Editor, City Press, JHB (5/2/2008) — 02/08/2008
BRAVE RESPONSE TO COMMUNIST PARTY LEADER'S 'APARTHEID-STYLE INTIMIDATION'
Mathatha Tsedu
SACP leader Nzimande threatens boycott over City Press news report

We publish below an open letter from Blade Nzimande, the general secretary of the South African Communist Party and member of the African National Congress National Executive Committee. The letter makes a number of accusations against this newspaper and its editorial leadership, alleging we are out to divide the ANC. The statement suggests to the owners of this newspaper, Media24, that the editors be fired. If this is not done, a veiled threat is added that a possible boycott of City Press could be effected. The letter was apparently triggered by last week's lead story on how an angry Jacob Zuma [newly elected president of the ANC, with crucial support from Nzimande and the SACP – ed] had complained about members of his NEC who have been allegedly positioning themselves to lead the ANC, should he be convicted. [Zuma is facing trial later this year for corruption and fraud in connection with the arms deal of 1998-99. His financial adviser, Schabir Schaik - brother of Shamin 'Chippy' Shaik, then at the centre of the arms deal as head of Procurement in the Department of Defence – is serving a 15 year sentence for corruption and fraud relating to the arms deal. All three men were linked in underground operations of the ANC military wing in the last years of apartheid. – ed]. Zuma later apologised for his anger.
 
Threat from SACP/ANC viewed 'very seriously'
We view the allegations being made as well as the threats very seriously. City Press tries hard to be impartial and to report as accurately as is humanly possible. This applies to the ANC as well as any other party. We do so because our mission is to serve the public good and not individual or organisational interests. In doing this, we sometimes get stories wrong despite our best efforts and codes of ethics. When that happens, readers are able to raise the issue with us and we admit to our errors and apologise. The aggrieved also have the option to go to the Press Council of South Africa for redress. Nzimande has chosen to ignore both, writing instead to the owners to intimidate them. It is a tactic that must fail.
 
The huge battles in SA for freedom of expression and free media
This country fought huge battles for our rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and a free media. This newspaper took a decision four years ago this week to become a serious read for people who are serious about their information needs. At that time, following the slump in circulation that came with the furore over the publication by this newspaper of the non-story about Bulelani Ngcuka being a spy for the apartheid regime, circulation was in free fall. We were selling close to 139,000 copies each week. Last week we sold 198,000. This is as a result of you, our readers, feeling that we are serving your news and information needs. We respect you and would never try to feed you propaganda.
 
'We are not going to bow to the new gods'
Happenings within the ANC are of interest to everyone because it is the organisation that rules the country. The accusation that we could be playing a divisive role by pointing at divisions is spurious. The ANC does not need a divider. It is divided. The irony in Nzimande's attack is that the main accusation against Mbeki by people like him was that Mbeki was intolerant of opposing views. Now, if this newspaper does not want to suffer the fate of a boycott by the almighty alliance structures, the editors should kowtow to the new regime at the helm of the ANC, or the owners must fire them. When the apartheid regime arrested and tortured journalists for daring to tell it as the regime did not want it told, we stood firm and fought back. We are not going to bow to the new gods. We stand for the right to do our work ethically and professionally. And if anyone, Nzimande included, feels we are failing, there are mechanisms set up by the industry to address this. We remain committed to our goal of being an informative and interesting read covering our country and our continent without fear or favour, threats or no threats. As for last week's story: we stand by every word. – Editor
 
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NZIMANDE ACCUSES NEWSPAPER OF BEING 'A LOBBY GROUP WITHIN ANC STRUCTURES'
City Press (5/2/2008)
 
Open letter from Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the SACP and member of the ANC NEC, to the management of Media24:
I have for the past three or four years debated whether to write this open letter to you regarding one of your prime publications, City Press. You may, of course, ask why we are not taking City Press to the Press Ombudsman, but this matter is so serious that it goes beyond what is in any case, at least in my experience, a relatively toothless institution... The main point I wish to make in this letter to you is that the editorial team of City Press has deliberately pursued editorial stances and general news coverage on many serious matters relating to the ANC and its allies in a provocatively factionalist, divisive and highly subjective manner. As far as I am concerned, City Press has ceased to be a newspaper. It has become a lobby group inside our structures! In other words, City Press has, at least over the last four to five years and increasingly and especially in the run-up to the ANC's Polokwane conference, displayed a very clear preference on the outcomes of the major congresses and events of our movement, including who is elected into leadership structures.
 
Accusation that City Press supported re-election of Mbeki
To put it bluntly, City Press had positioned itself, in relation to the ANC Polokwane conference, in support of the re-election of President Thabo Mbeki and adopted an extremely hostile attitude towards comrade Jacob Zuma. This included occasional vitriolic attacks on those alliance leaders the paper had identified as supporting Zuma. I need to state it categorically that I would have had the same problem had City Press so passionately and factionally positioned itself in support of comrade Zuma or any other leader for that matter because this is not the business of the media but that of internal organisational processes. By so doing, I would argue, City Press has blatantly violated and thrown out of the window every rule of fair and impartial journalism. It is for these reasons that we have to write an open letter to you because City Press's editorial team, from our experience, is totally incapable of ever realising that it is committing serious blunders.
 
Sensitivity to news report of Zuma's angry outburst
I have no problem with your newspaper taking this stance but my discomfort is that your editorial team cannot have their cake and eat it. Either City Press is the independent, impartial and 'Distinctly African' newspaper it claims to be or it must come out openly and unashamedly as a factional player inside our organisations so that we can relate to it as such. It has over these years become very clear that the City Press editorial team is so embedded in factionalist battles inside our structures that it is now incapable of rising above these; hence this extraordinary letter we are writing directly to you... The lead story in your last Sunday's edition, 'Cracks in Zuma's NEC', is a case in point. Apart from a deliberate distortion of ANC procedures and decisions in this article, City Press decided to privilege four anonymous and faceless sources over on-the-record responses of three senior leaders of the ANC who denied that there was ever an incident in which the ANC president supposedly burst out in anger over alleged gossip or 'plots' against him.
 
Zuma faction alleges 'factionalist manoeuvring' by press
Is this professional and ethical journalism? To me this story is an attempt to sow divisions and create internal suspicions amongst the elected leadership of the ANC, based on the spurious notion that this leadership was elected on the ticket of being against one individual as opposed to being pro-ANC… But a question that I have to ask of Media24 management is: now that a different group of ANC and alliance leaders have been elected, how is City Press going to relate to this new reality?... The owners and management of Media24 have to also honestly and frankly answer these other questions: Is the current editorial leadership of City Press capable of establishing a new, non-partisan and professional relationship with the current movement leadership, given its history of party political and factionalist manoeuvring inside our structures? Is the current editorial leadership of City Press capable of going beyond its current sycophancy and correcting whatever "mistakes" it has made? Frankly I have my most serious doubts on this score.
 
[Mathatha Tsedu is one of the most senior journalists in South Africa. He became editor of City Press in June 2005. Prior to that he was deputy head of news at the Johannesburg Sunday Times, having previously held the same position at the state broadcaster, the SABC, having also been editor of The Star, Johannesburg, and acting deputy editor of the Sunday Independent. He is chairperson of The Africa Editors' Forum and was an active member of the Media Workers Association of South Africa. Having started work as a journalist in 1978 (a year after the murder in police custody of the Black Consciousness leader, Bantu Stephen Biko), he was then prohibited from working as a journalist between 1981 and 1986  under a banning order of the apartheid government. In 1997 he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in the United States. He was awarded the Nat Nakasa Award for Media Integrity in 2000.]