/ 25 April 2007

Newspaper will publish despite hostage drama

The Pretoria News will definitely be published and be on the streets on time on Thursday, said acting editor Zingisa Mkhuma on Wednesday night.

She and the rest of the Pretoria News staff waited outside the newspaper’s office while police forensics experts combed the scene of the afternoon’s hostage-taking that led to the building being evacuated for about four hours. They were finally allowed back into the building at 8pm.

”We are waiting to come up with a newspaper for tomorrow, but we’ll be patient because someone got shot here,” said Mkhuma.

The hostage-taker, a man believed to be in his 30s, took eight newspaper advertising staff hostage and shot and injured a police officer during the stand-off, which started at about 3.30pm and ended with his arrest at about 7pm. All hostages were released unharmed by 5pm.

Mkhuma said journalists and staff at the Pretoria News‘s sister newspaper the Star, in Johannesburg, were helping the newspaper to produce pages for Thursday’s publication. Her reporters were filing by phone from the scene and the reporters at the Star were taking dictates from them.

Nearly an hour after the drama ended, the six-storey building in Vermeulen Street was still cordoned off.

A vehicle believed to belong to the hostage-taker, which had been parked right outside the building, was removed by police.

The newspaper occupies the entire building, with a bureau for the Sowetan newspaper on the top floor.

Newspaper staff said the man, who claimed to be a former police officer, had apparently been trying to find the newsroom, which is on the second floor, but was confused by the existence of a mezzanine floor and ended up in the advertising department on the first floor instead. — Sapa