Respected journalist Max du Preez was axed this week by the SABC. This is his version of the events of the past 10 days
“He who is scared of a hyena’s howling, is he who has smeared himself with fat” – old Shona proverb.
Forgive me, I have just discovered a book on Shona proverbial lore and wisdom. Like a melody that sometimes gets stuck in your head, these ancient African wisdoms keep coming up in my mind when I contemplate the madness that has engulfed me this past week.
Like: “The cheetah enjoys pulling others around, but when it is being pulled around, it complains that its spots get soiled.”
And: “If a blind man walks without a walking stick, he is inviting people to question him.” Or: “If you make a deal over a dog in secret, tomorrow you will fight over the leash.”
I would like to tell you what really happened at your public broadcaster over the past 10 days. (Don’t read on if you haven’t paid your TV licence.)
But for those of you who are bored by the SABC/Max du Preez soap opera, here’s the truth in a nutshell: I was unceremoniously axed from the SABC by the new management of television news because it was easy.
No great conspiracy. No evil politician giving the orders. And the fact that my skin is pale and my mother tongue is Afrikaans was largely irrelevant. There was no master plan and no Machiavellian strategy.
It was simply the easiest option, because it has worked so easily so many times in the recent past – inside and outside the SABC. I did not fit into the new bosses’ neat little picture of a uniform, disciplined corps of soldiers who would blindly and unquestioningly execute the orders of the hierarchy. It’s almost become a knee-jerk reaction: if someone irritates you, remove him, redeploy him, destroy him. A campaign to discredit the victim will quickly confuse the critics and, anyway, the bad publicity will blow over in a few days. We’re untouchable and those who are not with us are against us.
That’s exactly why you should be interested in the saga of the sacking of one hapless journalist. Because it is a simple case study of a culture that is slowly taking hold in our country. Perhaps I should say “taking hold again”, because this comes straight from the owner’s manual of the Afrikaner Broederbond in its heyday.
But there’s fun in the detail. Allow me to tell you the story.
Perhaps the story starts when one of the most honourable of all South African journalists, Joe Thloloe, was unceremoniously kicked out as head of television news (TVN). Or perhaps it should start when his replacement, veteran newsman Allister Sparks, suddenly got the big kick and was replaced by the much less experienced Philip “Chippa” Molefe.
But where the story really gets momentum is when the power structure of SABC news was broadened with more men with titles. The energetic and once much-admired Bulgarian graduate and Umkhonto weSizwe commissar, Snuki Zikalala, became head of the project to co-ordinate radio and television news; and a stalwart from the days when PW Botha ruled the SABC newsroom, Themba Mthembu, became Molefe’s deputy. Molefe is “editor-in- chief” of TVN, Mthembu became “head of news and current affairs”. Instant fat cars, privileged parking spaces, fancy offices.
Mthembu clearly thought his time had come. No more Christo Kritzingers treating him like a lapdog – the wheel had turned. Within days of his appointment Mthembu – probably with some help from his friends higher up – sidelined TVN general manager Vasu Moodley.
And then the Mthembu decrees came: he would now sign off on all ideas for programmes or documentaries, editorially as well as budgets. The tried and tested international system of executive producers as programme editors had now virtually become redundant. Mthembu had now become Christo Kritzinger, with an equal disrespect for those who are the heart of the SABC: the journalists.
On Special Assignment we reluctantly saw more and more editorial freedom and integrity slip away week after week. We resisted meekly, but the new management was flexing its muscles more blatantly every week and the process seemed inevitable. We began to realise that resistance was not working, so we changed tactics to sweet compliments and bonding sessions. It backfired. Mthembu mistook it for weakness and submissiveness.
Something had to give. So in the late afternoon of March 30, Mthembu marched into the offices of Special Assignment and declared that he would not allow that evening’s programme on witchcraft to be broadcast. The two black freelance producers had used “offensive visuals” – the slaughtering of a goat during a ritual – and they “confused witches with sangomas”. He ordered that the previous week’s programme be rebroadcast. (Molefe this week said the slaughtering of the goat would have offended “a million vegetarian Muslims”.)
I was in Harare doing a documentary on President Robert Mugabe (that’s where I got the book on Shona proverbs). I rushed back the next morning and wrote a memo to the head of television, Molefe Mokgatle, as well as Molefe and Mthembu. I said I regarded Mthembu’s decision as “a grave error of judgement” and an embarrassment to us and the SABC, and asked Mokgatle to work out a procedure to be followed before a programme could be ripped off the air at the last minute.
