And so Naspers borrows from its own book on rebranding apartheid

FOR DECADES Naspers was during the apartheid years, an incubator for racist government, producing no less than three Prime Ministers. PW Botha, HF Verwoerd and DF Malan. All had the backing of the corporation formed by the Broederbond. With the appointment of a new local CEO, following a listing in Amsterdam, the company has once again attempted to rebrand itself.

Unfortunately, the focus on assets avoids questions as to why Naspers was a ‘traditional sinecure for the national party’, providing funding, propaganda and support. This is a lot more involvement than today’s media spin-doctors would have us believe.

Naspers collaboration with apartheid is given short thrift by the likes of Joseph Cotterill of BDlive, who believes the group was simply “a publisher once condemned as a mouthpiece of the apartheid regime in SA .” These reports all fail to mention ongoing litigation against the company, and continued opposition to the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

A more balanced view of the campaign against the commission can be found in a review of Ton Vosloo’s biography “Across Boundaries” by veteran journalist and former Mail & Guardian editor Anton Harber.

Lizette Rabie also finds time to present her case in support of the so-called ‘TRC rebels”, a group of former apartheid collaborators who succeeded in turning themselves into ‘conscientious journalists” while ignoring the plight of those in the struggle press, recipients of Naspers dirty tricks.

TRC rebel Tim du Plessis presents his version of events in the Nieman Report.

But according to Hennie van Vuuren, the company was also a ‘tap root of the National Party’.

So what exactly is going on?

After 1994, the corporation found itself on the back foot politically-speaking. Sanctioned by the TRC for its failure to come clean over its role during apartheid, but with PW Botha avoiding a subpoena to appear, the company grudgingly introduced a BEE scheme, appointing Jakes Gerwel of the President’s office to the board, alongside Francois Groepe.

And so the game of political chicanery continued.

With Groupe moving on to the Reserve Bank, Chairperson Gerwel passing on in office, and the company still attempting to gag me for speaking out about racism, race profiling and de facto newsroom segregation at its then community newspapers division.

The resulting anti-Semitic and anti-Secular counter-case, was more than simply a corrupt and unfair proceeding before the labour court of South Africa. Nothing short of a racist miscarriage of justice involving a Naspers business associate and labour broker presiding over a matter involving his own client, while I was restrained from calling witnesses. The corruption is currently the subject of an as yet unresolved complaint to the Judicial Services Commission.

Two days after filing a further Equality Court complaint regarding the Group’s ongoing campaign against the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and thus the trashing of the report by Naspers council, then Group CEO Esmerie Weideman issued an apology to the heavens. The 2015 statement references one case-limited example of a single employee of colour, Conrad Sidego, who had experienced problems with separate facilities.

The EC case is currently in abeyance pending an appeal of a decision by Legal Aid SA not to grant legal aid where a substantial injustice would result from my not possessing an attorney in the matter.

If you wish to fund my action against LASA, you can do so on BackaBuddy.

Needless to say the latest racist decision by the High Court, once again trivialising the TRC report, (‘too long to read’, according to AJ Martin) in the process, creating an exclusion of the Preamble to our Constitution, cannot hope to gain any approval under our nation’s Constitutional dispensation.

With pressure mounting for change, and with a sophisticated new share structure that preserves white privilege, in the process moving the now multinational operation out of the country, Naspers mandarins have once again dealt out a hand that seeks to gain influence within South Africa’s political sphere.

The appointment of no less than Ramaphosa Foundation board member Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa to manage Naspers South African operations, echoes the groups earlier effort to inveigle Mandela. This while Ramaphosa is on the ropes following a report by the Public Protector.

Time can only tell whether the strategy of co-opting the incumbent President, while maintaining apartheid profits within the company, (now outside the country), will succeed in burying the TRC Final Report once and for all. 

