Judges remarks for the 12th Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism
Delivered by Justice Malala, acting convenor of judges for 2017.
Award ceremony, 24 March 2017, at the Wits Club, Johannesburg
Welcome to the 12th annual Taco Kuiper Awards for Investigative Journalism. We gather for this year’s awards in a world defined by fake news and a highly contested media space.
In the United States a new political leadership has attempted to redefine news and has launched what many consider an assault on journalism in general and many respected, traditional, news outlets in particular. Here at home talk of a Media Appeals Tribunal is back on the agenda and will be discussed at the ANC policy conference in June.
Technology and social media continue to redefine our idea of news and its consumption. It is a time of uncertainty. It is also a time of excitement, innovation and opportunity.
We gather today to pay tribute, as our convenor for the past 11 years Professor Anton Harber has put it, to journalists who spend their time digging and probing to expose wrongdoing.
Their work has never been more important. In the age of “alternative facts”, we need probing, fact-checked, fearless journalism of this nature. In the age of mass opinion carried in 140 characters, our society needs those – like our entrants this year – who scratch and worry to reveal what lies beneath the surface.
We are pleased to announce that since inception the award has grown and attracted significant support in the media world. This year we received 45 entries as opposed to last year’s 43. We are particularly pleased that we are seeing more and more entries from online outlets, television, radio and magazines.
Whereas in the past the overwhelming majority of entries was from newspapers, this year just under half were from this medium. Last year Professor Harber and the judges expressed their sadness at the low number and quality of television and radio entries. Happily, all that has changed.
We received twenty entries this year from print publications. Two were from radio, nine from online publications, a whopping 13 from television and one from a magazine.
Entries came from small outlets such as the Oxpeckers in KwaZulu Natal, GroundUp in the Western Cape, the Zululand Observer and the Con magazine. They also came from major outlets such as the SABC, Sunday Times, amaBhungane, eNCA and others. We were particularly pleased with entries from media outlets we have not seen before such as ANN7 and Forbes Woman Africa.
We welcome and encourage this diverse pool of entries and hope to see this improvement persist in years to come.
As usual we have two panels to assess entries for the award. The first, which sifts through all the entries and draws up the shortlist, consists of:
Sarah Carter, of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Franz Kruger, Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Director of the Wits Radio Academy, and Lizeka Mda, senior editor and lecturer at Wits Journalism.
The second panel then focuses on the top ten contenders. This panel is made up of former editor of the City Press, Sunday Times, Sowetan and other media outlets Mathatha Tsedu and former Supreme Court of Appeals judge Tom Cloete. It also included Sarah Carter from the first panel and myself as convener for this year.
We missed the wisdom and stewardship of Professor Harber. Anton has chaired the panel for more than 11 years and has been the force behind the growth, in size and stature, of these awards. Anton has recused himself from the judging panel this year due to a conflict of interest and we look forward to his return in the future.
The judges have made several comments on the entries. We were very sad to disqualify some very worthy entries simply because they failed to meet the deadline for submission of entries. Indeed, one of the best entries we have seen in recent years from television did not even get considered for this reason. We would like to ask entrants to please meet the deadlines for next year.
We have over the years made a point about presentation, and this year the use of graphics and other methods of bringing the text in print articles alive came up. We were impressed with improvements at some media houses, but poor design remains a problem at many other publications.
We were again impressed by the range of subjects probed and covered. Topics ranged from the State Capture controversy to the politics of water and dams; journalists probed everything from the Life Esidimeni tragedy to the plight of an accident victim defrauded out of his road accident fund payout by his lawyer. However, exposes of business malpractice remain few and far between. How can it be that theft, looting and skullduggery happens only in the public sphere?
The period under review was punctuated by major political events. One of the judges’ concerns is that we saw few investigations that tried to scratch under the surface of these major political shifts. Where was the #FeesMustFall movement in entries this year, we wondered.
Our journalists were offered bribes and threatened in the course of their work. Sipho Masondo of City Press was offered an eye-watering R3-million and a job as a minister's spokesman. We are happy to report that he turned it down. Another journalist was threatened with violence. Despite all these odds, these journalists persisted to bring all of us the story.
This year we saw a welcome collaboration between media outlets and non-governmental organisations. The Life Esidimeni story illustrated this new collaboration, and the impact was immediate. Where journalists couldn't get access, NGO workers could. In the case of the SABC story, crucial access came through an NGO. There are many positives to this, as we saw with the stories we have received, but we also urge caution in such collaborations. Issues of independence, credibility and veracity should be weighed carefully.
Over the past ten years we have seen investigative journalists use innovations in technology and the law to follow and break major stories. The judges were disappointed that this year most investigations seem to have relied on only the old methods – the tip-off, the leak, the sources – and we saw very little or no innovation in using legislation such as PAIA or, as we have seen in the past, forensic investigation of documents and so forth. We did see the use of hidden cameras and in some cases a dogged reading of the minutiae of court documents, and this is to be commended.
There were many positives which indicate a vibrant, boisterous and competitive investigative reporting environment. Journalists showed an incredible tenacity, staying with stories for months and sometimes even years on end. Small stories took on lives of their own, becoming national stories with impact beyond our borders.
Many of the stories had incredible results. Commissions of inquiry were instituted, political heads rolled and fraudulent careers were stopped in their tracks. This is what Taco Kuiper aimed for in his endowment of the investigative journalism award.
Now let’s get down to the 10 entries which made our shortlist, all of which are examples of excellence in investigative reporting. In no particular order:
1. Joy Summers of Carte Blanche for Optimum’s Helping Hand
This is the story of how Eskom managers gave the Gupta-owned Oakbay Resources / Tegeta company a R600-million pre-payment to ensure that they could buy the Optimum Coal Mine. This story contained one of the greatest moments of South African television last year as Eskom’s head of generation, and now acting CEO, was caught denying the pre-payment and then, as the contract was showed to him, he had to concede. The impact of this expose continues to unfold.
