Mail &Guardian reporter
The National Party has lost its appeal against a decision by the press ombudsman that the Mail & Guardian was justified in publishing details of a police investigation into its leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
The article published last year (April 30 to May 7)under the headline “NP leader in bizarre sex probe” reported how a Western Cape criminal, John Hermanus, had laid charges of sodomy against Van Schalkwyk, whom he claimed had paid him R20 for sex.
The NP based its appeal on the fact that laying a charge did not amount to placing the matter in the public domain and that the article negatively affected both the NP and Van Schalkwyk’s reputation.
It also said that because Zubeida Jaffer, of Independent Newspapers, wrote an article slamming the M&G for “besmirching the reputation” of South African media, and Western Cape Attorney General Frank Khan called the article “a low ebb in journalism”, the article posed more than a personal crisis for Van Schalkwyk.
The NP claimed that the only reason the M&G published the story was a political motive to smear Van Schalkwyk. But the ombudsman’s appeal panel found the M&G had “truthfully and accurately covered a story about allegations it considered to be untrue”.