City Press’s Ferial Haffajee, journalism professor Anton Harber, media activist Mark Weinberg and ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu have their last say on media freedom in South Africa at the M&G’s Critical Thinking Forum in Johannesburg earlier this month. M&G editor Nic Dawes is the chairing the discussion. Click here to read the Daily Maverick story on the forum.
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Trevor Ncube, the owner of the Mail & Guardian newspaper, has leaped back into the brave new world that is Zimbabwe today with a new daily newspaper, NewsDay. The Zimbabwean publisher and entrepreneur who remained a thorn in President Robert Mugabe’s side with his two weekly newspaper even after he left Zimbabwe talks about the business of launching a paper in a wrecked economy.
Gill Moodie: The first South African media folk really knew about NewsDay was that the Zimbabwean Media Commission granted permission for new newspapers in the country and then a week later (on June 7), you launched NewsDay. I would imagine that you had been preparing for this for quite some time?
Trevor Ncube: Yes, which is why we have basically been able to hit the ground running. We have had over the past 12 months a core team to which we’ve been adding as we thought the prospects were improving for us to be registered (by the commission). For me, the turning point was the inclusive government (with Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister). When I saw it being put in place and in it there was a strong component about freeing up of the media, that was the window that I was looking for and I said: ‘This is our time; we’ve always wanted to do this’. So we started preparations then.
NewsDay's website.
Moodie: And this was about a year ago?
Ncube: Yes, on September 15 last year. That’s when we really started putting together a business plan in earnest and asking ourselves: ‘What do we need?’ One of the first things I identified was that we needed was a printing press because we didn’t have one.
Moodie: What have you been printing on up till now?
Ncube: We owned 25% of a printing press but we were not in charge of the management of that printing press.
Moodie: May I ask who is ‘we’?
Ncube: I shouldn’t use ‘we’. Alpha Media Holdings is the company that publishes NewsDay. I control 61% of that company and we publish two other weeklies (in Zimbabwe): the Zimbabwean Independent, which is a business weekly, and The Standard, which is a Sunday newspaper. We have a printing company that does commercial printing and we’ve just added a newspaper web press to that. The first challenge in buying the web press was the fundraising. The second was to go out and find the press.
Moodie: Which is a big deal. Did you have to go to Europe?
Ncube: We went to the Netherlands. We found one there and we did it in record time. We also had to identify a building (in Harare) that could accommodate a printing press but there wasn’t one. We had to build a new factory for the press, with a purpose-built foundations so that it doesn’t shake and so on.
Moodie: The web press itself must have cost about R40 or R50-million?
Ncube: No, it wasn’t exactly a brand new press but, ja, it wasn’t cheap. And then we had to ship it. Identifying the press and shipping it into Durban, building the press and putting it in – we did it in a record six months.
Moodie: That’s amazing. The standard is about 18 months, isn’t it?
Ncube: Yes, and our factory is one of the best printing press facilities that I’ve seen in the world – immaculately staffed, which tells us that there are still skills in Zimbabwe. When I went into that printing press I was so proud… To get the printers, we poached from other printers but we also found unemployed people. Industry in Zimbabwe is running at between 20% and 30% of capacity and unemployment is around 80% or 90% depending on who you listen to. So there are lot of skilled people who don’t have jobs and we managed to find the printers and specialised people to man the press. The next challenge was to find the editorial people and production people, people in accounts, sales and in distribution… We have had a core staff of about 12 people, looking at layouts and design for the newspaper, and also looking around in the market to see who’s available and who’s not available. We own our own distribution company – that’s the advantage that we have. One thing that 20 years in this business has taught me is that in African countries, it’s important that you control your own printing and distribution if you are to be a serious player… Click here to read the rest of the interview at Bizcommunity.
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Lucky for President Jacob Zuma and First Lady Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma that the World Cup came along and shifted the country’s attention from the recent allegations of infidelity in the extended presidential household.
Or perhaps the timing of that remarkable letter (claiming that MaNtuli, as she is known, had had an affair with a bodyguard who then committed suicide) faxed to newsrooms around the country is auspicious. The eve of a big international event such as a World Cup is a choice time to embarrass the president if that was the intention and it’s possible that those behind the anonymous letter did not realise how the soccer jamboree would swamp SA’s media to the extent that it has.
This shouldn’t surprise us as all political leaders have enemies and Zuma would have more than most, given the bitter battle he waged and promises he made to get the top job. And of course, information is seldom leaked to journalists without an agenda. But this was all looking suspiciously like a smear campaign into which the press were suckered with abandon until it also started looking like it was true.
Though the mainstream press have found it hard to nail down independent corroboration of the allegations, I’m convinced after speaking to Eric Ndiyane – the editor and news editor of the KwaZulu-Natal isiZulu-language newspaper Ilanga that broke the story – that it is indeed true.
