Howard Barrell
A company employing the brothers of Western Cape African National Congress leader Ebrahim Rasool produced a controversial poster distributed in Muslim areas of the Cape Flats two weeks ago carrying the slogan “A vote for the DA [Democratic Alliance] is a vote for Israel”, according to sources in the printing industry in Cape Town.
Two of Rasool’s brothers, employed by Amazon Media, a Cape Town artwork company, delivered the positives to Tandym Print CC on November 11, after which the printed posters were delivered to Allies Printing Services to have backboards attached, according to the Mail & Guardian’s sources. The finished posters appeared on lampposts the next day, causing an outcry.
The posters, as published, did not carry the name and address of whoever was responsible for them, nor those of the company that had printed them, as is required by law.
The posters merely stated: “Printed for Friends of Palestine.”
All three companies have denied any role in producing the offending poster. Ebrahim Rasool said yesterday: “The ANC (Western Cape) has repeatedly put on record that it has nothing to do with the poster … We stand by this.”
The M&G is in possession of a copy of a document obtained from sources in Tandym that provides a list of print orders from Amazon Media for posters for ANC candidates in the forthcoming local government elections. At the end of the list is an additional, atypical entry, marked: “A1 Posters (DA) … 1?000”.
The DA told the M&G it had not given any orders for posters to either Amazon or Tandym. There have, moreover, been no posters carrying the ANC’s and/or Tandym’s imprint attacking the DA.
The M&G’s sources at Tandym said the document referred to the print order for the A1-sized anti-DA poster that suggested the party supported Israel. The sources added that the printing job had been overseen on November 11 by the factory manager at the company, David Carlse. The print order was common knowledge among staff, they said.
Carlse said on Thursday, however, that he had no recollection of any such print run. Jerome Morkel, part owner of Tandym, denied his company had printed it, adding later in his conversation with the M&G on the general issue of whether his company had produced it: “I just can’t comment at this stage.”
Rasool’s brothers who work at Amazon were not available for comment. But Adli Jacobs, the company’s project manager, said Amazon “categorically denies that it produced the poster in question”. Naieema Parker, for Allies, said: “Allies has no knowledge of this poster. It never came through Allies. But hypothetically, if Allies had done it I would not be in a position to tell you.”
Ebrahim Rasool said he resented continued attempts to “embroil us in this controversy”. It was, he said, a plot by the DA. “Maybe it’s time that they broke their silence and condemned the killing of so many Palestinians. This is the real issue,” he said.