system was still widely practised on Western Cape wine farms resulting in pervasive foetal alcohol syndrome. The article, motivated by a desire to vilify Western Cape wine farmers as apartheid-era racists, was subsequently found to be devoid of truth and, in substantial measure plagiarised. The newspaper then printed a front page retraction and apology.
- The announcement on 10 April last year that Sekunjalo Investments Limited was changing its name to the anodyne African Equity Empowerment Investments, thus cutting all brand and reputational ties with the constantly – controversial Iqbal Survé who had stepped down as chairman five months earlier. According to non-executive chair Prof. Vukile Mehana, the market response was immediately positive.
- The withholding from Cape Times readers the information, outlined by Judge Rosheni Allie, that RMF activists, led by Chumani Maxwele, tried to burn down It also withheld from its readers the information that Maxwele, who the newspaper has constantly encouraged in his anti-UCT/Dr Max Price campaign, was held overnight at the Woodstock police station after a violent outburst in July last year in which property was damaged. This information was not withheld from the readers of the other Cape Town morning newspaper, Die Burger.
- A decision by two of Survé’s senior executives, Karima Brown and Vukani Mde to attend an ANC rally wearing ANC-related clothing, something which attracted critical comment in one of the world’s most influential magazines,
- The increasingly abusive behaviour by Cape Times editor Aneez Salie towards readers. This was first mentioned by Helen Zille on 22 March last year when Salie threatened to ‘deal with’ a reader who had questioned the newspaper’s coverage:
Take the scathing email Salie sent to a Cape Town engineer, John Carver, after he wrote a short letter to the newspaper enquiring: “How is it that a Cape Times reporter happened to have his camera ready at the exact moment a UCT student threw poo on Rhodes’ statue?”
Salie’s ranting reply ended in the following sentence: “We’ll just assume you are part of a racist campaign against the Cape Times – and we will deal with you.”
- As an encore, Salie subsequently told another reader to “Piss off” – something which was without precedent in the 140-year history of the newspaper. (It must be said, in Salie’s defence, that he was subsequently and falsely accused of being a ‘man of true gravitas’.)
- The allegation earlier this year that Survé had not paid back a cent of the PIC loan which had enabled him to buy the Independent News Media company and the revelation in parliament thereafter that the PIC motive in lending him much of the money had been
- The information contained in the founding affidavit by Alide Dasnois revealing how Survé had verbally abused her and threatened during a questionable disciplinary hearing to use his “billions” to blacken her name and harm her future employment prospects.
- The way in which he settled with Dasnois to avoid facing cross-examination under oath in the Cape Town labour court and then promptly reneged on the settlement agreement with her. This was reflected in a front page article in the Cape Times and more articles inside the newspaper. After being ordered by the Press Council to retract, the Cape Times carried a tiny four-sentence apology in the bottom left corner of its front page on 31 August which does not appear on the IOL website while the much longer original article
- The high-profile and unexplained resignation of Karima Brown.
- The implosion of the Cape Times as a respected newspaper with the newspaper being instructed by the Press Council to apologise for its reprehensible reporting on the Tiger Tiger Five, for a year-long vendetta against Helen Zille in which she was falsely accused of hiring a spy and for its reporting on the Alide Dasnois labour court case.
- Survé’s call earlier this year on the front page of the Cape Times, accompanied inevitably with a large photograph of himself, for charitable Capetonians to open their homes to UCT students still searching for accommodation. Conspicuous by its absence in the article was a leading-from-the-front offer to make his own home available in this regard – something which some readers of the newspaper averred was a classic example of the NIMBY principle in operation.
- The results of a two-year investigation by Terry Bell which exposed Survé’s false claims about his non-existent relationship with Nelson Mandela and his non-existent role in the sporting successes of the Springbok rugby team which won the Rugby World Cup in 1995, the Bafana Bafana soccer team which won the African Nations Cup a year later and the Indian team which won the Cricket World Cup in 2011.
- This, in turn, resulted in the ‘Struggle Doctor’ and ‘Fearless Leader’, the man who claimed that he had treated Nelson Mandela ‘on and off the island’ being ridiculed on Twitter.
- The undenied allegation that, while planning large scale retrenchments, Survé is taking home a salary of half a million rand a month.
- The news, earlier this year that Survé had wanted to go into partnership with the Guptas in his purchase of INMSA. In court papers, Survé indicated that he wanted Moegsien Williams, Editor-in-Chief, The New Age and ANN7, to play an influential role in the Indy newspapers. Williams, it must be remembered is a huge admirer of President Jacob Zuma – but not Julius Malema. He has accused South African media of behaving like an ‘unelected opposition’ and, in effect, called for rapprochement with the Zuma faction.
- The fact that, almost weekly, a large photograph of Dr Survé appears in one of the newspapers that he owns, something that never occurred before the Sekunjalo takeover and certainly does not occur in the newspapers that compete with him for market share.
This litany of censorship by omission in the article of 23 August clearly contravenes section 1.2 of the Press Code with specific reference to the words “material omissions”
1.2. News shall be presented in context and in a balanced manner, without any intentional or negligent departure from the facts whether by distortion, exaggeration or misrepresentation, material omissions, or summarisation.
The article was an extraordinary manifestation of paranoia, hyperbole and wild speculation. As Terry Bell pointed out in a response, it does nothing to advance the cause of investigative journalism.
However, for the benefit of Dr Survé’s interns, I must point out that, at the last count, the number of critical articles written about him – ‘using mostly conjecture and speculation’ as the above-mentioned timeline indicates – has now risen to 269.
- Ed Herbst is a pensioner and former reporter who writes in his own capacity.