Defend Status of the TRC Report before the Courts

DEFEND STATUS OF TRUTH & RECONCILIATION COMMISSION BEFORE THE COURTS

DEFEND THE PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

I have less than one month in which to file an SCA appeal in terms of s17 (2) (b) against AJ Martin’s racist decision (CA18417/17) to not provide relief with regard to representation in a matter affecting the TRC and its Final Report.

The High Court decision literally agreeing with Legal Aid SA in first instance, that it ‘would take a long time to read the report’ and therefore it can be ignored, and also, in second instance, upholding validity of LASA chief officer‘s view that the matter has somehow ‘prescribed’ since the commission wound up its work some time agois demonstrably racist.

Attacking the legal basis of the TRC, an inquiry into gross violations of human rights under apartheid, still a crime against humanity, for which there is no statute of limitations, trivialises the report, lowers its status before the courts and denigrates the memory of the victims and survivors. It is certainly contrary to our Constitution and its preamble which states, ‘recognising the injustices of the past …’ not to mention several statutes each one promulgated in order to prevent ‘repetitions of the past’.

The decision impacts and affects my case before the Equality Court of South Africa (EC19/2015) brought to defend the report against the vicious and racist attacks by Naspers/Media24 and thus failure to defend the law by the former Min of Justice, Michael Masutha. My not possessing an attorney at state expense as contemplated in the constitution, is a substantial injustice when it comes to the odious task of defending the TRC.

AJ Martin’s sloppy and incompetent decision is nothing less than racist double standards, since I have already been taken to task on a previous occasion during the proceedings of Lewis v Media24 (2010) for my not having ‘read the report’, in particular chapter 4, and thus according to Adv Kahanovitz SC, ‘knew who I was getting involved with when I joined Media24’, a racist organisation at the time, opposed to the TRC.

Kahanovitz SC further claimed that the report was a ‘public record’ to which I could not claim ignorance, at the same time that he claimed the commission was ‘simply a commission’, and the report, ‘simply a report’. AJ Cheadle, who admitted to presiding over a case involving his own client (and thus a judgement written up by the opposing party), then proceeds to state in his 2010 decision at para 98: ‘His evidence is unreliable because he is engaged in a campaign against the Respondent for its support of apartheid and its refusal to apologise for doing so before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.’

Now Martin declaims loudly from the bench that it is okay to simply ignore the report, echoing Kahanovitz SC earlier direction that the report should be ignored when doing so favours his client, but be upheld when it affects my own legal standing.

Not only did AJ Martin refuse to recuse himself from the High Court, Western Cape on Monday 20 May 2019, after this contradiction was pointed out to him, but he has had the audacity to claim his decisions and findings in the matter are somehow obiter (merely in passing), and also “Judges can make mistakes that is what superior courts are for, correcting error.” There also appears to be some confusion here as to whether or not the court has the requisite power to review decisions taken by a ‘national public entity’ and thus other schedule 3 entities such as boxing clubs. Martin then proceeded to deny me leave on the basis.

The determination amounts to an exclusion of the Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, not to mention the Bill of Rights. The separation of powers is between the judiciary, the executive and the legislature, not the public sphere versus the judiciary and represents a new low so far as the justice system is concerned.

The calumny against the TRC Act is not surprising since the the High Court of the Western Cape still houses portraits of apartheid and colonial era judges. Albert van der Sandt Centlivres for instance, was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1950 to 1957, and the result is an embarrassing racist rogues line-up, book-ended by a beaming portrait of current Judge President of the Western Cape, John Hlophe. Portraits of Centlivres et al deserve to be in a museum not the chambers of active judicial officers.

I urgently require assistance in filing my documents on appeal in Bloemfontein, failing which an appeal directly to the ConCourt. If I cannot retain an attorney to accomplish this, I will be required to travel to Bloemfontein and/Jozi. I am also required to furnish the SCA/ConCourt judges and parties with the transcripts and records of the proceedings, all of which costs money. Some four hours of transcription is required.

Please assist me in defending the TRC and its Final Report in the matter Lewis v Legal Aid SA CA18417/17. This matter affects similarly-situated individuals and is a major test of the foundation stones of our democracy.

