Why was an article about the alleged meeting between Judge Desai and the ANC removed from the IOL-website?

2 December 2020

Note to Editors: Please see attached screenshot here and here 

A news report, based on a statement by the Democratic Alliance (DA) about Judge Siraj Desai who allegedly attended an ANC planning meeting, has been removed from the news website iol.co.za since yesterday.

In the statement yesterday, I asked serious questions about how a Judge, who is currently a member of the Western Cape High Court Bench, would seemingly openly attend a party-political meeting.

The fact that this article has been removed from the website since yesterday afternoon is highly suspicious. The DA has since written to the IOL editor, Riana Howa, to ascertain why this article was removed from the website.

It is no secret that the Independent Media group has strong ANC affiliations and is generally extremely biased towards the DA. It is also significant that this media group resigned from the Press Council and opted to appoint their "own ombudsman".

It would appear that pressure has been applied to the website to remove the report. It's unheard of for a news article to simply be removed in this way.

I have also noted a statement by the ANC defending Judge Desai’s alleged presence at the meeting by claiming that it was in fact a social meeting.

The DA, however, still believes that the circumstances of Desai’s alleged presence at the meeting must be investigated. It is for this reason that I escalated the matter to the Office of the Chief Justice, MogoengMogoeng, to request an enquiry.

Issued by Glynnis Breytenbach,DA Shadow Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, 2 December 2020