M&G Crime Correspondent Angella Johnson, who spent 10 years working on papers like The Guardian, London Times and Los Angeles Times, finds herself at loggerheads with the SAPS
`Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.”
These apposite words from American writer James Thurber may have been written with the South African Police Service in mind. For despite a commitment to “transparency and accountability”, getting information from the SAPS is like romancing a virgin in a chastity belt.
Within a short while of taking up my post as crime correspondent for the Mail & Guardian, I was made aware of the enormity of my task in eliciting assistance by a police press officer.
I wanted to know if the SAPS had an update regarding the three escaped Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging bomb- ers. “You have to send us a fax with the question and we’ll fax a response,” the representative told me. I was so flabbergasted, I asked if he had difficulty remembering the question.
You see, not once in 10 years of journalism (including eight years with The Guardian newspaper in London, one year on the London Times and a two- month stint on the Los Angeles Times) had a police representative made such a demand. Yet here it is de rigueur, adding to the already difficult task of good crime reporting.
Without wishing to labour the point too much, here’s another classic example: I wanted figures for cars hijacked in Johannesburg each month. One press officer not only insisted on a fax, but claimed it would take days to collate the information.
Undaunted, I approached another representative in the same department. “No problem,” he said, “I’ll get a computer printout and call you back.” When the phone rang some 30 minutes later, he was apologetic. “You’re not going to believe this,” he laughed. “I have the information in my hand, but I’ve been told not to fax it to you until you send me a faxed request.”
The SAPS seems unable to move away from its past. It is not as if there is a shortage of personnel. There are 58 press officers working in its media liaison departments at national and provincial level. Yet twice in the past two months I have been forced to drop stories because the press officers said it was too difficult, time-consuming or expensive to get certain information.
I hasten to add that there are many police officers who want to be helpful, and some who even go out of their way to assist. Then there are those who have all the finesse of a “third force” bully bent on sabotage. Here I am specifically referring to a verbal assault on my person from within National Police Commissioner George Fivaz’s office, which might have been more appropriate in a banana republic.
Where else would I expect to be called “a pseudo- journalist”, told to “get off my arse” and attend police press conferences, accused of being a “British colonialist” (my ancestors, I’m reliably informed, were Ghananian, taken as slaves to the Caribbean) and have the phone slammed down on me by an official who insisted on calling me “babe”.
This volley of abuse came from Craig Kotze, special media adviser to Fivaz , after I had complained that he was blocking information regarding the names of white-collar criminals who have fled the country.
The information had been painstakingly collected by a press officer after a request from me on a Monday morning. Yet on the Wednesday (our deadline day), I was being told Kotze had instructed (on the commissioner’s behalf) that the information be witheld from me for “operational” reasons.
Kotze, a one-time crime reporter with The Star who left to join the police, was part of the apartheid police apparatus as spokesman for the ministry of former police minister Adriaan Vlok and his successor, Hernus Kriel. Shortly after Sydney Mufamadi became safety and security minister, he decided not to renew Kotze’s contract.
Although he is held in contempt by several senior journalists who have over the years been subjected to his sometimes hysterical outbursts, he landed himself a powerful staff job within the SAPS media department.
According to one senior SAPS representative, he fires off orders on the commissoner’s behalf that often make it difficult for them to do their jobs. “We don’t even know if what he says is true.”
I know Kotze prevented the M&G publishing a report of the SAPS “Sword and Shield” plan by refusing to give me an advance copy — the document was released on a Thursday at 2pm; we put the paper to bed at 12 noon and publish on a Friday.
Kotze’s comments after suggesting I “beg” for the document: “Why should I give you a scoop?” and “How do I know you won’t pass it on to another paper?”
I am amazed that someone with a reputation for using bombast and rhetoric to stonewall should be one of the public faces of the SAPS. The service has a bad enough reputation to overcome without senior officers firing off abuse at media representatives trying to do their jobs.