NO TO HIGH COURT APARTHEID

NO TO RACIST DOUBLE-STANDARDS 

NO TO APARTHEID DENIAL
NO TRASHING OF THE TRC REPORT

The right-wing’s Politicsweb goes big on support for Naas.

Andrew-Kenny-nuclear-conference-5-555x370
South Africa’s Walter Mitty

SEVERAL pieces on the right-wing political site Politicsweb, a local news platform run by James Myburgh, demonstrates the narrow racialism of its multifarious contributors. The site purports to carry opinions from across the political spectrum, but has a seemingly limitless abundance of polemic and commentary from the likes of RW Johnson and the Freedom Front’s Pieter Groenewald,

First off there’s a familiar conservative spokesperson opining on the subject of the Ashwin Willemse incident ‘On racism, real and imagined: “Can a disagreement between sports broadcasters really qualify as news?” asks RW Johnson who then proceeds to denigrate the standing of the Equality Court, (in the process casting aspersions against its status in terms of the Equality Act): “Him and his lawyers are now proceeding to the Equality Court (the name has an Orwellian ring),” writes Johnson.

While our justice system if far from perfect, the Equality Court is a shining light in this regard. Rather it is conservatives who must be taken to task for dangerous double-speak, bigoted opinion that essentially denies that Willemse has access to any rights in terms of his own opinion on the matter. As the liberal mantra often restated by conservatives goes, ‘we believe in the audi rule so long as only one side to the dispute is heard.’

Andrew Donaldson, forever a lapdog of the effete rich and trendy wealthy, finds the time to wade in with a pathetic Cry racism piece that although erudite, willfully proceeds to miss the point entirely by cynically misstating the Equality case: “shoehorning the controversy within a racial context will restore moral order and present the readily outraged with a familiar, comforting paradigm’ that of Cry Wolf? No Mr Donaldson, this isn’t about racism per se, but rather apartheid denial, the rotting carcass of quotas and the sell-by-date of former apartheid-era darlings, a corporation with anything but a sterling history of opposing racism.

With all the tact of a charging hippopotamus, the grandson of Verwoerd and Oranie spokesperson, Wynand Boshoff’s ‘Ashwin, actually we know what you mean’ delivers a thinly disguised hatchet job, attempting to deflect attention away from Naas Botha and thus Afrikanerdom in general. Deploying the tired and anachronistic ‘blame it on the British’ schtick that is so often used by former members of the Nationalist party to ingratitude themselves with the ruling ANC whilst also affecting a crushing blow to us English-speakers.

It is not terribly surprising then to find South Africa’s own Walter Mitty, one Andrew Kenny delivering an equally destructive blow to the English language. Having affected a mid-life career change from failed nuclear pundit to “contracted columnist to the Institute of Race Relations” Kenny’s vivid imagination proceeds to shower us with bizarre details verging on the fantastical, “I know nothing about rugby” he says before embarking upon a sorry attempt at the nitpicking obfuscation for which he is perhaps renowned. The result is a failed piece of political bumph posing-as-commentary which merely demonstrates that Kenny has zero credentials and course-work when it comes to the social and political sciences. 

 ‘Hurt, pain & Ashwin Willemse‘ deploys a scurrilous and appalling comparison between the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, (perhaps to assert a vivid fantasy life in which Kenny recently acquired a moral position on non-proliferation?), to the aforementioned Supersport incident, before proceeding to freely mix metaphors and borrowing heavily from a Nixon-era public administration pundit:

“The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low” is a saying attributed to one Wallace Sayre. It is thus rephrased as Sayre’s Law, which was all really just another patronising putdown to the students of the University of Berkeley and the victims of the Kent State massacre, and grist to the mill, for a decade of revolt which gave the world free love, women’s rights and equality. Enough to ruffle the feathers of today’s youth and our modern generation of die-hard de-colonialists?

