It hasn't been pleasant being a member of the media these past few weeks. Former journalist Ashley Smith's confession that he had been bought for pushing Ebrahim Rasool's political agenda on the pages of the Cape Argus has brought all the media's enemies to the fore. And God knows, they are many and it doesn't take much to provoke a backlash to the media in this country. But in fairness, Smith's conduct was shocking and unacceptable and there are no excuses for what he did.  

Be that as it may, among the many critics was Blade Nzimande, in his capacity as General Secretary of the SACP. In his party's on-line publication Umsebenzi Online, which was republished in Politicsweb, he pulled no punches in tackling the credibility of the country's press (see here).

Nzimande is spot on in what he has to say about Smith's lapse in ethics. He argues that it is the likes of the former Cape reporter who are giving the honourable profession of journalism and journalists the unfortunate titles of "mediapreneurship" and "mediapreneurs". He outlines the dangers of the Fourth Estate blurring the lines between itself and the Fifth Column. And he also argues that the Smith case is likely one of many such cases of "brown envelope journalism" and journalists who are waging "factional and dangerous political agendas". The level of corruption within the profession is more widespread than we might care to contemplate, he believes.

On the whole I find it hard to fault Nzimande's argument. However I take issue with him on one front where he adds my name to his list of corrupt journalists when he refers back to early 2008 "when a senior editor was caught out shamefully publishing lies about the Deputy President's private life". Here he refers to stories I wrote in the Sunday Independent and The Star about women who were allegedly intimately involved with Kgalema Motlanthe, who was then the country's caretaker president.

That story is always a hot favorite at times like these and Nzimande is not the first to rake back over the coals of that episode. When one of the women at the center of the saga changed her tune and turned the story on its head, which I was the first to publish, there was talk of little else.

My former employers, Independent Newspapers, later published an apology. I was in full agreement with that. However I had always wanted to tell the story behind the story, which casts a telling light on those 2008 events. But my editor was reticent to do so, feeling it would detract from the apology. I had little choice but to accept his decision.

But now that Nzimande has included me as one of those lesser persons of the profession, then I have no choice but to tell the story behind that infamous story and remove my name from the corruption he writes about.

It started in late 2008 when Motlanthe was sworn in as caretaker president after Thabo Mbeki was ousted. What was conspicuous on the day was the absence of a partner by his side. It sparked, what I believe, was natural interest in our newspaper group about the identity of the country's new first lady.

As I began to investigate the story it became apparent the then president's private life was not as straightforward as we had first thought. Adding to the complexity was one young woman who had been claiming in her own circles for quite some time that she was carrying the man's child.

This information was brought to my attention not by any politically connected person, as was widely rumored at the time, but through the mother of a friend of the young woman herself. I subsequently visited the place where she had most previously worked as a secretary. I spoke to a former supervisor, who confirmed that she was in fact pregnant but resigned because of the pregnancy. But he did not know the paternity of the unborn child and seemed to care little.

I then contacted the young woman herself. She was startled to receive the call. She pleaded with me not to tell the story for the trouble it would cause, not least for "Kgalema". I suggested we talk. We agreed to meet that afternoon.

The young woman in question was not the only woman involved in that story. There was a second, older woman as well. That relationship had been confirmed by people close to her. I had contacted the presidency about the relationship with this second woman and asked if they could confirm or deny it. The then spokesperson answered with the customary, "no comment".

I explained to him that I would be contacting him later in the day for comment about a second affair (concerning the younger woman). I was told I was welcome to call but that the answer would still be the same: no comment.

In the meantime I went to meet the younger woman. She didn't arrive at the venue. What she had done, however, was phone the then editor of the Sunday Independent on his office line. No big mystery there that she could track down an office number of a well known newspaper. He tried to engage her in conversation. She agreed to call him again that afternoon. By the time she did, the switch board had closed and she subsequently called him back on his private cell phone, which is not publicly listed! She claimed it was given to her by the presidency. She referred to the then spokesman by name.

Various attempts were made to meet with the woman that afternoon but one run-around led to another in the height of chaotic Friday afternoon traffic in Johannesburg. Various conversations followed between she and I and the editor and herself.

I later called the presidency, as I had said I would, asking for their comment on the story regarding the younger woman, which we intended to publish that Sunday. The spokesperson was true to his word. "No comment," came the response.

The story was published and it sparked widespread interest and outcry in equal measure, with other publications attempting to follow up on it and carry it forward. I continued to talk to the woman by phone. And she continued to stick to her story.

She also told me about documents she had managed to get her hands on about the Land Bank saga. She talked about the shenanigans at a lodge in Polokwane during the ANC conference at the end of 2007. Whoever she was, she clearly had an inside track.

However 10 days after the initial story appeared, I received a text message early one morning, from a number I couldn't trace, from someone who had alleged to have physically beaten her that morning while she was out for her walk and left her for dead on the side of the road. No-one messes with the president, was the gist of the message.

