'The Editors' [SAfm, 2003-08-03]

Radio Station	SAfm
Program	"The Editors"
Presenter	Dianne Kohler Barnard
Guests/Reviewers	Mathatha Tsedu - Editor, Sunday Times Peter Bruce - Editor, Business Day Christi van der Westhuizen - Political Correspondent, Die Beeld
Date	2003-08-03
Web Link	www.safm.co.za

This is SAfm, South Africa's news and information leader. I'm Dianne Kohler Barnard. Thank you for joining me for today's edition of "The Editors". With me today Mathatha Tsedu, Editor of The Sunday Times, and with him in the Johannesburg studios is Peter Bruce, Editor of Business Day. In the Cape Town studios is Christi van der Westhuizen, Political Correspondent for Beeld. We'll start with your choices of what you believe to have been the top three stories of the past week. No explanations necessary at this stage. Let's begin with you, Mathatha Tsedu.

It has to be the Zuma investigation in all its manifestations through Maharaj, the Scorpions, the ANC involvement, Shabir Shaik and his brothers, essentially.

Right. Well, I think all credit has to go to you, Mathatha Tsedu, and The Sunday Times, for leading the field not only last week but again this week, and the reports and the reports and the reports there seem to be tentacles spouting every which way. Your take on the situation? Is it possible to have a single one?

Just that I think it's a story that is testing not only the patience of the nation but the resilience of our institutions. It has moved from being just about the investigation into a confrontation essentially between Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, and the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ncguka. What would have otherwise have been just an administrative error story around his car now comes in the middle of a fracas that turns it almost into more pressure on him that can even see him go.

We saw the President coming in during the week - in answer to a question, it must be said - saying that the Scorpions might be misplaced where they are, which is a hell of a statement considering the time in which...

And on top of that we saw the Secretary-General of the ANC essentially saying that Bulelani Ncguka's men and women in the Scorpions operate like Hollywood, and that there are a number of ANC leaders who have been left bruised but still not proven guilty. And all of that has created an aura of high stakes politics around this story, to a point where in one of the pieces that we're running today it's being said that it's now basically a question of Ncguka and Zuma, and one of them surviving, and it's a question of who that person will be.

Indeed. Peter, on Business Day's front page on Friday, "Subtle muscle flexing as Zuma stays silent" - quite a low-key story there by Tim Cohen. What would the financial implications be should...?

Oh, I don't think there are any obvious financial implications. Obviously stories like this don't do any good for international and local confidence in an economy. But I don't think that's the story of the hour. The story of the hour is the pressure being put on Ncguka, who in my view stands between becoming a national hero and being destroyed. We're now talking about the first issue in which I can recall that President Mbeki doesn't have an opinion.

But I think one is also seeing some desperate attempts to deflect from the real questions in the investigation, and that is whether the Deputy President did ask for a half a million rand bribe. I think there've been quite obvious attempts to deflect that attention to whether there's a leak in the Scorpions to the media. In a democratic society you'll have information being leaked to the media - that's how it works - even legislation protecting people, so-called whistle-blowers. So that for me is very much a red herring.

Perhaps so. But, Peter, I was going to put it to you that if perhaps this played, if this nation found that its Deputy President was being had up by something that the Scorpions perhaps have investigated and come up with - this five hundred thousand rand bribe - will it have a ripple effect upon the status of this country?

No, I think it would do just the opposite, frankly. It would increase confidence in our system - which is not to try and find him guilty before the facts.

But that sort of thing... Politicians all over the world have been forced out of office without dire consequences for their own economies. Remember Spiro Agnew?

Yes, Spiro Agnew in the US. It's not an uncommon thing in the world, people ending up doing the honourable thing or getting the honourable thing done to them if they've misbehaved.

But also he has actually committed himself to responding to those questions. He has said he'll do so in his own time but he's committed himself to doing that. And we know that this past week - on Tuesday, when he was in Durban for the Nelson Mandela university unveiling event - when he finished that he went into a very serious discussion with his lawyers, where they're trying to reconstruct his life over the past nine years in order to be able to answer those questions. So he is actually working very seriously around that. The answers will definitely come.

Thursday was just the end of the month, and I think he'd been asked to try to answer the questions by the end of July.

The letter did not say 'or else this and that' - it wasn't phrased like that - it said they'd be very happy to get the answers soon, preferably by the end of the month. It was not an unreasonable thing, I think, because the letter was dated the 9th - so you're talking 21 days. But the amount of information that is being asked of him is enormous.

Yes, a huge amount. And, of course, the entire situation of wheels within wheels within wheels... We have your Sunday Times, again, Mathatha - a report that former Transport Minister, Mac Maharaj, had apparently or allegedly had a family holiday to Disneyland paid for by Durban businessman, Shabir Shaik. Again this will run and run.

Yes, and that trip... Shabir was actually refunding a company that has links with Dick Cheney, which had actually done the financing of the trip - the hiring of the limo and all of that - which Shabir had asked them to do because Maharaj's comfort when he was in Florida was of strategic importance, according to Shabir. [A CHUCKLE FROM PETER] And at that time they were talking about the new airport in Durban and the additions that were being made in Johannesburg. And one must add that Shabir's companies did not get any contract on Johannesburg, so it doesn't necessarily translate into a benefit that would have accrued. But Shabir has now actually said that the trip that Mr Maharaj took with his family to the US was paid for by him.

Well, we're going to see what First Rand does about that. Of course, their four-month independent enquiry into allegations against Mac Maharaj is now complete and about to be released...

I thought it was quite interesting that we've spent a whole month looking at two soldiers who have been charged and now found guilty and might actually be discharged from the Defence Force because they did what comes naturally to people. And this being South Africa, and the guy being black and the major being white...

There's a whole race thing that comes in there, this woman now being dragged through all this because she did it with a black man. It's a typical South African story.

I must say I enjoyed the take on it by The Natal Witness. The Natal Witness seems to take a very upright stance on it saying that this is serious misconduct and that they've done the right thing - that she should indeed be cashiered and chucked out. To be cashiered is really the worst and most humiliating punishment that can ever be taken. To have her uniform ripped, to be thrown on the ground, and all the parade over those insignia lying there on the floor, and then totally ostracised... It's quite dramatic and probably quite crushing. So, yes, interesting takes from all angles. Of course, the feminists are going crazy saying that men do it all the time so why pick on her, that they're doing it only because she's a white woman and she was sleeping with a black man - or sleeping with anybody at all, which apparently goes on quite regularly, or so she says.

Let's look ahead now. Mathatha, just a quick one. What do you think is going to take the headlines next week, or perhaps run as much as a month?

I think the Maharaj story. Everybody will be watching what happens on Wednesday.

And, of course, whether Bulelani Ncguka... whether the pressure on him is going to force him to go. And if he wants to go, what that would mean for Zuma.

Very much the same sort of list. There's a rumour going around that Ncguka might leave this week.

Yes, not a moment too soon. Well, thanks to the three of you for joining me on "The Editors" today. That was Editor of The Sunday Times, Mathatha Tsedu; Editor of Business Day, Peter Bruce; and Political Correspondent for Beeld, Chrisi van der Westhuizen. Thanks to you at home also. I'm Dianne Kohler Barnard here in Durban. Cheerio.

With acknowledgements to Dianne Kohler Barnard, Mathatha Tsedu, Peter Bruce, Christi van der Westhuizen and SAFM.