To cap it all, there is also a strange statement released by the Freedom Front’s Pieter Groenewald “Minister of Sport and DA leader must apologise” absurdly blaming the Minister of Sport and the leader of the DA, for the incident. Apartheid collaborators are racists, full-stop. Instead Groenewald wants a fantasy-world where “people must refrain from attributing incidents where people of different races are involved to racism,” begging the question, what happens when racism isn’t about race per se but rather structural racism? The two apartheid darlings Mallet and Botha turned into on-air monuments, the post-apartheid wing, Willemse, forever in the studio shadows.

The Freedom Front shows its metal, providing uncritical support for the discredited Naspers-Multichoice and its pathetic inhouse finding on the matter, arguably, all the result of extra-judicial privileges founded upon race, and despite the matter being sub judice. The outcome of the labour proceeding in which Willemse was not represented, has been rejected by the former Springbok, as too should any similar proceedings not meeting standards of due process. There has yet to be an official inquiry into the role of sports administrators during apartheid in terms of the TRC Act, which allows the Minister of Justice to appoint special inquiries subsequent to the winding up of the first commission.

And so Multichoice grants itself a clean bill of health on apartheid

images (1)IT WAS bound to happen. The bizarre situation in which two apartheid-era springboks were taken to task by a post-democracy Springbok, over racism, quotas and paternalism. Followed by the media spin driven by Multichoice Supersport whose holding company Naspers refuses to come clean over its role in promoting separate development, race classification and segregation during the apartheid-era.

Naspers the company which owns Multichoice, ducked the subpoena handed out by the TRC to its former-director PW Botha, refused to participate in the media hearings at the commission, rebuked a group of journalists attending in their private capacity, and instead has stuck to a version of history that is anything but an accurate and fair depiction of the times.

After effectively being found guilty of gross violations of human rights by the commission, and thus a report which records  “a total lack of concern for the company’s support of the racist system” (Volume 4 of the Final TRC report), the company proceeded to deny the reality.

“I worked hard to earn my own respect in this game… so, I’m not going to be patronised by two individuals who played in apartheid – a segregated era – and come and want to undermine… people” said Ashwin Willemse after a match last month  between the Lions and the Brumbies.`

The Supersport public relations machine immediately went into overdrive. Holding their own internal inquiry, the company casually announced yesterday that it had found that “there was no racism involved in Ashwin Willemse walking out from an on-air broadcast” in the process exonerating Nick Mallett and Naas Botha, two darlings of the apartheid regime.

Apparently  SuperSport CEO Gideon Khobane maintains the group was cleared by Advocate Vincent Maleka, and thus presumably a member of the Bar. The result is anything but an open inquiry before an independent tribunal, and echoes similar statements by manager Ishmet Davidson, who claimed on air the entire group had been cleared by the TRC back in the early 90s.

Davidson’s 2015 comments followed a case-limited apology issued by Media24 CEO Esmarie Weideman citing only one instance in which a ‘coloured employee’ had experienced difficulties with separate facilities.

Talk about undermining the Truth. Willemse did not participate in the internal review for obvious reasons. The attempt to legitimize apartheid-denial by acting as sole arbiter of apartheid history, must be rejected for what it is, a total sham.

Willemse’s lawyer Nqobizitha Mlilo told SAFM radio host Tsepiso Makwetla on Wednesday morning that Willemse “did not see any value in participating with the process” because the rugby analyst had already expressed his views …”

“We expressed a view to Adv Maleka SC that he (Adv Maleka SC) was being used to sanitise and chlorinate failures by SuperSport to deal with a number of reported incidents of racism by the gentlemen in question‚”

DISCLOSURE: The writer is currently suing Naspers via the Equality Court and is awaiting the outcome of a case brought against Legal Aid South Africa in this regard.

 

 

Naspers: One week of greasing shame

THIS week saw apartheid media firm, Naspers in the news with a fresh scandal, large enough to top any previous peccadillo. The sheer amount of opinion pieces generated by South Africa’s media, and the scale and tone of the inquiry into the press is quite impressive.  It marks a turning point insofar as a shady history of decades long immunity from criticism is concerned.

