SHORT TAKES

By the time of Andre de Ruyter's now famous interview with Annika Larsen on eNCA (22 February 2023) earlier this year he had long been front page news. The South African public, including myself, had been primed to believe the worst.

The earliest signs of rot within the ANC had already started to appear during Mandela's reign, became worse with Mbeki's presidency, further compounded by his Africanist racial rhetoric, the antics around AIDS, the Virodene scandal and the facilitation of Zimbabwe's ruin by Mugabe's brutal and corrupt dictatorship.

The succeeding decade, with the rise of Zupta-style state capture and the sorry sequence of South Africa's moral, infrastructural, social and economic decline has now been so thoroughly aired I cannot bring myself to recapitulate the standard narrative.  Those living in South Africa's enclaves of quasi-First World functionality could remain in denial until Eskom struck home.

Only the truly wealthy or politically connected could escape the energy crisis. Tales of sabotage, corruption, criminality, murder, and political complicity at the highest level swept the country. The facts seemed overwhelming. The Daily Maverick published a timeline of 30+ scandals which needed weekly updates to remain relevant.

Many believed that this was only the tip of the iceberg. It was astounding that the South African ship of state, while listing badly, was still just above water. This elicited much comment about South Africa's mysterious ' resilience', but little attempt to understand or document it. A topic for another occasion.

So we were ready to believe De Ruyter was possibly understating the case for the prosecution and that the denials from the ANC which followed the interview was standard avoidance tactics. The Daily Maverick once again compiled the evidence for what we all believed in anycase but with some added juicy details. The upcoming SCOPA investigation was regarded as political theatre to which we had become accustomed.

Then News 24 dropped its bombshell revelations, just in time for the SCOPA hearings. De Ruyter had been duped - at best. By implication, according to News24, he revealed his own naiveté (and possible bias) by including an allegedly racially prejudiced Apartheid-era operative as part of the investigative team and failing to examine the evidence closely.

As a consequence he (and the rest of us) was taken in by the plausible presentation and narrative.

At this point Anton Harber penned an article in Business Day bemoaning the tensions between being the first with the news and being factually accurate. The subheading to his article was " The ‘De Ruyter allegations’ highlight the need for journalists to slow down and check the details ". I'm sure that's real but it's not the whole story.

News24 in the meantime wasn't being inactive following its initial disclosure of what it had NOT published and why. It conducted numerous follow-up, self-congratulatory articles as well as interviews with Jacques Pauw especially. It basked in its rather unaccustomed role as the South African version of the 'Grey Lady' of journalism. 

A more supportable position, in my view, is that whatever the specific details over time may be, Eskom fits into a persistent pattern of irresponsible, incompetent and corrupt governance over considerable time and De Ruyter's accusations are likely close enough to the truth. News 24 admits as much:

"There are enough real facts in the public domain and in courts of law around the country that prove how Eskom became ground zero for rent seeking by politically connected networks and mafias./But these networks, which likely include collusion by politicians..."

News24's expose itself needs closer scrutiny. Since they don't really claim the essence of De Ruyter's narrative is wrong are they jumping on the bandwagon of journalistic integrity repurposing Dr Ruyter's clumsiness for that purpose?

Perhaps in this era of intense media competition such one-upmanship is understandable though rather distasteful.  But their claims are somewhat contradictory.

Claim one: while the investigation initiated by De Ruyter was fully justifiable given the circumstances it was reprehensibly (and regrettably) sloppy. Perhaps, but De Ruyter reported his concerns to the National Police Commissioner and prominent politicians who assiduously did nothing.

Claim two: News24 are also implicitly claiming that that the findings should be rejected because the source was morally tainted by the participation of Tony Oosthuizen, a former member of Military Intelligence’s Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC) pre-1994.

This raises an important philosophic and practical question. Does a tainted source irretrievably contaminate a true proposition? My answer to that would be no, but it should raise the threshold of proof in proportion to the moral taint of the source.

There are other issues also raised by the News24 coverage which has served to deflect public attention away from ANC culpability onto De Ruyter. Was that intentional (firmly denied by News 24) or only a regrettable casualty of News24's journalistic integrity, or self-promotion? Readers will have their own views.

Media integrity runs much deeper than simply avoidance of outright factual inaccuracy as important as that is. Has this affair strengthened trust in the media?

Yes and no. It certainly shows the benefits of a free media in challenging embedded narratives, dubious facts and holding politicians' (and others) hands to the fire. But still citizens need to be alert to the biases and agendas of the media itself.

The focus on De Ruyter unfortunately detracts from considering the larger setting of which the Eskom saga is an inevitable but important part. Surely that is what should be engaging the South African public's collective mind.

Mike Berger

P.S. In the service of due diligence I scouted through all three TRC reports and the Wikipedia entry on the Apartheid Security Service using the names Oosthuizen and Tony Oosthuizen. I came across only one direct reference to Tony Oosthuizen as an operative in the DCC involved in an operation around the Chand family.

I would welcome additional information.