WHAT IS BASSON’S AGENDA?

ADRIAAN Basson, the editor-in-chief of News24, recently published a piece suggesting the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) should criminally prosecute those private sector executives who appear to be implicated in some form of criminal misconduct at the helm of their corporations. It’s not a bad idea.

Companies such as Steinhoff, Regiments, Tongaat Hulett, Murray & Roberts, Nemai Consulting et al and their top brass should be brought to book if they are guilty. However, where Basson strays from reason is in his inclusion of Sekunjalo in the list of targets.

Again, he has fallen prey to his own rhetoric in pronouncing Sekunjalo and particularly the chairperson, Dr Iqbal Survé, as guilty of the self-same alleged criminal activity of these companies.

I attended virtually all of the sessions at the Commission of Inquiry into alleged impropriety at the Public Investment Corporation. When it came to Sekunjalo and its associated companies being put under the microscope, there was not a single person at the commission who implicated Sekunjalo in any corruption or wrongdoing – only those leading the evidence.

To date, no institution, agency or commission has found any evidence that Sekunjalo, its associated companies or Survé himself have ever been implicated in any criminal conduct whatsoever. A lot of questions, finger-pointing, and supposition are all carried out on public platforms for sowing doubt where none existed.

I challenge Basson to prove that Sekunjalo has been implicated anywhere. If he can’t, he should admit that this is all fake news. As journalists, we are constantly told to guard against misinformation and it is disappointing that the editor-in-chief of News24 appears to absolve himself of the responsibility for misinformation.

What then could Basson’s agenda be? Basson and Ferial Haffajee at Daily Maverick are part of a group of media houses and journalists who have decided to, at all costs, protect Pravin Gordhan. Sources within these media houses, and others, reliably indicate that it is Gordhan who instructs these media houses and these journalists, as to what to write.

Sekunjalo, the owners of Independent Media, do not fit into the strategy of this narrative and have to be destroyed at all costs – in order to protect Gordhan. As a journalist at Independent Media, the most transformed media house in South Africa, I can confirm that we have the freedom to write what we like. This means that we are free to expose the criminal conduct of people like Gordhan with the Sars Rogue Unit, and many other areas in relation to the government, which Gordhan has to account for.

Independent Media was able to expose Gordhan’s central role in raising between $1 billion (R14.6bn) and $2bn for the Cyril Ramaphosa presidential (CR17) campaign.

Independent Media continues to expose how Gordhan is destroying state-owned enterprises (SOEs) – others are starting to see this too.

Basson and his cronies are thus creating the perception of wrongdoing on the part of Sekunjalo, possibly as deflection for what is really going on here. It does not matter whether Sekunjalo has done anything wrong or not, because by creating the perception and goading law-enforcement agencies to act against the company, embarrass it and intimidate it, Sekunjalo can be “controlled”, made to “toe the line” and made out to be guilty of all manner of false claims.

I am well aware of the adage that he who protests too much, must have something to hide… But consider the possibility that in this case, there is nothing actually going on at Sekunjalo, and that Basson and his cohort’s articles are all a smokescreen created by a cabal of poisoned pens.