So South Africa’s most notorious journalist, Ranjeni Munusamy, has officially crossed the line.
Munusamy was a conspicuous member of Schabir Shaik’s team at the Durban High Court last week where she was seen quarrelling with journalists about a leaked defence document.
While her affiliation with the Shaik brothers is no surprise, it is harder to establish the exact service she provides. She says she is no spin doctor, because ”she does not spin to journalists”.
The Shaiks do not pay her. She is just ”part of the defence team”.
Munusamy says she was asked to assist in the ”public management” of the case, including ”accounting to a broader African National Congress constituency who have been bludgeoned by the media’s biased projection”.
Munusamy says she runs her own communications company, Ranjeni Communications, although she was present throughout the gargantuan corruption trial of Schabir Shaik, which ended last week.
But she does explain that the communications work she does is not ”orthodox”. Rather it involves research, document planning and trouble-shooting.
Munusamy had her 15 minutes of fame as the journalist who nearly destroyed the reputation of former director of national prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka by insisting on reporting that he might have been an apartheid spy.
When her then employer, the Sunday Times, refused to publish, she went to City Press. The latter was later forced to retract and apologise to Ngcuka.
Munusamy said her destiny had become entangled with the Shaik case, ”the most important political event since the 1994 elections”. ”Journalists have done nothing but vilify the deputy president. We had to find alternative forms of communication.”
Her passion for the deputy president is unmistakable, because she adds that the slander directed against Jacob Zuma ”is worse than anything that could ever have been directed against an apartheid leader”.
So, only two things are certain about the debate over whether Zuma will succeed Thabo Mbeki as president: Munusamy will have a job and Zuma will not struggle to find a good ”spin doctor”.
