In mid-August the largest Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Times, splashed on its front page claims of corruption by Helen Zille’s Western Cape government.
The article claimed that Premier Zille’s office had awarded a communications tender worth a potential R1-billion. The paper further claimed that proper procedures and regulations were not followed. No doubt the editor and staff of the Sunday Times licked their lips with glee at this news. In their mind, for once they were showing that, like the ANC, the DA too is corrupt.
I agree that such a story should be extensively covered if it were true - except for one important fact; the story isn’t true. It’s a fabrication. The Sunday Times quite simply ignored the facts.
It can only be described as bad journalism at best, The Sunday Times “cut and paste” selective information from an internal Western Cape Treasury document. Out of context quoting was prevalent in the newspaper article. Untruths like claims of treasury regulations violations, tender award manipulations and the non advertising of this tender was presented as gospel truths.
Very soon the print, electronics and social media were aflutter with this information using the rubbish published by the Sunday Times at truth.
Immediately Helen Zille jumped into action; she requested the Auditor-General to conduct a tender process audit. She also hosted a media briefing where a comprehensive set of documents were presented, including the information supplied to The Sunday Times previously.
The Western Cape treasury department clearly stated that no regulatory violations or corruption had taken place.
Now let’s imagine that all this had happened on the ANC watch. History tells us that a few things would take place. The ANC would immediately jump to work – to cover up this story as the chances of corruption and all that goes with it would be almost certainly true. The ANC would call for the head of the leak who provided the media the information. It would be reiterating the need to control and gag the media whilst vilifying The Sunday Times as an organ of the old order or similar terminology.
The DA, on the other hand, made it its mission to explain clearly the correct position and the truth. In turn The Sunday Times had no choice but to respond the very next week with a front page article entitled “Yes, we made mistakes”, admitting that it “arrived at the figure of R1-billion by estimating the total marketing and communications budgets of all provincial departments, but we were wrong to report this estimate as facts.” In truth the tender value is R70-million a year.
Continuing to eat humble pie, The Sunday Times conceded that their statement saying that the contract had not been advertised was wrong, it admits, “more so because we had been furnished with evidence of this by the provincial government.” Embarrassingly for the newspaper it stated that “we regret these errors and apologise for them.”
The truth is that there is no corruption story. The real story is that the DA runs the Western Cape well, clean of corruption and maladministration. This is making the ANC nervous. The Western Cape is miles ahead of any of the other 8 provinces. This is dangerous in the ANC’s eyes as it is the DA and its excellent performance that is starting to sway ANC voters in the DA direction.
The ANC will stop at nothing to make the DA look bad in any way possible. Simply put, they can’t and won’t – the DA only runs clean governments that delivers ensuring that our imbalances are redressed, uniting and reconciling our diverse communities.
This article was originally a letter sent to the Editor of the Sunday Times by Manny de Freitas, MP - Deputy Shadow Minister for Transport.
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