At first, the opposition Democratic Alliance, once staunch allies of the firm, but now in a marriage of convenience with the EFF, sought to buttress growing metro and provincial leadership by exposing what appears to be another influence peddling scandal.

The story was quickly picked up by technology and business sites, Business Tech “R100 million influence”  MyBroadband “diabolical and secret R550 million” and Business Live “sabc greasing”, showing some disparity in the figures and eliciting Hlaudi counterspin from IOL and a series of Alec Hogg advertorials on Moneyweb “reports malicious” “Naspers not concerned” and also Business Live “not involved”

The op-eds from Daily Maverick and Business Day “cannot wash hands” soon followed.

That Multichoice is involved in a number of corrupt political deals harks back to the founding of the pay channel company under Naspers director PW Botha. The story is not unique so far as this outlet is concerned.

The company simply moved from state capture under the National Party, to state capture under the ANC. All documented here. Massive pay-offs to those in power with the ability to make decisions, appears to have been the norm. Significant too, are the latest attempts by Naspers subsidiary Media24, itself involved in a variety of scandals, to dodge the broader implications of its boardroom being interwoven with  a “corrupt nexus” involving Multichoice, to use former editor of the Weekly Mail and adjunct professor of journalism Anton Harber’s term.

Harber who recently moved from his academic post to eTV, an entity itself involved with Multichoice (via Remgro and Kagiso), a little out of character but unsurprisingly given his recent tenure, appears to have equivocated on the issue by writing what can only be termed a Daily Maverick fluff piece in defence of Naspers, urging the company to face up to the charges while painting a picture of an apartheid firm which miraculously transformed itself.

The piece is unfortunately devoid of facts and appears to ignore my own case against the company, and thus the belated apology issued by CEO Esmerie Weideman.  Advertising agency executive Deon Wiggett wasn’t having any of this. The founder and creative director of Fairly Famous, “a progressive advertising agency” didn’t buy the spin doctoring and produced what can be called the best roasting of Koos Bekker in the press yet.

Huffington Post, a title owned by Media24 dutifully carried Yunus Carrim’s brief rebuttal of Bekker’s denial.   (and Moneyweb interview here)

The Naspers board issued a statement, proclaiming their 80% owned child to be autonomous, with their shared directors ring-fenced on paper by the law, while major Naspers shareholder Sanlam issued a similar denial of responsiblity. Bob van Dijk’s “its not our problem” defence in this regard can only be described as bizarre.

US law firm Pomerantz announces it is investigating Naspers on behalf of Paypal investors, for securities fraud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Apartheid Guns & Money

apartheid_guns_money_covWITH the current national fixation on “state capture”, public fascination with the intrigues of the Zuma administration and calumny surrounding the Guptas, it is easy to forget the blueprint for graft was laid decades earlier. Apartheid, Guns & Money, a 600+ page doorstop of a book by Hennie van Vuuren, and published by Jacana Press, debunks several popular myths associated with the past regime — that corruption is a purely racial phenomenon, that apartheid South Africa was an “isolated state”, that democratic freedom signalled a break from the past, that the defeat of apartheid was inevitable and that we cannot undo this wrong.

Van Vuuren reveals in painstaking detail, utilising research garnered from recently declassified documents and interviews with key players, how a secret economy — “a global covert network of nearly 50 countries was constructed to counter sanctions” and “allies in corporations, banks, governments and intelligence agencies” helped move cash, illegally supplied weapons for the apartheid money for arms machine. ‘In the process whistleblowers were assassinated and ordinary people suffered.’

Revealing a ‘hidden past in a time of oppression”, the work is a masterful coup, providing details on the Special Defence Account (SDA), long the bane of the anti-apartheid movement. An investigation into the assassination of activist Dulcie September is both poignant and long overdue. Dulcie was “not just murdered she was erased.” Obtaining a copy of the TRC investigation unit’s report into the murder, kept under lock and key for 20 years by Dept of Justice officials ‘took an enormous effort by a team of lawyers and the South African history archive’.

