It is quite difficult nowadays to find a single newspaper, magazine, TV-news broadcast, radio talk show, comic strip, political analyst, economist, cartoonist, constitutional expert, comedian, archbishop, fortune cookie or even an Internet blog that has not enthusiastically latched on to an increasingly diabolical portrayal of the beleaguered figure of Jacob Zuma, new president of the oldest liberation movement on the continent of Africa i.e. the African National Congress and the man destined to become the forth president of the Republic of South Africa.

The degree to which Zuma’s, and by association the ANC’s, relationship with the South African media has deteriorated is best illustrated when Zuma recently decided to sue Zapiro, internationally acclaimed political cartoonist, over a cartoon published in the influential newspapers Mail & Guardian and The Sunday Times. The cartoon depicts Zuma unbuckling his trousers preparing to rape Lady Justice with Zuma’s staunchest supporters, ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, South African Communist Party (SACP) secretary general Blade Nzimande and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi holding her down with Mantashe encouraging him with a “Go for it boss !”. The cartoon draws inspiration from Zuma’s alleged efforts to circumvent justice by seeking a “political solution” to the charges of corruption linked to the South African arms deal hanging over his head and controversial statements made by some of his supporters that have generally been construed as a verbal attack on the independence of the judiciary. On a secondary level the cartoon, brilliant piece of work that it is, alludes to Zuma’s rape trial by depicting Zuma as a rapist preparing to violate Lady Justice. Ironically, and this will certainly be the legal basis for the defamation law suit, Zuma was found innocent of that accusation of being a rapist by the very same justice system he is now depicted as intending to rape. On a perverse subconscious level the cartoon is doing exactly what it accuses Zuma and his supporters of doing : it undermines the findings of a court of law by tainting the antagonist Zuma with the stigma of rape despite the fact that he has been found innocent of that crime.

The Pirates of Polokwane

But what is the thinly disguised political bias in Zapiro’s notorious “Rape of Lady Justice” cartoon if there is one? Analyzing Zapiro’s work in context helps to answer that question. It is indeed no coincidence that the leaders of Cosatu (Zwelinzima Vavi), the SACP (Blade Nzimande) and the new secretary-general of the ANC (Gwede Mantashe) are depicted together in a disparaging image because it appears to be a recurring theme in Zapiro’s cartoons. Mantashe happens to be the former chairman of the SACP, and together with Vavi and Nzimande they constitute what the media commonly refer to as Jacob Zuma’s “left-leaning” allies i.e. they represent those political forces in South Africa that are associated with the political left or socialist orientated political ideologies. Accordingly Zapiro’s latest Nativity Play cartoon depicts Mantashe, Vavi and Nzimande as shepherds holding sway over the “ANC sheep” or the ordinary ANC supporters. Zapiro’s dim view of the ANC under Zuma is most succinctly summarized by his 2008 cartoon named the Pirates of Polokwane that depicts Zuma with the “left-leaning” Vavi and Nzimande in the background as pirates who have somehow hijacked the ANC ship in a lawless, violent or undemocratic take-over. The unsavory truth, however, is that the Zuma faction garnered overwhelming democratic support during the ANC’s Polokwane conference and comprehensively defeated the Mbeki faction in a peaceful, grassroots based, democratic process that lead to the election of Jacob Zuma over Mbeki as the new president of the ANC.

Apparently, although Zapiro loves to portray himself as the spiritual guardian and champion of democracy, even claiming “struggle credentials” for his “refusal to carry arms” when he was conscripted in the SADF and his satirical opposition to the Apartheid regime, the fruits of democracy inexplicably soured for Zapiro and turned unpalatable this time around. After the Polokwane conference of December 2007, Zapiro’s disgust with the ANC, its “sheep like” supporters and his unhealthy obsession with Zuma and his “left-leaning” allies seems to know no bounds. Some commentators would say that Zapiro is showing himself to be the classical “white liberal” or the “antiracist” - as Louis Lomax put it eloquently a few decades ago: “he is a man of conflicts, not contradictions : an advocate of change but an arch foe of revolution”. Whether you agree with that conclusion or not - the alarmist rhetoric employed by Zapiro and other prominent sections of the mainstream media is becoming increasingly similar to that of the Apartheid regime i.e. the black masses support the ANC, or Zuma in this case, either because they are coerced and/or intimidated into doing so by those evil and manipulative communist forces or because they are uncivilized, uneducated, ignorant and simply do not know any better. Accordingly - the ascendancy of Zuma and his “left-leaning” allies at Polokwane is never attributed to the democratic process : but rather to vulgar “populism”, the new codeword bandied around in the media more often than not to characterize Zuma, his supporters and post-Polokwane ANC.