The two producers, Bibi Lethola and Muzi Sithebe, took their gripes to the newspaper Sunday World. Molefe told the newspaper the documentary was “factually inaccurate”. Editor Fred Khumalo watched the documentary, found it “gripping television”, did not get confused between sangomas and witches, and stated: “The canning of the programme … is an autocratic abuse of power, a reversal of gains we, as a society, have made with regard to extending freedom of the press and freedom of information.”
Khumalo’s words meant the end of my career at the SABC. That Sunday afternoon at a braai, a friend reported to me the next day, Zikalala and Molefe boasted, beer in hand, how they were going to crush me and my programme. Somebody had to pay for the embarrassment and they couldn’t make Khumalo pay.
Ironically, that same weekend, Special Assignment was the only current affairs programme – there are seven on five different TV channels – to get any mention at the annual Avanti Awards. We won six awards and a special mention for consistent high-quality journalism.
Alarmed by the news and growing rumours, my colleagues and I tried to see Molefe or anybody else in power, but we were clearly avoided. On April 15, I sent an urgent fax to the group chief executive of the SABC, Reverend Hawu Mbatha, pleading for an audience. A few hours later my colleagues Jacques Pauw, Shenid Bhayroo and I met with Mbatha, Zikalala and the crown prince who will become the new head of all the SABC’s news services, Enoch Sithole.
The three men faked complete surprise at our concerns, but when I volunteered the news of the conversation at the braai, Sithole stated that Molefe had briefed him that the only concern was that our contracts should be “renegotiated to re- establish editorial control”. Mbatha, who constantly wore a smile and clearly had no idea what was going on, said: “The SABC is a decent and disciplined organisation. Nobody gets to the end of his contract to find he has no job.”
“So we are just being paranoid, Reverend?” I asked.
The three men smiled and nodded their heads.
Relieved, we made our way back to our offices. Five minutes later I was summoned to Molefe’s office. When I walked in, he thrust a piece of paper in my hands. It stated simply: “This letter serves to notify that the SABC has decided not to renew the existing contract or to conclude a new one.”
I was stunned. I asked him: “Why do you do this?”
Molefe, pacing his office in a highly agitated state, constantly sipping water from a glass and not once looking me in the eye, said I did not respect TVN management, I had become arrogant and impossible to work with.
“How would you know, Phil, I haven’t seen you or talked to you in more than six weeks?” I asked.
Then it came out: I “use the press” against him, and I wrote my memo of complaint about the witchcraft programme to his superior and not to him. “If you want to work for Molefe Mokgatle or the board, then go work for them. You will never work for Philip Molefe again,” he roared. He also said that when I arrived for an appointment with him the previous day and he wasn’t there – he again simply didn’t pitch – I had “threatened” his secretary that I would go to the press if he didn’t meet with me.
It got more bizarre: I refused to hand over to news editor Chris Bishop visuals shot of a kangaroo court in Cape Town by one of the Special Assignment team members, shouted Molefe. I remember Bishop asking me. I told him it was the heart of a documentary to be broadcast next week and that we would produce an item for the news bulletin on the day. I thought Bishop had accepted my explanation.
“You defied me!” declared an emotional Molefe.
By the time I got to my office, the news was all over the SABC. An hour later a Beeld correspondent phoned me at Pauw’s house, where my shocked team was gathered.
“I believe you were fired?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Now here’s a problem. Officially no reason was given. But if I didn’t tell what I was told, people would wonder if perhaps I stole money or something. So I told him, and soon afterwards the other newspapers called.
This Wednesday, Molefe told me he would possibly have reinstated me if I hadn’t “run to the newspapers”. (Last Sunday Molefe told City Press my contract “was not renewed because it had expired”.)
I sent Mbatha a fax reminding him of his reassurance that nobody would lose his job like this, and asked why he had lied to me. He convened a meeting with me, with specific instructions that I came alone. I walked in to find him flanked by the SABC’s lawyer and a human resources man, plus Sithole and Zikalala.
When I reminded him of his statement, the still smiling reverend said: “But you did not get to the end of your contract to find you did not have a job. You still have two weeks to go.” He even suggested I had myself broken my contract by speaking to the press after I was fired.
The biggest surprise was that Zikalala then told us Molefe had not decided to get rid of me, but that the decision was made by “TVN management” who then told Molefe to execute it. Who is “TVN management”, and when was the decision taken, I asked, but lawyer Ronnie Bracks ordered Zikalala not to answer the question.
I told Mbatha there and then it was now clear that Zikalala and Sithole knew that the decision to fire me had already been taken when they met me the first time and that they clearly had so little respect for him and his position that they allowed him to tell my colleagues and me that everything was just fine. When they nodded that we were “just paranoid”, they – or at least Zikalala – had already been part of a decision that I be fired.
I proceeded to tell Mbatha the full story of all the events, even dispelling the malicious rumours that “TVN management” had started spreading about me.