The full extent of the apartheid enterprise under PW Botha and Magnus Malan et al, will come as a shock, as we finally discover the details of the secret projects, many of which were only alluded to in proceedings of the TRC, and its 3000+ page report prefaced by an awkward explanation that many documents pertinent to the proceedings had already been destroyed.

It is an extremely disturbing picture which emerges, the more so since it speaks, both to a current generation, for whom the machinations and covert nature of the regime will come as a surprise, as too survivors, many of whom may have been too young to appreciate the high level of manipulation occurring. That the TRC report has its failings can be seen in the statement by Van Vuuren, that not all documents were destroyed by Armscor in Project Masada. There also appear to be tonnes of documents sequestered in archives such as that of the National Party, and this begs the question on what is being done to preserve South Africa’s heritage of the past struggle for future generations.

Sections on “Naspers: the tap root of the National Party” vindicate my own investigation into the subject, as does the discovery of correspondence by one Ton Vosloo gifting the National Party with ample funding. The role of PW Botha, as a Naspers board-member, is also aptly described, as too the controversial incident involving his company’s opposition to the TRC, (the appearance of 127 apartheid collaborators who walked away from the commission, as conscientious journalists) and it is trite that many of the corporate entities upon which the late Anton Rupert sat, and related to the enterprise, like that of Christo Wiese, were also involved in the regime. But according to van Vuuren, nothing has emerged yet from the recently discovered archives, directly linking the Rupert family to the PW Botha administration and earlier Nat administrations, save for his generous donations to party successor FW de Klerk.

One cannot help thinking that any story about Federale Volksbellegings and sanctions-busting would be incomplete without relating the history of one of its founders. It thus appears the author has either not read Anton’s own biography about “the organisation that finally lured Rupert away from academia”– or has sought to downplay the Rupert factor for some political reason, as they say, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. This failing, minor in comparison to the great work in uncovering details of the SDA speaks to the need for peer review and perhaps a more scientific approach to the puzzle. There are still quite a few surprises in store for readers, and especially related to covert information regarding previously unknown collaborators and I won’t give the game away by relating all the dirt here, suffice to add that Apartheid Guns & Money is certainly a great start for information activists and a must have in any private collection of apartheid arcana, and deserves to be made available to scholars via public and academic libraries.

 

Huffington need look no further than its own masters

screenshot_2017-02-16_11-14-08HUFFINGTON POST need look no further than inside the offices of its local owners at the Naspers Building, where portraits of apartheid theologian DF Malan were openly displayed near the editors office, as late as 2006 when I attended an Eidos training course.

Two portraits that of Naspers founder JBM Hertzog and Perskor business partner H F Verwoerd are depicted in the piece published by Huffington.

By attempting an investigation of apartheid artwork, in a curious piece seemingly giving the appearance of editorial distance from the problem of their own association, the company is merely playing into the hands of those at Naspers who would revise history. The article fails to disclose Huffington’s business connection and involvement, and unfolds as if the portraits shown are merely that of some troublesome politicians.

Naspers itself has redacted its online corporate history to avoid uncomfortable questions surrounding director PW Botha.

No Mr Du Toit, you’re not investigating mere ‘apartheid art, you’re investigating your own history — the history of the self-same company instrumental in the creation of apartheid and the resulting tragedy which unfolded.

Recently Naspers directors have appeared at pains to create the impression they are the heroes not the antagonists of the struggle for freedom. The historical record is a little different and shows that Naspers were indicted on crimes against humanity and gross violations under apartheid by the TRC. The piece is consistent with the campaign of opposition to accountability.

In bringing the Huffington Post to South Africa, Naspers have gained an English language daily online title. They need to be reminded apartheid is still a crime, whatever the language, and whichever the colour of the ‘alternative facts’ procured by the Deputy-Editor.