How frightened is the government about the Mail & Guardian‘s revelations of the abuse of state funds in the Oilgate affair? Frightened enough for the police to launch an investigation into the M&G, rather than the main actors in the drama? To formulate flimsy contempt of court charges against us in a bid to gather information that might assist Imvume, the African National Congress-aligned oil company at the centre of the scandal? To do this on the quiet, hunting for information in the records of our website without informing or questioning us? To use Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act, widely regarded as the biggest legal threat to freedom of expression?
These are not rhetorical questions. Requests by the Freedom Front Plus and the Democratic Alliance to the police and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to investigate how R11-million found its way from PetroSA, via Imvume Management, to the ANC are going nowhere, as we report today. At the same time the police have turned some of their heaviest weaponry on the M&G.
The commercial crime branch in Pretoria, which should deal with serious fraud and organised crime, has issued a subpoena to the Internet -service provider MWeb, majority shareholder in our website, M&G Online. According to the subpoena, the investigation concerns contempt of court charges, apparently that we defied a court order briefly preventing us from publishing material relating to payments by Imvume to a builder who renovated the house of Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya, and to Bonga Mlambo, the brother of former minerals and energy minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
This seems a strange job for the nation’s crime-fighting elite. And it gets stranger. The technical investigation is being performed by a front company for police intelligence established during the apartheid era. It has ordered MWeb to provide records of our site for the period in question, links to a copy we had earlier posted of excerpts from Imvume’s bank statements, and logs of activity on the site.
These are dirty tricks that smack of abuse of power. The police are trying to shoot the messenger. Could this be because Imvume is closely aligned with the ruling party? Because the Oilgate articles have embarrassed the ANC by revealing how it received funds effectively raided from state coffers? Perhaps they thought the techies at MWeb would simply hand the information over without questioning the subpoena, or that we had all forgotten the agreement between the NPA and the South African National Editors’ Forum that Section 205 subpoenas would only be used against the media in the gravest of circumstances.
Are the police trying to find out our sources? Will the material they gather in what will certainly be a fruitless contempt of court probe be handed to Imvume for use in its civil case, aimed at forcing us to reveal our sources? Was whoever authorised the subpoena aware of these competing agendas?
These aren’t rhetorical questions and we have an answer for the police, and for the government. You should be investigating Imvume, not us.
We will defend the confidentiality of our sources, and continue to report robustly on this issue. And we will fight to the last ditch for our right to report on anything we believe the country should know about.
Culling the tourism trade
When six bull elephants escaped from the Kruger National Park two weeks ago and were shot on community lands, there was an outcry from the public.
So what will the public make of plans by South African National Parks (SANParks) to shoot up to 6 000 elephants in the world-renowned park? As Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said at a briefing to announce these plans this week, there is a “special aura” around elephants, and killing them evokes powerful emotions.
The department has contracted an “issue management” consultant to deal with the expected backlash and to facilitate public debate. SANParks, having delivered its proposed elephant management strategy to the mini-ster, has been instructed to step out of the arena for a while.
One of the first “issues” the consultant needs to tackle is to get Van Schalkwyk to listen to alternative viewpoints. SANParks officials have either reluctantly attended or refused to attend gatherings where not only the ethics of, but also the scientific necessity for culling, have been discussed.
The criticisms may sometimes come from voices the powers-that-be would rather not hear. But they are loud and influential voices and they reach the ears of international tourists. Like his predecessors Pallo J-ordan and Valli Moosa, Van Schalkwyk is under pressure to expand -tourist numbers. Unlike them, he seems incapable of saying say that the culling of elephants will not happen while he is minister.
The “issue management” consultant, Brian Gibson, advised the department during the World Summit on Sustainable Development and later advised the asbestos industry. His counsel to the latter was that it was in their best interests to get out of the asbestos business.
Gibson told the Mail & Guardian this week the department and Cabinet were not convinced culling was the only solution to growing elephant populations, and non-lethal alternatives would be examined. Given the expected public outcry at the possible shooting of thousands of elephants, he may be wise to advise Van Schalkwyk that the tourism and killing businesses do not mix.