“The Oppenheimers have been directly responsible for the destruction of black families and black men in particular, benefiting extraordinarily from apartheid and they, too, have even owned media.
Now they have emerged as funders of the Daily Maverick and CR17. Are we then surprised that the narrative of this publication is anti-black? Are we surprised that they are supporting a narrative that is anti-transformation and anti-liberation?”
Ayanda Mdluli IOL19/2/2019
“Media outlets such as Daily Maverick, funded by the Oppenheimers and other well-placed businessmen and families; so-called media investigative units like amaBhungane, are funded primarily by overseas backers who themselves have certain political interests.”
Iqbal Survé: SA media in the post-Mandela era IOL 13/2/2020
Who owns Daily Maverick?
This was a question posed in a comment beneath a recent article I posted on this website.
According to Wikipedia it is ‘run by an independent private company’ and Alan Knott-Craig is cited on the Daily Maverick website as a founding shareholder along with Branko Brkic.
The question needs to be more sharply focused – who determines editorial policy?
In my 53 years as a reporter I have seen two exposés which had a seismic impact on the South African political system.
The first was Muldergate, the Info scandal, and as cameraman working for the SABC television news parliamentary team, I filmed B J Vorster leaving Tuynhuis for the last time.
The second was Guptaleaks and, for me, there is a telling sentence on page 164 of Anton Harber’s stellar book on recent media events, So, for the Record – Behind the Headlines in an Era of State Capture:
Brkic agreed to partner with News24, an act of exceptional generosity. ‘This story belonged to the whole country. Nobody could keep it for themselves’ he said.
That tells me that Branko Brkic is his own man and that he is calling the shots.
What I care about is that the Fourth Estate in this country should be afforded respect when it has been shown to have justifiably earned it.
What I care about is the wellbeing of the people who work in this sector, a sector which has seen employment halve in the past decade.
As a means of comparison: Sekunjalo Independent Media (SIM) and its subsidiary, the state-subsidised African News Agency, has in the past few months lost two exceptional reporters.
Emsie Ferreira, one of the best political reporters in the country has left ANA to join the Mail & Guardian. Sheree Beega, one of the best environmental reporters in the country, has also joined this newspaper from the Survé-owned Saturday Star
As a manifestly deliberate policy, Iqbal Survé ripped the intellectual heart out of the Cape Times when the team which had produced a front-page Madiba obituary rated by Time as one of the best in the world was either axed or had their lives deliberately made such a misery that they resigned. This happened a) because they were ethical journalists and b) because they lacked the required and obligatory obsequious sycophancy. (see here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here)
Two members of that team, Janet Heard and Tony Weaver, now work for Daily Maverick.
The doyen of South African foreign affairs correspondents, Peter Fabricius, also now writes for Daily Maverick and is also a former SIM reporter.
Two decades ago, as the senior court reporter for SABC TV News in Cape Town, I had as one of my colleagues Estelle Ellis who I held in high esteem and who was then reporting for the Cape Argus
She subsequently moved to The Herald in Port Elizabeth where her reporting was, by any measure, outstanding.
She now writes for Daily Maverick and her coverage of the Eastern Cape is equaled only by the coverage of the Daily Dispatch which is edited by Chiara Carter. Carter is yet another former Survé employee.
So, while Branko Brkic is creating employment and building the most potent South African news team that I have seen in the past half century, Sekunjalo Independent Media and the African News Agency are hemorrhaging talent.
Without precedent
The number of senior journalists of colour who have been fired for political reasons or who have transformed themselves out of the employ of the man who claims to be the transformation champion in the local print media sector is without precedent in South African newspaper history.
Among them are Moshoeshoe Monare, Philani Mgwaba, Makhudu Sefara, Vukani Mde, Wally Mbhele, Steve Motale, Ellis Mnyandu, Unathi Kondile, Gasant Abarder, Lynette Johns, Yunus Kemp, Caryn Dolley, Lebogang Seale, Jovial Rantao, Lindiz van Zilla, Gertrude Makhafola, Chantall Presence, Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya and the late Karima Brown.
As one of the anchor quotes on this article indicates, SIM journalist Ayanda Mdluli accuses the Oppenheimers of unspeakable deeds and makes the evidence-free claim that Daily Maverick is ‘anti-black’.
He provides no proof of that but has no qualms about working for a newspaper company that is virulently anti-white – see here and here – and is proud of it.
Had Mdluli – an imbongi of note, see here and here and here – been an ethical journalist, he would have mentioned the fact that both Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki paid fulsome tribute to Harry Oppenheimer when he died and that sworn testimony before the TRC makes a matter of record the fact that he never interfered in the editorial policy of his newspapers. I know that because I worked for one of his newspapers, the Daily News,in the mid-1970s.
Ironically Mdluli was made editor of this newspaper in October last year after pumping out four articles in four days praising his employer and attacking professional colleagues such as Alide Dasnois and Ferial Haffajee.
In stark contrast to Harry Oppenheimer’s policy of not dictating to his editors, former employees of Survé such as Siphiwe Nodwele have testified under oath before the Mpati commission that he exercises iron-fisted control over the editorial content of his newspapers.
I am encouraged by the fact that Daily Maverick remains a member of the SA Press Council unlike Sekunjalo Independent Media newspapers which brazenly lie, sometimes for months on end, as was the case when Helen Zille was falsely accused of employing a ‘spook with a grabber’.
And when they are not lying to their readers, SIM newspapers censor by omission as was the case when Survé and his senior executives appeared before parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance a week ago. Survé’s newspapers deliberately omitted to mention that, across the board – see here and here and here – political parties criticised the evidence-free Sekunjalo and AYO testimony of a massive plot against them as ‘conspiracy theories’.
Mdluli and Survé attack Daily Maverick for being allegedly funded by the Oppenheimers and ‘overseas backers’ with ‘certain political interests’. As propagandists they withhold from their dwindling audience the fact that one fifth of SIM is owned by Chinese companies, and that Iqbal Survê does not hesitate to censor news which China wants suppressed. At the same time Survé constantly promotes, through his newspapers, his ‘overseas backers’ with ‘certain political interests’. [see here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.]
In fact, no other South African newspaper company owner so regularly and so vociferously aggrandises an ‘overseas backer’ with ‘certain political interests’ than Survé – see here and here.
The hypocrisy of his attack on Daily Maverick and amaBhungane in this context is as obvious as it is nauseating.
The Oppenheimers are known for funding worthy causes which promote public welfare and Mdluli will have noted that, unlike his employer, they have contributed billions of rands to the Covid-19 Solidarity Fund and affected industries.
If they are also funding Daily Maverick – and no evidence has been provided in support of that claim – then they have my gratitude.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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