I refer to the press release "I don't give orders on police operations - Nathi Mthethwa" published on Politicsweb on June 20 2012.

The release quoted the following piece of text: "in the early hours of this morning an operation was launched to attempt to arrest members of the Durban Organised Crime Unit. The operation was launched by a General Mabula from the Hawks, the SAPS Air Wing and the Special Task Force. The claim has been made that Minister Mthethwa personally ordered this operation and gave the instruction that certain members of the Organised Crime Unit were to be arrested."

I would like to bring the following to your attention. Claims made in the release are unfounded and inaccurate in that the text referred to by the Minister was never published by The Citizen in any form. There is thus no allegation for the Minister to dismiss.

Our reporter, Paul Kirk, approached the Minister for comment and clarification during the course of collecting information for a story he was working on. It is standard journalistic practice to approach government officials and/or their spokesmen should persons make claims pertaining to them during the course of such information gathering. For the Minister to declare this to be a smear campaign, and to answer a request for comment in a press release, is bizarre.

We would like to reiterate that The Citizen did not publish any story on 20 June containing any allegations about the Police Minister. The Ministry was sent an allegation for comment, they denied the allegation, we accepted their denial and did not publish it. We find it ironic that the Ministry decided to circulate this rumour about the Minister when we decided that it was not newsworthy." 

Statement issued by Michael Coetzee, News Editor, The Citizen, June 21 2012

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