Instinct told me it was her, behind the message. Yet lo and behold a short while later I could hear her voice on a local radio station, into which she had called, telling how she was being attended to at a private Johannesburg clinic for the attack. Still I didn't believe her. Something was very odd. And my suspicions were heightened when all the efforts of every reporter in town, including me, who tried to track her down at the clinic, collapsed.

Later that morning I got a call from the police station in Brixton. The officer told me he had received a tip-off that I was driving a stolen car and that I should be tracked down and brought in. When he checked the records, it transpired my car was indeed registered as stolen. And he asked if I could present myself at the station.

What I was told at Brixton was that a man had phoned the station that morning with the tip-off. He refused to give his name. When the officer asked how the caller knew the car was stolen he was told that they had access to police records.

What transpired was short of incredible. In the winter of 2007, there had been an attempt made to steal my car from my house. But it failed and the car was abandoned on the street outside. Because it was recovered off the property, by law it had to be registered as an attempted theft. However what I did not know was that a police officer in Brixton had registered it by mistake as stolen. All these months I had been driving around in a stolen car!

That morning the police realized their error and set about rectifying it. But that was the least of my worries. What bothered me was the caller who had access to police records.

When I got to my car I found the front left tyre as flat as a pancake. I didn't think twice about what to do but drove it, as flat as it was, to Independent Newspapers a few kilometers away. To say I was shaken is to understate the moment.

I contacted the newspapers' lawyers. Given the sensitivities of this story we had brought them in at an early stage and they were aware of every leg of the story as it had developed, guiding us on what to do and when to do it to ensure fair play and a reasonable amount of time to reply, etc. They suggested I open a case of intimidation, which I duly did.

By then it was clear the story had taken a sordid twist. And if this young woman was not all she had made herself out to be, then I wanted to find out who she really was and what she was up to.

Over the next 48 hours we managed to track her down to a workplace on the outskirts of Johannesburg where she admitted sending the text to me, admitted calling into the radio stations, admitted she was no longer pregnant (though she had been), and said that the then president was not the father of the baby in any case (which she later retracted again).

I duly published the story that Sunday, 14 days after the initial story appeared. And not surprisingly, the heavens opened and criticism rained heavily on me in the days and weeks that followed. I had to take it. It was part of the job. But I had assumed I would have the chance to tell the story behind the story in the weeks that followed. Alas, as I explain above, that was not to be.

The following afternoon, 15 days after the original story appeared, the presidency's lawyers faxed a letter to the newspaper demanding an apology. Not a whisper had been heard from them in the first fortnight. Yet no sooner had the woman changed her tune than the fax machine began to purr.

In the days that followed I stayed on the story. I worked with a journalist from another newspaper who had been also burned by her. We were both confident that despite her u-turn, this woman had too much information to be just some wayward impersonator. So we continued to dig, we shared information and compared our leads.

By then the young woman had stopped speaking to me. So my colleague did all the talking to her. I vividly remember one Friday morning meeting him at a local coffee shop ahead of his meeting with her that afternoon. When he met her, she asked, "What were you doing with Fiona this morning?"

"I wasn't with Fiona," he told her.

"You were," she responded and proceeded to relay where we had met and at what time and until one. Someone was being tailed, either he or me. To this day we don't know who. Or why?

A few days after that again, we tracked down a former colleague of hers, who agreed to speak to her and probe her about all that had been going on and the media frenzy surrounding her. Once again she confirmed her initial story.

Soon after that I tracked down her family in a small town outside Johannesburg. At a first glance, her mother appeared like a regular suburban woman, trying to make ends meet and get on with her life. Yet as sat down to talk, her first question was: "Can I check your bag for recording equipment?" Once my bag was searched I was also asked to switch off my phone. Her advice to me was to stay well away from the story.

It was around that time that we - my editors and I - agreed to call it a day. Whoever this woman was, we were unable to get the better of her. And we agreed to close the chapter on that story. The apology was published not long after.

Yes, it was one of the most unfortunate stories I have ever put my name to. But I can say with full confidence, as I can with any other story that bears my name, there was no corruption involved, no blatant or knowing publishing of lies, no political agendas waged and certainly no money or favours colouring my work. Though there are still a number of questions rolling about in my head about that story, as outlined above, as a journalist I admit I made some mistakes, such as not getting the woman to sign an affidavit, for instance. But none of those mistakes are of the nature Nzimande writes about. And the story most certainly does not belong to the Smith category.

If the story behind the story could have been published alongside the apology way back when, I, unlike my former employers, believe it would have strengthened the apology rendered.

Be that as it may, and all these months later, the story behind the story does not change. But I sincerely hope it sheds some light on the events of that time and helps remove my name from the calibre of journalist that Nzimande writes about and the kind of incidents that have wrongly sullied the reputation of Independent Newspapers.

Fiona Forde resigned from Independent Newspapers in February 2010 to work on a book project for Jonathan Ball Publishers.

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