Ndiyane said the paper found three independent sources to corroborate the allegation that MaNtuli had an affair with bodyguard Phinda Thomo, who then allegedly took his own life after the affair was discovered. (If true, this puts the paternity of MaNtuli’s unborn child in doubt. Her pregnancy was confirmed recently.)
Like everybody else, Ilanga was faxed the letter on Monday, May 31, and it spent the next couple of days nailing down independent corroboration so that the paper could break the story on Thursday, June 3. Later on that day the Johannesburg-based national Sunday paper, City Press, took the unusual step (for City Press) of putting a story up on their website, which then forced everybody’s else hand. Except for the Mail & Guardian, almost everyone, his blog and his dog piled gleefully into the story, citing Ilanga though few had their own independent sources for the story or had probably even read the original in isiZulu.
This raises a number of interesting questions about journalism in South Africa. Was it irresponsible for those to publish the allegations on the say-so of someone else? Can the president’s wives expect some measure of privacy? Was it necessary to name the bodyguard? While you can’t defame the dead, the hurt caused to his family would have been great but, on the other hand, what kind of privacy can a presidential bodyguard expect if he is allegedly caught having an affair with one of the first ladies?
Having spoken to Ndiyane, City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes about how they covered the story, I can say the decision to publish was not taken lightly at any of these newspapers… CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN, CALLED “BACKSTORY”, AT WITS UNIVERSITY’S JOURNALISM.CO.ZA
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The Mail & Guardian came up tops this week for the juciest, hottest little Carl Hiaasen story born out of a public spat played out on its pages between the Western Cape’s former premier Ebrahim Rasool and the ANC’s chief whip in the Western Cape legislature, Max Ozinsky.
Under the classic headline “Brown-envelope journalism”, the M&G reported today that a shareholder in a top media services company has alleged in a two-hour taped phone conversation with former Western Cape premier Lynne Brown that Cape Town journalists are being paid cash “in brown envelopes” to influence stories for political ends. Get this gobsmacking snippet from the tape, which is in the M&G’s possession. To understand it, you need to know that Joe Aranes is an executive editor at the Cape Argus newspaper and Pokwana is Vukile Pokwana, former accounts director at Hip-Hop Media.
“I am saying, Premier, Joe Aranes does that, but I was saying to Thabo [Mabaso, a former Cape Argus journalist] now, he is so weak. This thing of handling brown envelopes, he still does it until today. … Brown envelopes, Premier, they are nice … you can blow it, you can drink every day, feed off other habits,” Pokwana told Brown.
Goodness me! When I was a reporter in Cape Town, I came to view the politics there as a dirty backstabbing business of the first degree. The allegation that senior journalists may have been on the take really gets my creative juices flowing. I can see a great novel in this.
The Rasool-Ozinsky saga has also been fascinating. Ozinsky wrote an opinion piece for the M&G saying he could no longer stay quiet about what he perceived to be a serious misuse of power by Rasool. He also said:
Rasool became intimately involved in briefing journalists, and at least one senior journalist from the Cape Argus, but I believe more, benefited financially from their proximity to a web of companies contracted by the province,” wrote Ozinsky. “I don’t make this allegation lightly; there is proof. The journalist was compelled to resign because of it.
Which is where the “Brown-envelope journalism” seems to come from.
Click here to read Ozinsky’s opinion piece, which ran on the same day on the same page as a letter from Rasool talking of a “Faustian pact between some in the ANC and the DA”. Read about the spat here in the M&G story reporting that Membathisi Mdladlana, who is the head of the provincial task team, had told both Rasool and Ozinsky to keep their battle within ANC circles.
The other really cool story of the week was picked up and played big by the newly launched Daily Maverick website, about a groundbreaking dinosaur find in the Free State. Well done guys for spotting an interesting offbeam story and projecting it in a week dominated by Eishkom. Must say though that I’m finding it hard to navigate the Mavericks’s design as there are few obvious entry points. Guys, you’ve got to graduate your stories and vary those point sizes!
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A friend of mine told me last week: “I work for a wanker. The only problem is that I am the wanker.”
It was frippery, of course, but it captures our times as we’ve hit the depths of the worst recession in living memory. In the good times companies can afford to be benevolent to their staff; in the bad times they can get downright evil.
Even my friend, who has prided himself on evading the corporate world to create a sustainable small business is having to make hard decisions but because his staff are a small, close-knit team, he also wants to treat them fairly even if it means countless sleepless nights for him and taking a hit in revenue.
Most of us, unfortunately, find ourselves in the same position as our parents’ generation, working for big companies that we know will put us out to pasture at 50 because it’s cheaper to retrench us than keep us on at the salaries we’ve worked so hard over decades to increase. We’ve seen it happen to many of our parents and, over the past year, to our older colleagues.
At the end of last year I was working for a big firm that cut a large number of staff in a voluntary retrenchment programme and witnessed the enormous damage to morale as people had to say goodbye to favourite colleagues and then take on extra responsibility for no extra pay and little prospect of bonuses or increases – all the while wondering if they were next, should the company move to involuntary retrenchments.