Trial by Media

This severely strained relationship between Zuma and the media has a long and convoluted history and can be dated back to 2003 with the first public allegations of corruption against Zuma with the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) investigation into the now infamous South African arms deal. On 24 July 2003 the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, Bulelani Ngcuka, called an “off-the-record” and thus confidential briefing with a “selected group of black editors” from South Africa’s top newspapers. Present at this meeting were John Dludlu (Sowetan), Vusi Mona (City Press), Mathatha Tsedu (Sunday Times), Jimmy Seepe (City Press), Mondli Makhanya (Mail & Guardian), Phalani Motali (Sunday Sun) and Jovial Rantoa (The Sunday Independent and Star).

Whilst one may be hard pressed to explain why only black editors were invited to Ngcuka’s office - the urgent need for an off-the-record meeting with the media could perhaps be justified given the constant flow of “media leaks” that seem to emanate from his office, as they were not only prejudicing those who were being investigated but also had the potential to severely compromise future investigations. That interpretation however, would be highly unlikely given that on 27 July 2003, a mere three days after the meeting, the Sunday press carried front page stories with graphic detail of questions, apparently yet again “leaked” to the media, posed to Zuma by the NPA regarding the relationship between Zuma and Shaik with reference to the arms deal. It should be noted that confidential information regarding a NPA investigation into Zuma was leaked to the press on several occasions in the two year period during the Shaik investigation - although the NPA declined to inform Zuma of such investigations. The NPA questions to Zuma leaked to the press were forwarded to Zuma’s attorneys only after a protracted exchange with the NPA regarding the situation where Zuma was continuously informed via the media that he was in fact also under investigation for corruption. This constant flow of media leaks, by now a hallmark of the way that the NPA conducted its business, appeared to originate from within the NPA i.e. Ngcuka’s office in what was thought to be sources inside the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO or Scorpions).

One month later, on 23 August 2003, Ngcuka convened a press conference overseen by the then Minister of Justice, Penuell Maduna. Ngcuka announced that after the NPA’s two year long investigation into Zuma and Zuma’s financial advisor Shabir Shaik, he had come to the decision to prosecute Shaik on corruption charges relating to the arms deal. He also made full use of this press opportunity to officially implicate Zuma by announcing that although he had “prima facie evidence” of corruption against Zuma it was “insufficient to win the case in court” and he would therefore not prosecute Zuma. The public “announcement”, in direct violation of well understood codes of conduct in the legal fraternity, implied that Ngcuka had just appointed himself as prosecutor and judge: for surely if there is “prima facie evidence”, then it is the job of the courts to decide on its sufficiency. Ngcuka did not only violate Zuma’s basic constitutional right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, but severely prejudiced Zuma and put him as a prominent public figure and deputy president of South Africa in an almost untenable position. He could not defend himself in a court of law since he would not be prosecuted, at least not for a foreseeable time to come.

The poorly disguised farce took its intended course when the media swiftly pounced on Ngcuka’s announcement and uncritically accepted it as proof of Zuma’s guilt. The severe prejudice to Zuma and the obvious attempt by Ngcuka to smear Zuma with the corruption charge with nothing more than circumstantial evidence that by Ngcuka’s own admission would most likely not stand up in a court of law went virtually unnoticed as the media feeding frenzy around the person of Zuma intensified.

The combination of these factors lead Zuma and his supporters to characterize what was happening as a “trial by media”.

