On Sunday, October 21, 2007, the London Sunday Times published an article by RW Johnson titled: "Press targeted in Thabo Mbeki's paranoid war." The article claimed that President Mbeki ordered the arrest of Sunday Times editor, Mondli Makhanya. It proceeded to market more falsehoods about the President, the government and other issues currently in the public domain. The article was subsequently published in Australia , Canada and other countries throughout the world.
Our High Commissioner in the United Kingdom , HE, Lindiwe Mabuza, wrote a response to the London Sunday Times in which she disputed Johnson's falsehoods; communicating the facts as they exist in objective reality. The response was sent to the Sunday Times on Monday October 22 for publication on Sunday October 28. The paper did not publish the response. The High Commission last week inquired whether the Sunday Times would publish the response. The paper verbally - it consistently failed to respond to the High Commission's written communications - informed the High Commission that it would not publish the response because the content of RW Johnson's article had been published in South Africa . The Sunday Times also informed the High Commission that it has conveyed the response to Johnson and insofar as it was concerned, that was sufficient.
We have taken the unprecedented decision of releasing this statement because the London Sunday Times' conduct has prejudiced the truth. It is similarly a patent contradiction of the principles of fairness, objectivity and free speech to which it purports to subscribe. The paper's conduct has left begging many questions, among them: what does freedom of speech entail? Do those about whom the media are surely entitled to comment not have a right of reply? We invite people to read the High Commissioner's response on our website: http://www.dfa.gov.za/
For more information, please contact Ronny Mamoepa on: +27829904853
Response to the London Sunday Times By H.E Lindiwe Mabuza South African High Commissioner to the UK October 22, 2007
In your last edition, October 21, 2007 , you published an article on South Africa by RW Johnson under the scary title "Press targeted in Mbeki's paranoid war". The article is a veritable and highly toxic witches' brew of deliberate fabrications to which we must respond in plain English. The simple fact is that RW Johnson's article is made up of a bundle of lies. I will now list these lies.
Lie No 1: Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times faces arrest for "exposing the minister of health as an alcoholic."
Lie No 2: the Minister of Health threw tantrums at the hospital where she underwent a liver transplant operation, demanding wine and whisky.
Lie No 3: the Minister "received the new liver because of her government position."
Lie No 4: the Minister of Health called for Aids to be treated with garlic and beetroot instead of antiretroviral drugs.
Lie No 5: President Mbeki ordered the police to investigate a case against Makhanya.
Lie No 6: "investigators" have been instructed to find "dirt" on Makhanya and "his reporting team".
Lie No 7: President Mbeki views the ( Johannesburg ) Sunday Times with venom.
Lie No 8: the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) is "as obedient to government fiat now as it was under apartheid".
Lie No 9: the SABC has "denounced the rest of the media for not being sufficiently pro-Mbeki".
Lie No 10: a nationwide security crackdown is under way, with journalists and political activists being spied upon.
Lie No 11: there is a climate of fear and suspicion in the country "like we haven't seen since apartheid days."
Lie No 12: the former Deputy Minister of Health, Madlala-Routledge was sacked because she visited "an Eastern Cape public hospital".
Lie No 13: the government has presented Madlala-Routledge a bill "for every expense she incurred during her years in office, in an obvious attempt to bankrupt her."
Lie No 14: "plans are afoot forcibly to change press ownership".
Lie No 15: President Mbeki has "sacked as untrustworthy anyone who shows anything but slavish deference".
What are the facts with regard to some of these matters?
Fact No 1: the medical file of the Minister of Health was stolen from a hospital in Cape Town and the electronic record at the hospital deleted.
Fact No 2: the stolen document ended up with the Sunday Times, which then published a story about the Minister of Health, ostensibly based on what is contained in this document.
Fact No 3: the National Health Act prescribes that patients' medical records are private, and makes it a criminal offence to publish such records without the permission of the person concerned.
Fact No 4: it is an offence to receive stolen goods.
Fact No 5: as required by our Constitution and the law, the South African Police Service (SAPS) is investigating all possible criminal misdemeanours relating to the matter of the medical files of the Minister of Health: the SAPS has stated categorically that there are no impending arrests in this regard.
Fact No 6: nobody in our country is above the law. Where criminal misdemeanours have occurred, the law must and will take its course, regardless of who is involved.
Fact No 7: the doctors who carried out the liver transplant strongly objected to the baseless suggestion that they acted in any way outside internationally accepted medico-ethical principles: the opposition Democratic Alliance retracted the false allegation it made in this regard.
Fact No 8: Madlala-Routledge was removed from government because she knowingly defied a written instruction by the President not to travel to Madrid to attend a conference on Aids vaccines, a subject about which she is entirely ignorant.
Fact No 9: the money that Madlala-Routledge has been asked to return to government relates to unauthorised and therefore illegal expenditure of public funds, for which she was responsible while she was Deputy Minister both at Defence and Health: correctly, the Chair of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has announced that if such unauthorised expenditure occurred, it will help ensure that the affected tax-payers' funds are returned to the public coffers.
Fact No 10: all interceptions of private communications by the state agencies for purposes of gathering intelligence have to be authorised by a judge of the High Court, who must be satisfied that such interception is justified: the suggestion that in this regard we are back to the apartheid days is entirely malicious.
For many years RW Johnson has waged a media campaign against our government, presenting himself as the great defender of democracy in our country, whereas we, who sacrificed everything to bring about that democracy, threaten the very democracy we fought for. Johnson is at liberty to continue along his merry way, masquerading as an expert on South Africa . But not even he should be allowed to propagate blatant lies about our country, as in the article under discussion, resulting in the entirely false headline in your newspaper that press freedom in South Africa is threatened by a fictional paranoid war waged by President Mbeki.
Lindiwe Mabuza.
High Commissioner.
Issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs November 4 2007
