M&G editor in chief Nic Dawes tells you everything you need to know about Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's report into police leasing deals. Will the president take action? What's next for Madonsela? Watch our video analysis and find out.
Now that the shock of the leaked Nkandla report's incredible revelations has been diluted among a selection of other controversies, we will have time to consider the implications of the Mail & Guardian's actions in publishing the key aspects of the draft version.
I think the M&G has committed a grave error, whether legally defensible or not. At best, it has stumbled over journalistic ambition and attempted to get the scoop for commercial reasons. At worst, it has been hoisted by its own petard.
There can be no doubt that the premature publication of the report in the M&G will ultimately undermine the one rare example of due process in the government. Watching Thuli Madonsela tiptoeing on eggs while trying to navigate defensibly through uncharted territory has been awesome. Her ability to demonstrate transparent, responsive and sensible governance, with painstaking attention to detail, is one faintly flickering glow of hope in the storm.
We are all waiting for the assault on her castle (or, quite conceivably, her person – many people have died here for a lot less). What the M&G has done, in its expedience, has enormously increased her vulnerability and damaged her prospects of survival. The M&G has petulantly thrown a spanner in the works, diverted attention away from the content of the issues at stake and given the presidency a workable means of defence.
I contend that the M&G has probably opened the way for legal review of the processes and thereby provided a path out of the morass for the very people the newspaper has apparently tried to expose.
So stupid and expedient is this action that it leaves me wondering whether the M&G's eagerness was not actually used against the paper and the protector – a brilliant plan that may have worked very well.
Why did these defenders of democracy, the M&G's editors, not let it play out and wait until the process under way matured to the point where we would not need to consider how we got there, as opposed to figuring out how to deal with the implications of the revelations? – Neville Sweijd