On 7 September 2003 all hell broke lose when City Press published a sensational report under the headline: “Was Ngcuka a spy?”. Vusi Mona, editor of City Press, also brought the off-the-record meeting that he had attended with several other editors on request of Ngcuka to public attention. The City Press Ngcuka spy story led to then President Thabo Mbeki appointing the Hefer Commission of Inquiry to investigate the spy allegations against Ngcuka with the finding that Ngcuka “probably” was not an Apartheid spy. We will deal with the political intrigue and findings of the Hefer Commission later.

For now it is the off-the-record briefing between the “black editors” and Ngcuka, Director of the Public Prospections and the subsequent fall-out regarding “journalistic ethics” that deserves a little more scrutiny. Mona agreed to testify in front of the Hefer Commission about the content and purpose of the off-the-record briefing because, according to his testimony he felt that what was discussed at the meeting violated some prominent inividual’s constitutional rights. He testified that, amongst other things, Ngcuka used the meeting to inform the editors present that he was going to “wash his hands of Zuma and leave him in the court of public opinion”. According to Mona, Ngcuka also said that Zuma had landed in trouble because he “surrounded himself with Indians”. One of the “Indians” referred to here was none other than Mac Maharaj, whose name allegedly also came up during the meeting, another respected “left-leaning” ANC stalwart and a prominent former member of the SACP Political Bureau. The “black editors” immediately closed rank on Mona slamming him for revealing the content of the off-the-record meeting and bringing the journalist profession into disrepute. Vusi Mona and Ranjeni Munusamy, the Sunday Times journalist who passed the Ngcuka spy story on to Mona after her employer Sunday Times refused to publish it, both lost their jobs. Munusamy is now branded as “Zuma’s spin doctor” whenever the main stream media, the core of which is made up of Ngcuka’s “off-the-record” team of “black editors”, mentions her “propaganda”. Indeed, any journalist who happens to stray from the apparently uniformly agreed main stream media conviction that Zuma is a criminal who is cunningly circumventing prosecution by applying legal delay tactics is immediately ostracized and turned into a pariah - as has also happened with independent film producer Liesl Gottert - who spent two years producing a documentary about Zuma entitled The Zuma Media Trial.

While there is no doubt that Vusi Mona had clearly breached journalistic ethics by agreeing to testify on the contents of an off-the-record briefing you cannot help wondering if he was the only journalist who behaved unethically. Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with journalists attending “off-the-record” meetings with the director of an extremely powerful state institution such as the NPA? The NPA, after all, falls under the political oversight of the Minister of Justice who is accountable to the State President. Isn’t the independent media supposed to inform the public without fear or prejudice and keep all institutions of power accountable? By agreeing to off-the-record meetings, isn’t the media compromising itself and opening itself to abuse by these institutions of power? How about the “black editors only” or for the sake of brevity, lets henceforth just refer to them as Ngcuka’s black editors, been given some secret inside information, some dirty little secrets that they were not allowed to publish - what was that all about, why were white or “Indian” editors not invited? Did the off-the-record meeting with Ngcuka have anything to do with the Sunday Times refusing to publish the Ngcuka spy story - is it not a fact that Ngcuka himself conceded that much? What about the leaking of the NPA questions posed to Zuma published only three days after the briefing - did Ngcuka perhaps request the newspaper editors to publish them to help the NPA achieve some strategic goal?

We can only speculate on an endless list of rhetorical question but we will never know the truth because Ngcuka flatly refused to divulge the content of that meeting during the Hefer Commission, the only record of what was discussed is the contested version provided by Vusi Mona. Yet, given the endless leaks to the media from within Ngcuka’s office a cynic might be forgiven if he concluded that the off-the-record briefing could well have been a planning and synchronization workshop to establish a schedule of “media leaks” to coincide with important political events to help the NPA discredit undesirable political enemies of the state. Besides the scapegoating of Mona the South African media did not hesitate for one moment to ask any probing questions about its own questionable conduct in this sordid mess. Instead, after the findings of the Hefer Commission clearing Ngcuka of the spy allegations - Zapiro, apparently an obedient lapdog of Ngcuka’s black editors and clearly jubilant that Ngcuka the “good guy” won and those corrupt “left-leaning” crooks ended up with egg in the face, responded with another funny picture vilifying his journalist brothers Vusi Mona and Ranjeni Munusamy who dared to go against the flow.

