Minister Malusi Gigaba says he has no knowledge of the account opened in his name
The Mail & Guardian and especially Sam Sole have, over the past three years, churned out unamusing and unsubstantiated assertions and allegations in a vain attempt to depict Minister Malusi Gigaba unfavourably.
With no justification whatsoever, Sole recently referred to the minister as “feckless” (SAA’s boundless flights of fancy). The M&G celebrates Sole as an investigative reporter, but it seems he has become an opinion columnist.
Yet, even at the height of Sole’s “investigative” work, the types of questions directed at the minister suggested that the “investigators” had preconceived notions about him and would not have been moved even by the merits of the answers we may have provided.
Of the speculative journalism Sole has spearheaded, a standout was the M&G‘s lead story of March 22 2013, which suggested that the resignation of SAA board members under the minister’s stewardship was a result of some “R10-billion tender”.
This was after we had extensively listed the challenges at SAA and after the board chairperson herself had stated her reasons for resigning. Sole ignored these inputs and rather stuck with an imaginative story that suited his predisposition.
The story was, of course, that all was not well because the minister, then in charge of public enterprises, was involved. Fortunately, the M&G ombudsman, Franz Krüger, questioned the substance of Sole’s story. Krüger said that “the story was frustrating in that it provided very little substance”.
Although I personally provided Sole with the facts, he swept them aside because they did not fit his predisposition, and (who knows?) may have exposed the fabrication he took for an exposé?
I did bring this predisposition, giving journalism a bad name, to the attention of the then editor of the M&G, Nic Dawes, stating the pitfalls of allowing his reporters to believe us all to be involved in some impropriety.
The M&G ombudsman affirmed my concerns by stating: “This story is not the only example of a kind of investigative approach, increasingly common, that presents a series of vague and complex connections that may suggest something improper – or they may not. It is too easy for the writer’s conviction that something is wrong to drive the supposition and inference in particular directions.”
We have never received an apology from the M&G. Instead, we get an unwarranted tirade, with Sole labelling the minister as “feckless” and referring to his tenure at the department of public enterprises as “chaotic”. Once again we are subjected to the “conviction[s]” of a highly emotional “investigative” reporter, with the facts swept aside.
Sole did much to ignore the fact that the department had achieved a clean audit and 83% of its targets. He ignored, for reasons best known to him, the fact that, of the eight state-owned enterprises falling under the department, six have become profitable – a huge improvement that should attest to the dedication and commitment of the minister to building a better life for all South Africans.
One cannot alter Sole’s predisposition, but I would only hope that whatever assertions and aspersions he casts are backed by evidence and some modicum of substance.
Mayihlome Tshwete is Malusi Gigaba’s spokesperson