2) Bongani Fuzile of the Daily Dispatch for Maximum Security
This is an excellent investigation of a government tender gone wrong. After noticing that Eastern Cape maximum security prisons were leaking inmates at an alarming rate, Fuzile got to work finding out what was going on. He found plenty. He found inmates in prison guard uniforms. He walked nonchalantly into a prison. He found prison guards at the mercy of their prisoners. This investigation led to corrective measures by the Department of Correctional Services, with multi-million rand tenders issued.
3) AmaBhungane team with SARS wars
This is a massive story that highlights the reason why, just this week, it was announced that tax ombud Judge Ngoepe is investigating systems at the SA Revenue Services. The team revealed shenanigans at the top of SARS, the bags of money deposited by the number two at SARS into his girlfriend and his accounts, and got him suspended along the way.
4) Susan Venter of Rapport for Life Esidimeni scandal
This is one of two stories in the top ten which delved into possibly the most horrific story of the new South Africa. The Life Esidimeni story, which has been the subject of an official inquiry by the Health Ombudsman, started here with a tip-off on Facebook. The reporter went digging. She got chased away from many of the unlicensed NGOs she visited. In these stories all the horror and shame of the at least 94 Esidimeni dead is chronicled – months before the official inquiry. As a society, we cannot claim to not have known.
5) Kyla Hermannsen of eNCA and Health-e News with Dignity Denied
This is the second of our top ten stories on Life Esidimeni. This series chronicled the lives of several patients and families affected by the decision to remove mental health patients from Life Esidimeni. It is immediate, fierce, harrowing and stays with you for months on end.
6. Charl Blignaut and Lloyd Gedye of City Press with Hlaudi’s SABC
This collaboration between the City Press and Save Our SABC went beyond the headlines and examined hundreds of court and CCMA documents to unpeel the real capture of the state broadcaster. Much of what we know today about the SABC is contained in this investigation.
7) Sipho Masondo of City Press with the Watergate scandal
This story of how SA’s future water needs were inexplicably inflated starts with a whistleblower and goes on to entangle a minister, a foreign minister and a convicted fraudster in Lesotho. Water is usually a boring subject, but through vivid graphics and new information this investigation came to life.
8) xxxxxx of City Press on State Capture
This is the first of our entries on State Capture and details extensive links between the Gupta family and political power players. It stretches across several linked stories investigated over months. This is a solid, dogged, informative investigation that added important new layers to the unfolding story.
9) Thanduxolo Jika, Sabelo Skiti and Qaanita Hunter of the Sunday Times with State Capture
This is our second story on State Capture and it delves into the murky offering of ministerial positions to Mcebisi Jonas and others allegedly by the Gupta family. The investigation goes on to draw links between several ministers’ visits to Dubai, Saxonwold and other places. Again a solid, deep investigation into an ongoing and pivotal South African story.
10. Sabelo Skiti of Sunday Times with Penniless Millionaire
This is a powerful on-the-ground investigation that starts with the reporter telling the story of just one victim of a crooked personal injury lawyer. The reporter drops everything, goes to the Eastern Cape and finds a trail of thievery by the lawyer that shows fraud in the millions. The story has massive impact with investigations of the RAF at the top levels. It also has a happy ending. The young man who first told his story gets his millions – and a new life.
And so there you have it. The judges were happy to have two very powerful television entries in the top ten. We were pleased to see the continued strength of the stalwarts, Amabhungane and the Sunday Times, plus the City Press. Last year we had two non-traditional website-based operations, Daily Maverick and USpiked, in the top ten, and we hope to see them and other non-traditional media back next year.
After considerable debate, we narrowed it down to five. In no particular order, these are:
1. Watergate by CityPress
2. Optimum Coal Mine by Carte Blanche
3. State Capture by City Press
4. State Capture by Sunday Times
5. Life Esidimeni by Rapport
After further debate, the judges settled on the Top Three. These are:
1. Joy Summers from Carte Blanche with Optimum Coal.
2. Thanduxolo Jika, Sabelo Skiti and Qaanita Hunter from the Sunday Times with State Capture.
3. Susan Venter from Rapport with Life Esidimeni Scandal.
These were all amazing pieces which showed courage, tenacity, uniqueness, collaboration and had massive impact on our society. Joy Summers’ Carte Blanche piece ran in the City Press on the same Sunday it was flighted, giving it wider impact. The Sunday Times investigation drew in work from other publications and, even when they had to issue an apology to ANC leader Jessie Duarte after they admittedly got one thing wrong, they stayed with this important investigation. The Life Esidimeni investigation survived six denials from the MEC for Health in Gauteng, it was put on page 6, 9 and 5 by the editors yet it fought for its place over months.
All these investigations are worthy of the Taco Kuiper Award this year. But there can only be one winner.
This year the runner-up who takes home R100 000 is:
Thanduxolo Jika, Sabelo Skiti and Qaanita Hunter with State Capture by the Sunday Times
And the winner of the country’s biggest journalism award of R200 000, is:
Susan Venter with Life Esidimeni Scandal from Rapport
When Susan Venter first confronted former Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu with this story she was told that “all this is just hearsay” and she was kicked out of the MEC’s office. Her story was never a major splash – the furthest it got into the paper was just page 4. Yet this is the defining story of 2016 and in years it will be mentioned alongside Marikana and other tragedies. Venter stayed with the story for months, brought us the human side of it while exposing the corruption and insensitivity of our political leaders as they refused to accept what was happening. This was a major and necessary investigation, beautifully and heartbreakingly delivered.
…..ends….