It is perhaps worth noting here that after the Hefer Commission report was released in January 2004, Bulelani Ngcuka resigned as Director of Public Prosecutions in July 2004 and was appointed Executive Chairperson of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) company Amabubesi Investments on 8 November 2004. Apparently he is not doing too badly for an ex-civil servant with his current shareholding in one company alone reported to be over 90 million ZAR. But we will come back to the topic of “black guys networking like this” as Ngcuka put it, when we discuss the many splendid manifestations of “neoliberalism” in post-Apartheid South Africa.

A Generally Corrupt Relationship ?

Unfortunately for Zuma his “media trial” turned really ugly and things got much worse in 2005. On 2 June 2005, more than four years after the NPA investigation into Shaik and Zuma kicked-off and two years after Ngcuka officially implicated Zuma, Shabir Shaik was found guilty on charges of fraud and corruption in a judgment delivered by Judge Hilary Squires in the Durban High Court. Judge Squires described the relationship between Zuma and Shaik as a “mutually beneficial symbiosis”. The media misreported Judge Squires’ findings to include “a generally corrupt relationship”, although this description does not appear in Squires’ judgment and was in fact a phrase used by the prosecution during the trial. Business Day led the charge by reporting on 3 June 2005:

“Zuma’s loaded joke suggests that his relationship with Shaik, which Judge Hillary Squires found this week to have been “generally corrupt”, is not unique among ANC leaders and that there are others with financial relationships and dealings that are just as compromised, if not more, as his connection with Shaik.”

Not bothering too much to do any actual journalism the South African media eagerly plagiarized the misattributed phrase “generally corrupt relationship” as BBC reported at the time under a heading “SA papers demand Zuma resignation“:

“Deeming him unfit for high office, papers call on Mr Zuma to step down and abandon his ambitions to be president. The country cannot face the world with a president - or deputy president - found by a court to have been involved in a “corrupt relationship”, they argue.”

Ngcuka’s black editors featured prominently in the chorus of condemnation with the Mail & Guardian arguing: “South Africa simply cannot face the rest of the world with a president, or a deputy president… found by a court of law to have had a generally corrupt relationship with a businessman convicted of fraud and graft…” and The Star following suit: “The question we pose today is: does South Africa want to continue to have, as its deputy president and possible future president, a man who has been found to have been involved in a corrupt relationship?…”

Twelve days later, on 14 June 2005, warming to the heat generated by intensity of the sustained media hysteria President Thabo Mbeki relieved Zuma of his duties as deputy president of South Africa. The reason for the dismissal extracted from Mbeki’s speech to parliament:

“However, the Judgement contains some categorical outcomes. These are that the court has made findings against the accused and at the same time pronounced on how these matters relate to our Deputy President, the Hon Jacob Zuma, raising questions of conduct that would be inconsistent with expectations that attend those who hold public office“

A truly awe inspiring feat in the miscarriage of justice was now finally accomplished. Zuma had now been found guilty by proxy of the Shaik trial - “in the court of public opinion” as Ngcuka allegedly put it, and the president of South Africa had effectively fired him from his job as deputy president of South Africa. On 20 June 2005, the successor of Ngcuka as Director of the NPA, Vusi Pikoli, apparently bolstered by the outcome of the Shaik trial and after almost five years of investigating Zuma finally announced that his office had decided to prosecute Zuma and served him with an indictment.

Ngcuka’s black editors seemed to have won the day - or so it would seem if it wasn’t for Judge Squires correcting the misrepresentation of his judgment regarding Zuma in the media seventeen months down the line. In fact - in a bizarre example of just how “ethically” the South African media conducts its business : Squires attempted in vain on several occasions to correct the obvious error. Starting with an email on 17 November 2005 to Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day after yet another report published on the 16 November 2005 repeating the same factual error. Squires pointed out in his email that he had not used the term a “generally corrupt relationship” in his judgment. One full year later Business Day had not published any correction; instead it continued attributing the phrase to Squires. Squires followed up with a letter : this time to the Business Day journalist Ernest Mabuza who had published yet another report containing the same error on 27 September 2006.