I think he believed me, because he said: “If you tell Phil Molefe what you told me now, he would listen, and he’s the only one who can reinstate you.”
He ordered another meeting between Molefe and myself, at which meeting Molefe tersely told me he wasn’t going to reinstate me or discuss the reasons for my dismissal.
I told Mbatha that this scandal was now a lot bigger than just the ending of my contract and asked him to involve the board of the SABC. He could not, he replied, “because the board did not have the line function to deal with your contract”.
But the real madness was still to follow. On Monday evening this week I was sitting in my SABC office when a TV news reporter brought me the script of the evening’s news bulletins, edited by Themba Mthembu. It was about my dismissal and it read: “Molefe has again refused to discuss the matter with the media. It’s however believed that Du Preez’s contract was not renewed because of several incidents of gross insubordination towards management.
“This included the incident in which he swore at the head of news and current affairs, Themba Mthembu, in the newsroom.”
I was shocked. I told the reporter to tell Mthembu that the story was complete nonsense and that I was still in my office one floor down from him so I was available to respond.
Mthembu’s response was to then add to the story: “Shocked members of staff saw an irate Du Preez in the middle of the newsroom pointing a middle finger at Mthembu and using an F- word. Du Preez later apologised and said he did not mean to insult Mthembu and said `F- SABC3′.” The bulletin went out on all channels.
The incident he referred to happened in February. He was sitting on a table in the newsroom surrounded by journalists when he called me over. He demanded an explanation for a change in our schedule, which I gave him. He replied that I wasn’t speaking the truth. I said it wasn’t a matter of opinion, the whole thing had already been broadcast, so he could simply draw the tape from the library and check it himself.
SABC3 staff had told him a different version, he replied. I was deeply annoyed by his tone and accusations, and said: “Well, fuck SABC3 if they don’t even watch their own programmes.”
“I take umbrage at your language,” he said.
“I don’t give a fuck what you think of my language,” I said and walked off.
That was it: the kind of robust interaction that happens every week in every newsroom in the world around the pressures of deadline time.
Later the same evening someone told me Mthembu was upset, so I wrote a proper apology to him and explained why I said what I said. In the days afterwards, my team and I had extremely cordial meetings with Mthembu and Molefe. The incident never came up again until the news bulletin two months later.
I think using the public broadcaster’s news channels to defame one of its own staff with whom it was in a labour dispute, without giving that person a chance to respond, is the most blatant abuse I have ever experienced in 26 years of journalism.
This whole drama was unpleasant in the extreme, but there is one big plus: the overwhelming support I am receiving from a large number of black and many white journalists at the SABC and at newspapers, as well as a groundswell from members of the public in calls to radio talk shows and messages to my office. There was even a special meeting in Newtown on Wednesday attended by about 70 journalists, activists and ordinary members of the public to protest at my dismissal, and the campaign of the Friends of the Public Broadcaster is being followed up.
Wherever I walk in the streets of Johannesburg, people of all colours and classes and ages stop me, all with the same message: what was done was outrageous. Don’t take it lying down. Someone should fight this kind of abuse. I agree with them but I wish it could have been someone else this time.
What is to be done now?
There can be no doubt whatsoever that this was a classic case of grossly unfair labour practice. But that is more of a private matter, and eventually the SABC will pay me out. They don’t mind – it’s taxpayers’ money after all. All they want to do is stall for as long as they can.
But I think it is crucial for the SABC board to intervene as soon as possible and launch proper investigations into the whole series of abuses committed by TVN management. How could they axe one of their most senior journalists heading one of their most successful and prestigious programmes with no notice, warning or hearing? How could they allow one or two senior managers to take such radical steps purely according to their own likes and dislikes? How could they show such contempt to their own chief executive by lying to him repeatedly? How they could abuse the public broadcaster’s own news bulletins for their own private vendettas?
I think this is bigger than just a matter for the SABC board. I cannot see how the Independent Broadcasting Authority can escape getting involved in this scandal.
This stopped being a case of the unfair dismissal of a journalist. This goes to the heart of the spirit of being a public broadcaster. It has severe implications affecting free and independent journalism.
The entire news and programming staff of the SABC is in shock because of this. There is a general acknowledgment that if my dismissal is simply going to blow over, every single journalist and producer would know: I better behave. I could be next. Anticipate what management wants and do it like that, or face the axe. It is pure intimidation.
But it is also important for public life outside the SABC that this kind of abuse should not be tolerated.
As I said earlier, I was in Harare just before this drama began. I got a sense of what Mugabe and his cronies in the inner circle of Zanu-PF have done to Zimbabwean society.
I smelled Mugabe in the corridors of the SABC this past week. South Africa cannot afford it.