But I have also detected something else on the wind: an upsurge in entrepreneurial yearning where many are plotting how to break free from the corporate world and strike out on their own so that they can control their own destinies.
Right now might not be the time to do it but I don’t think we can underestimate the change in people’s attitudes to the corporate world and to money that this recession has brought… TO READ THE FULL PIECE, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MY WEEKLY MONEYWEB COLUMN.
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Men’s Health had a great story this week about two South African surfers who happened to be in Sumatra when the big quake hit. It’s cool to see a magazine get a break on a big story like this and they played it perfectly: a first-person account of the disaster. It also produces the quote of the week, from one of the surfer bunnies, Andrew Brady, from Cape Town:
I locked eyes with Greame during the most violent part of the quake and the feeling of “oh f#ckness” was mutual as the buildings around us began to collapse!
Then off to disaster of another kind: when one man’s unbuntu get’s a kick in the teeth. The Daily Dispatch had a story about a man who help a house warming party in the burbs to get to know his neighbours and ended up being attacked in his bedroom by two goons. What is this world coming to? A very sad barometer of out violent times.
And then Carl Hiaasen, eat your heart out! The Jackie Selebi trial is turning out to be THE soap opera of the year. Everyday this week there have been new accusations of dodgy intentions, dirt and corruption. What amuses me is the image of Glenn Agliotti cruising Sandton for shoes for Selebi and Thabo Mbeki. What kind of a crook is this, for heaven sake? Doesn’t he have a wife or a flusie of some kind to do the shopping of bribery wares for him? Click here to go to the M&G’s very nicely presented special report on the trial.
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At this point the less Grubstreet says about Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe, the better. I’m talking to my lawyer about how best to avoid a defamation suit and she’s advised that if its not possible to be an independent, critically minded journalist without also being defamatory, then: “Just lay off, already”.
For a sober judge, Hlophe sure is a riot. There’s never a dull moment and he’s the guy I want at my party.
So pass the canapes and here’s the latest:
Business Day has got hold of a letter Hlophe has sent to Chief Justice Pius Langa blaming the Mail & Guardian for the “malicious and despicable” act of making a story up. In the story, Hlophe was quoted as saying he had refused to shake Langa’s hand after a Judicial Service Commission interview two weeks ago because “I’m not going to shake a white man’s hand”.
Read the Business Day story here and here’s the letter. While we’re at it, I’d like to point out to the Biz Day tecchies that it’s quite possible to insert a link into a story. Just hit the “insert a link” button rather than making the user copy and paste the url into their browsers.
The M&G is sticking to its story and here’s the original article on Hlophe by Sello S Alcock. You malicious and despicable people, you, who also happen to have a reputation for fearless and accurate reporting. You’re invited to my party too and the white guy who runs the paper — I’ll even shake your hand.
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Five things you need to read today:
The Mail & Guardian have a great pot pourri of interesting stories amid all the gushing over Madiba today:
2. A fascinating Q&A with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
4. An in-depth look at the lobby group behind Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe’s bid to become chief justice.
And Moneyweb have a transcript of a very interesting analysis by Alec Hogg on the business figures (Graham Boustred among them of course) interracting with the media.
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1. Nic Dawes will take over as editor of the Mail & Guardian from Ferial Haffajee, who is off to City Press. Dawes joined the M&G from ThisDay in 2004 as an investigative and political reporter.
2. The cops are patrolling the National Prosecuting Authority’s Pretoria headquarters as tension mounts over whether the charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma will be dropped. UDM leader Bantu Holomisa says he has reliable information that they will indeed be dropped. Read the IOL story here.
3. Here a great story from the M&G about teenage boys at one of SA’s elite soccer academies improving their football skills by doing ballet. Click here.
4. Madonna has been sent packing by a Malawian court, saying she can’t adopt a second child in the country becuase the law requires that prospective parents be resident in the country for 18 to 24 months. Hmmm. That doesn’t say much for the first adoption process. Read the BBC story here.
4. Jacob Zuma has explained his remark that the ANC will rule until Jesus returns, saying it was a “political expression” (read the IOL story here) while the ANC Youth League is being pretty rude to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu about his statement earlier this week that he was not looking forward to having Zuma as SA’s president. Read The Times story here.
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Something’s up in Media Land as the Mail & Guardian has announced that its editor Ferial Haffajee is leaving to be City Press editor-in-chief at the end of June — and this not long after Anton Harber says on his blog that M&G staff have been warned that they will know soon who is to be retrenched at the paper. Read Anton Harber’s piece here.
This says more about what’s up at Media24 than at the M&G as the widely respected Haffajee — with her M&G and Financial Mail pedigree — is a bit blue chip for the City Press. It can only mean that Media24 is planning to revamp City Press along high LSM Sunday Times lines, which could be interesting for both the Sunday Times and Sunday World.
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