The fact that Squires had never used the phrase “generally corrupt relationship” was only brought to light when the damage was well and truly done. And the damage went much further than just a misquote in the media - for it appeared that when the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed the appeal by Shaik against the judgment of the High Court and upheld his conviction and sentence on 6 November 2006, the appeal court judge may have been spending to much time in Ngcuka’s “court of public opinion” and too little time reading Judge Squires’ high court judgment. The SCA also cited the three words “generally corrupt relationship” in its ruling and attributed it to the findings of Judge Squires!

Judge Squires’ apparent intervention five days later led to some speculation about whether the judges had read the judgment that they were upholding. In the court’s judgment confirming that Shaik’s various companies had to forfeit assets to the state, judge Craig Howie stated:

“Between 1996 and 2002 Shaik and Mr Jacob Zuma engaged in what the trial court (Squires) appropriately called ‘a generally corrupt relationship’ which involved frequent payments by Shaik to or on behalf of Zuma and a reciprocation by Zuma in the form of the bringing to bear of political influence on behalf of Shaik’s business interests when requested to do so.”

This is one of at least two references the SCA judgement made to the two men’s “generally corrupt relationship”, both times attributing it wrongly to Judge Squires. On 11 November 2006 Business Day published a report where they for the very first time conceded the error followed up by Squires’ letter to Business Day published on 13 November 2006. Squires wrote:

“To the best of my recollection the phrase in question was used by the prosecutor in one of his pictorial presentations as part of his argument at the end of the trial. It was put into quotation marks by some sub-editor in a report covering the State’s case, and has been mindlessly parroted ever since as a finding by the Court by many of the journalists who have felt the need to write about the ongoing saga.”

This astonishing revelation of how the South African media had for no less than seventeen months “mindlessly parroted” a blatant untruth regarding the Shaik judgment on the strength of which they amongst other things demanded that Zuma ought to be fired (and got their way too) was met with much embarrassed hand-wringing, muted half-hearted efforts at side-stepping the issue by down playing what they called “legal technicalities” and semantics and in general behaving like absolutely nothing had happened - that is besides for an almost invisible apology from Peter Bruce to Judge Squires. Ngcuka’s black editors who were so precious about “journalistic ethics” when they ganged up against Vusi Mona during the Hefer Commission were arrogant and unapologetic, and rather than admitting to their mind-boggling collective incompetence or at least publishing an apology to Zuma, proceeded with the usual orchestrated onslaught now bolstering themselves for the next round in “the court of public opinion” with all hopes pinned this time on the SCA judgment in upholding Squires’ findings against Shaik. Unlike Mona who had acted “recklessly” by publishing the unverified Ngcuka spy story or Munusamy now disparagingly referred to as “Zuma’s spin doctor” nobody lost their jobs or got reprimanded. Even the international media could not help but to express disbelieve about what was going on. Peter Biles wrote for BBC on 16 November 2006 under the heading “SA media misrepresent Shaik trial“:

“The South African media is in a political storm for misquoting a judge in the trial of the former financial adviser to the ex-ANC deputy president. Judge Hilary Squires was falsely reported as describing the relationship between the ANC’s Jacob Zuma and Schabir Shaik as “generally corrupt”. The misquote was repeated many times in the media since the 2005 trial despite Judge Squires’ efforts to correct it. The scandal casts doubts over any potential retrial of Mr Zuma.”

The South African media, needless to say, didn’t seem to notice the scandal. On the contrary, Zapiro with all his apparent respect for “Lady Justice” showed that he is not only a hypocrite but perhaps that the real reason he “refused to carry arms” in Apartheid’s SADF was not that he was a conscientious objector but perhaps he was a little bit of a coward too. Instead of drawing a funny picture to satirize Ngcuka’s black editors he chose to ridicule Judge Squires depicting him as a latter day Rip Van Winkle who - after 17 months of slumber - had only just woken up to the misattribution. But then again, who amongst our “ethical”, fearless, “independent” and above all self-righteous main stream journalists would ever dare to bite the hands that feed them?

Part 2 to be continued…