The Mail & Guardian this week faced a new legal assault on its right to investigate and publish information relating to financial flows surrounding the payment of R15-million by PetroSA to African National Congress-aligned oil company Imvume Management in December 2003.
On Wednesday lawyers for Imvume and Imvume director Sandi Majali gave notice of their intention to seek an urgent interdict restraining the M&G from ”in any manner utilising, pursuing investigations or communicating with any person” in regard to any of the information contained in or issues raised by documentation relating to Imvume’s bank account.
The company’s financial records are key to understanding its political links.
Imvume alleges the documentation — which included an extract from Imvume’s bank statements showing how R11-million of the R15-million was transferred to the ANC within days — was private information and unlawfully obtained.
The company is also seeking an order compelling the M&G to disclose the details and description of any documents relating to Imvume’s bank account and interdicting the paper from publishing any information relating to these bank accounts.
The M&G will not reveal information that will in any way compromise the confidentiality of its sources.
M&G attorney Pam Stein said the order being sought against the M&G and its journalists was extremely far-reaching: ”It goes to the essence of freedom of expression and the right and duty of the media to inform the public about matters that are so clearly in the public interest.
”If granted it will have the effect of preventing the newspaper at any time in the future from investigating or publishing any matter concerning Majali or Imvume’s financial affairs.
”The order sought also has serious implications for the protection of information obtained by journalists in confidence. It may be that it is time now for our law to recognise a special journalists’ privilege attaching to confidential sources of information.”
Two weeks ago the M&G was gagged by an order of the Johannesburg High Court as it finished its main print run. The order was sought by Imvume and Majali, who objected to details from Imvume’s bank account being published, saying it was private.
Quoting from the leading precedent on this issue, a ruling against the Financial Mail, which tried to publish information derived from recordings of confidential board discussions, Judge Vas Soni held that the applicants’ right to privacy outweighed the public’s right to know.
His decision concerned the M&G’s report about payments by Imvume to a company owned by the brother of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Minister of Minerals and Energy, and to a company renovating a house belonging to Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya and his wife.
The judge found the story’s public interest did not outweigh the privacy considerations, but noted that he might have ruled differently on the original story about R11-million going to the ANC.
The order was discharged on Tuesday this week after details of the M&G’s exposÃ