The controversial lawyer who has helped steer the HRC’s media probe kept a low profile at the hearings this week
Jaspreet Kindra
Christine Qunta, the prominent Cape Town attorney, wore several caps at the South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) hearings into racism in the media this week.
Not only has she been identified as the mastermind of the role played by the Black Lawyers Association (BLA) in the media racism probe, but she has also been hired by the SABC for her services during the hearing.
It is not the first time Qunta has played a number of roles in the same arena. As the head of the Cape Town-based law firm Qunta Ntsebeza, she represented Don Mkhwanazi, the former chair of the Central Energy Fund, during the scandal surrounding his appointment of controversial Liberian politician Emanuel Shaw II as a state oil adviser. Qunta also represented former minister of minerals and energy Penuell Maduna in his protracted fight with former auditor general Henri Kluever over the state oil accounts – a fight that started when Shaw, then an unofficial confidant of the minister, helped Maduna investigate officials at the state oil company.
It is now 16 months since the BLA and the Association of Black Accountants of South Africa (Abasa) filed their original complaint of racism against the Mail & Guardian and the Sunday Times. The original complaint focused on an analysis of articles from 1996, and did not mention the oil saga or any more recent M&G articles, but these reports featured among the 33 articles which the groups cited at the HRC hearings this week as examples of “racist” reporting.
This week the BLA and Abasa, the main formal complainants at the hearings, struggled to identify “racism” in 33 of the M&G’s exposs into corruption, which they suggested dealt only with blacks. The racially exclusive organisations said corruption perpetuated by blacks “is no longer a corruption story”.
They further claimed that corruption reports involving whites always ended up with inconclusive findings. Represented by Hale Qangule, the deputy president of Abasa, and advocate Essop Patel, the organisations claimed the reports were largely based on hearsay.
Their attack was thrown off course by HRC chair Barney Pityana’s comment that such stories might be described merely as examples of “poor, sloppy journalism”, and not necessarily the product of racism. “No, it is racist,” the complainants insisted, without providing reasons.
When the M&G’s legal representative, Azhar Cachalia, pointed out that many of the 33 reports had been written by black journalists, the complainants said that was immaterial, as they had been studying the impact of the reports on readers.
And when asked by one of the panellists, Charlotte McClain, if they had sought to raise the issue with the newspaper, they conceded that they had not.
The BLA and Abasa said the M&G and the Sunday Times had been chosen by the organisations merely to illustrate racism in the media; it was not an attempt to identify individuals and charge them with racism. A senior BLA source said Qunta has been heading “the project” for “some time now”.
Meanwhile, the SABC’s chief executive for television, Enoch Sithole, told the M&G this week that Qunta had been hired as a consultant by the broadcaster to compile and write its final submission, based on reports submitted by SABC employees on racism encountered within their work environment. Sithole said that since it was unlikely that the HRC would have wound up its hearings this week, the public broadcaster would probably present its submission over the course of the next few weeks.
While Patel refused to divulge who was instructing him, Qangule confirmed that Qunta was one of the individuals he had been interacting with.
A senior African National Congress member with a legal background describes Qunta as an Africanist: “It seems to be the right thing to be nowadays.”
The source, commenting on the “increasingly closer ties” that Qunta and the BLA enjoyed with the party leadership, said it was “ironic”, as the BLA’s exclusively Africanist agenda “stands for all that the party’s Freedom Charter was against”.
Qunta spent most of her time in exile in Zimbabwe and Australia, where she studied and practised law. On her return she linked up with Black Consciousness activists such as Thami Mazwai and advocate Mojanku Gumbi, legal adviser to President Thabo Mbeki.
According to Pityana, Qunta, who he confirmed comes from a Black Consciousness background, was his contemporary at the University of the Western Cape.
Qunta, a regular columnist in Business Day, once wrote about the Madam & Eve cartoons that “on the subject of racism and racial oppression, it is not advisable to have a sense of humour”. She further wrote: “It is so popular because it is a relationship that is instantly recognisable, ubiquitous and therefore comfortable. Fundamentally, it is a relationship of inequality and control.
“In any case, popularity, especially mass popularity, has never been a recommendation of style.”
Qunta does not mince words while elucidating her opinion on the “Eurocentric” world view. She writes in one of her columns, while agonising over South African children’s lack of exposure to African culture, that she will fly her children to Johannesburg to watch Mbongeni Ngema’s play The Zulu and laments that African and white children are being “forced to read and watch plays by a European fossil like Shakespeare who has as much relevance in South Africa as a play about reindeers in the North Pole”.
The BLA was formed in 1974, and now says it has a membership of between 600 and 800. Members are supposed to pay an annual membership fee of R300, in addition to a branch fee, which varies from R800 per annum in Johannesburg, to R200 and R300 in other provinces, but this week the BLA’s Johannesburg office said its membership lists had not been updated for some time because many members had yet to pay. BLA chair Jake Moloi, however, points out that it is difficult to ascertain the organisation’s strength as it has candidate attorney forums and chapters in university campuses.
Our submission
Full copies of the M&G’s submissions to the HRCcan be found on our website: www.mg.co.za