Friday, 11 June 2010
A dramatic and shocking expose appears, and some months later the journalist wins a prize amid much back-slapping and warm words. More often than not, though, what is not part of the script is for authorities to actually do something about fixing the problem. Writing exclusively for journalism.co.za, Gill Moodie talks to winners in the recent Mondi awards to find out what was actually done about problems they dragged into the public domain.
In the latest instalment of her "Backstory" series, Gill Moodie writes exclusively for journalism.co.za:
“But it hasn’t made a difference” is the oft-heard cry of the lesser spotted South African investigative journalist. You break a hot story, exposing dastardly deeds and shameless corruption and what happens? The letters flow in by outraged members of the public, the Democratic Alliance asks questions in Parliament, you get a mention in Anton Harber’s column and then... nothing. Total silence from government.
Even with the latest crop of Mondi Shanduka journalism award winners that were announced recently, many of these excellent stories resulted in little – or half-hearted – reaction from the authorities.
“You can keep on digging,” says Media24 reporter Julian Rademeyer, who won the hard news category with photographer Felix Dlangamandla for exposing how Schabir Shaik was flouting his parole conditions in Rapport and City Press. “I think that the powers that be in many of these cases have discovered that the easiest way to deal with the issue is to ignore it completely.
“Generally, most newsrooms are run on a skeleton staff so it’s about having the manpower to try follow these stories up when you’re working on a number of projects at the same time. You can’t keep hammering the same story over and over. You might be able to revisit them once in a while but you do eventually move on to other things.”
Rademeyer, who works in Media24’s investigative unit, and Dlangamandla used real gumshoe detective work to catch President Jacob Zuma’s former financial advisor swanning around Durban, proving (with pictures) that he was not, in fact, in the final stages of terminal illness. City Press ran it in December last year under the gob-smacking headline “I want my f*%#@!! pardon ”, which is how Shaik picturesquely described his bid for a presidential pardon in an hour-long interview with Rademeyer.
The pardon did not come – quite possibly as a result of the expose – but ultimately Shaik got off with a slap on the wrist: he got a formal warning from the Department of Correctional Services and his parole conditions were tightened. I think we can assume that, for Shaik, it’s back to business.
Sadly, the same can be said of the Mondi Shanduka “Journalist of the Year” winner Stephan Hofstatter’s first-rate Sunday Times splash: “Fat cats milk R100-million fund”. (At the time Hofstatter was a freelancer and he won on submissions from both the Sunday Times and Business Day’s now defunct The Weekender. He has now joined the Sunday Times’s investigative unit.)
Hofstatter’s “fat cats” story revealed an elaborate scam that involved the Land Bank’s R100-million AgriBEE fund for emerging farmers being diverted to trust accounts and landing up in the hands of the politically connected – allegedly including Dan Mofokeng, the former Gauteng housing MEC and husband of ANC provincial legislature member Jacqueline Mofokeng.
It was a difficult story to nail down as it involved the careful cultivation of sources, some of whom, says Hofstatter, were scared to talk because they had received death threats or they feared they would lose their jobs. There were also threats of legal action against Hofstatter while he was reporting the story.
After the story was published there was a public outcry and police investigating the alleged scam promised soberly that they would widen the net. So what has come of the October 2009 story?
“Nothing much,” says Hofstatter. “Certainly no one’s being arrested... more people have been questioned by the Hawks. The official version from their side is that they want to build a bigger case rather than making smaller arrests. So that’s a fair point but I still think that it would seem to be more prudent to arrest your mid-level perpetrators who you’ve got a lot more evidence against and work it from there.”
Looks like business as usual, then, and all rather gloomy but there is one heartening tale amid the Mondi Shanduka investigative winners: the “Story of the Year” by the Daily Dispatch’s Gcina Ntsaluba did indeed get swift reaction from the authorities and resulted in what looks like firm action.
Ntsaluba’s “Broken Homes” series of stories published mid-year last year exposed the utter collapse of housing delivery in the Eastern Cape, for which he and photographer Theo Jephta spent two months travelling the rural areas, visiting RDP ghost towns and substandard low-cost housing projects.
Besides heart-breaking stories of the little people on the ground such as the young child who was killed when a house that was so badly built that it blew over in the wind, Ntsaluba also established the big picture in his investigation: that the provincial housing department has underspent its budget by R1-billion over three years and were sitting with a backlog of 800 000 houses. Because of dodgy or underskilled contractors and lack of management by municipal housing officials, Nstaluba established that it would cost R360-million to fix houses already built.
Incredibly, reaction came within a week when Chris Vick, special advisor to Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, contacted Ntsaluba to ask if he could get more information from him. Besides writing a letter to the paper to thank it for investigating the problem, Vick also asked Ntsaluba to accompany himself and Sexwale on fact-finding missions in the Eastern Cape and arranged a face-to-face interview with the minister.
In practical terms, the provincial housing department launched a new programme to improve the skills of emerging contractors and, on a national level, the investigation helped to frame the launch in November last year of a national audit of housing contractors.
Vick says: “The timing was quite interesting as we had only been in office for a couple of months and we were trying to get on top of what some of key the problems were. This made us realise... the extent of the problems.... I’m a former journalist and Tokyo’s attitude is very much that if journalists come to us with evidence, then we must investigate – that journalists can help government by highlighting problems and highlighting what people feel.”
Masterful PR spin, of course, and Sexwale was new to the cabinet so he shared no blame in the shocking lack of management of the low-cost housing programme. But Ntsaluba, who has subsequently joined the Mail & Guardian’s investigative unit, says that when he interviewed Sexwale, he got the impression that he was genuinely shocked by and concerned about what came out of the Broken Homes investigation. He also says Vick continued to stay in contact with him long after the investigation, phoning for him to get his thoughts on other defective housing projects that the department was investigating.
So the big question is whether Ntsaluba feels he made a difference?
“Well, I think it made a slight difference,” he says. “There’s definitely more work that needs to be done (with fixing the housing problem). I think it’s only in the beginning stages. But I appreciated that they actually took notice of the story.”
Good man – sceptical to the last.
DISCLAIMER: Moodie’s spouse is the editor of the Daily Dispatch.
* The "Backstory" series is exclusive to journalism.co.za. Gill Moodie is a freelance journalist who is also responsible for the website http://www.grubstreet.co.za
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