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:

1. The demand for swine flu antiviral drugs has brought about a shortage of that divine curry spice, star anise.

2. A fascinating Q&A with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

3. SABC3 looks set to make a R76-million loss because they ordered to broadcast  the ICC Twenty20 World Cup last month against the wishes of station boss Pearl Luthuli.

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.

Read the full story

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1. Today’s Mail & Guardian has an interesting insight into what’s going on behind closed doors at the National Prosecuting Authority regarding ANC president Jacob Zuma’s case. His legal team told the NPA at the meeting this week they should drop the corruption charges because of two new pieces of evidence.

No further details were released, but the Mail & Guardian has established that the two principal strands of evidence put before Mpshe concern:

* Mbeki’s role in the 1999 arms deal and new details of his alleged involvement in impropriety in the awarding of contracts for new defence equipment.
* Claims that Mbeki influenced the Scorpions’ controversial “Special Browse Mole” report, which raised concerns about funding and support for Zuma from Libya and Angola as well as the possibility of violent resistance to his prosecution.

What Zuma told the NPA

2.  The Times is reporting that Zuma’s legal team has pinned its hopes on potentially embarrassing tapes of Scorpions investigators allegedly discussing the case against him with former National Prosecuting Authority boss Bulelani Ngcuka. Click here.

3. And IOL’s got a good story on Willem’s Heath powerful role as deal maker in all of this. Read it here.

4. Here’s a cool little story at the Daily Dispatch about how a brewing mistake and a chance online meeting has led to a Grahamstown meadery (yup, that stuff Robin Hood and his Merry Men used to drink) earning it a world-wide reputation as a leader in mead technology. Read it here.

5. And it’s looking up at the oval. We bowled the Ozzies out for 209 yesterday and we’re going into the second day of the Cape Town cricket Test 57 without loss. Although we’ve already lost the Test series (it’s the best of three) we might at least end it with a modicum of respectability.

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1. The Times reports that government sources say that Intelligence Minister Siyabonga Cwele was to meet President Kgalema Motlanthe last night to ‘‘provide him with an explanation” of what’s potting following the Sunday Times story saying that the minister’s wife is being investigated for trafficking cocaine between South America and South Africa. Read the full story here.

2. Schabir Shaik, Jacob Zuma’s former financial adviser who was jailed in 2005 for fraud and corruption, made an offer of R10-million for a swanky plek in Morningside in Durban one week before he was paroled. It also happens to be a stone’s throw away from the official Durban resident of the state president. Looks like Shaik was pretty sure (10 million bucks worth!) that he had a “get out of jail free” card. You have to subscribe to the M&G to see the story online. Click here to do that and you get one week free.

3. Meanwhile, back at the ranch Zuma says South Africans are being big meanies about Shaik’s health, waiting for him to die now that we’ve been told by Correctional Services that he’s in the final stages of terminal illness.

“You can’t say so many officials, all the way up to the minister, were all corrupt and dishonest and wanted to smuggle a prisoner out, it can’t be,” Zuma said.

Famous last words? Read the story on News24 here.

4. There has been a 56% rise in the number of missing police dockets over the past year, it emerged in Parliament. In 2005/6, 382 were lost or stolen; 427 in 2007/8 and in 2008/9 668 dockets went up in a puff of smoke. Ever wondered how easy it is get to a police docket vanished but you’re persecuted by traffic and library fines? You’re not working the system properly, people.

5. And maybe , just maybe, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for hacks (and readers) as there is a change of guard at the Evil Empire. Tony O’Reilly is handing over the reins of the Independent newspaper group to his son. They’re denying this will means a sell-off papers but we can only hope. In South Africa the Irishman owns both Cape Town daily broadsheets, both Durban daily broadhseets, The Star in Joburg and the Pretoria News. Most South African hacks have watched in dismay as these papers have fallen in quality in the past 15 years as cost cutting rules the day. Read Business Report’s story here.

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Hayibo! Who are these people doing very funny spoof news of South Africa? I’ve just discovered Hayibo.com and they are dang cotton-pickin’ good. Check them out here. It’s about time South Africa had its own Private Eye.
Their latest post says that rugby player Luke Watson has denied that he will try to bolster his flagging popularity by producing a sex tape similar to that which allegedly featured former Bok star Joost van der Westhuizen because there is no one in the country willing to sleep with him. Check out this quote from the post:

Meanwhile friends and supporters of Joost van der Westhuizen say they are determined to watch the tape, allegedly featuring the Bok star, as many times as it takes to clear his name.

According to one friend who wished to remain anonymous, but is known in Hillbrow as Madame Thrust, the group assembled most nights to try to identify the man in the tape.

Watson denies planning sex tape to bolster flagging image

They’re also offering cool Julius Malema, red Commie T-Shirts for sale, which say: 100% for Zuma, 20% for woodwork. I’m off to order one now.

Homecoming Revolution solves the mystery of who’s behind the blog. It was started just over a year ago by two South Africans, Anthony Pascoe and Tom Eaton. Easton, a novelist who has been a Mail & Guardian columnist and cricket correspondent, runs the content. He also co-wrote the screen play for Anant Singh’s More Than Just a Game, the film about the Robben Island inmates’ football teams. Read the Homecoming Revolution article here.

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