Mondi Shanduka – 2007 Category Winners

Winner

1. 01

   A series of 32 pages covering Vusi Pikoli and Jackie Selebi.

   (Mail & Guardian)

   This entry represents the fruits of the second year of the Mail & Guardian’s dogged (if we have to say so ourselves) pursuit of the truth about Jackie Selebi, his friend Glenn Agliotti and the organised crime network that had
   congealed around mining boss Brett Kebble before he died.  Investigating this story has been no stroll in the park. Dirty tricks directed at us (but that’s a story for another day) apart, our stories were initially derided, including by some in the media.

   When we started sniffing around Agliotti and the police chief’s relationship during the second half of 2005 – even before Kebble was shot -- we thought we were onto something big. But ever since we published our first set of articles in May 2006, there were those who said we were barking up the wrong tree; that we had taken sides in a territorial war between the DSO (Scorpions) and the police; that we were useful idiots.

   Selebi himself took it a step further this January when he claimed in a court affidavit that a media campaign had been orchestrated against him, adding: “I have received information that members of [the] DSO even went on a so-called ‘bosberaad’ with members of the media, more in particular members from the Mail & Guardian to discuss and structure this campaign against me.”

   Selebi’s statement could not have been further from the truth. Of course we attempted to penetrate the DSO and find out what they knew - we could not call ourselves journalists if we did not try - but we were largely unsuccessful.
   Our investigation had started separately from the DSO’s and our greatest strength lay in the own sources we had cultivated who had direct or indirect contact with the criminal network that was the subject of our interest.

   Where we did find out what the DSO was up to, it tended to be because of the “fishing in the same pond” phenomenon – we and the DSO were talking to the same people because these were the people who mattered. Yet Selebi seems to have fallen for his own spinmeisters’ propaganda, refusing to believe that the media could be any more than a passive tool for interests other than the public interest, or that it could develop its own sources and resources – or indeed that it could investigate.

   Back in May 2006 already, we had plotted the links between Selebi, Agliotti, his associate Clinton Nassif and Kebble; placed Kebble’s murder in the context of this network; and referred to the “contraband” activities that occupied members of the network.

   Bit by bit our reporting has been vindicated. Agliotti and Nassif have turned out to be every bit as significant and nefarious as we portrayed them to be – they have both confessed to a role in Kebble’s “assisted suicide” and in a
   massive drug smuggling operation. And Selebi has been charged …

   We feel vindicated, but more: We have provided swathes of factual backdrop to some of the more pressing issues of our time, not least the ANC succession battle and the related issues of the political manipulation versus the independence of law enforcement.

   1. 01

      

      Stefaans Brümmer

      Stefaans Brümmer is a Mail & Guardian old hand. A politics and journalism graduate, he wrote for the Cape Argus before joining the M&G at the dawn of democracy. In the late 1990s he worked in television for a while, only to return “home” to work full-time on investigations at the M&G.

   2. 02

      

      Stephen “Sam” Sole

      Stephen “Sam” Sole has been a journalist since 1986. He served as president of the now dissolved South African Union of Journalists from 1996 to 1998. He has worked for the investigative magazine Noseweek, served as political editor of the Sunday Tribune, an joined the Mail & Guardian as investigative journalist in 2002. He also teaches journalism part-time at the Durban University of Technology

   3. 03

      

      Zukile Bathandwa Majova

      Zukile Bathandwa Majova, worked as political and investigative reporter at the Mail & Guardian in 2006 and 2007, helping to bridge the all-too-often yawning gap between chronicling the doings of politicians and exposing them. Before joining the M&G, he was a local government and politics reporter at the Mercury in Durban. He is now news editor at YFM.

   4. 04

      

      Nic Dawes

      Nic Dawes joined the Mail & Guardian in 2004 from the short-lived broadsheet This Day. He divides his time between investigations, reporting on public policy and editing duties. He had previously helped set up the online news service of Vodacom World Online but after the dotcom bubble burst he spent two years in management and consulting.

   5. 05

      

      Adriaan Basson

      Adriaan Basson joined the Mail & Guardian as an investigative reporter in 2007. He started his journalism career at Beeld newspaper as a crime and courts reporter in 2003 and was one of the founding members of the daily’s investigations unit. He is the recipient of the 2007 inaugural Taco Kuiper award for investigative journalism for a series on corruption, tender fraud and nepotism in South Africa’s Department of Correctional Services.

   6. 06

      

      Pearlie Joubert

      Pearlie Joubert worked as a journalist at the Vrye Weekblad after graduation in 1989. Some four years later she moved on to news production, researching and directing mainly for British television, making a wide variety of films both locally and in the rest of Africa. She joined the Mail & Guardian two years ago, supplying news and features from Cape Town and collaborating with the investigative team.

   7. 07

      

      Matuma Letsoalo

      Matuma Letsoalo joined the M&G in 2003 and writes on labour and politics, and collaborates with the investigations team from time to time. In 2004 he won the CNN African Journalist of the Year prize (MKO Abiola Print Journalism Award) and was finalist in the 2003 Mondi Papers Award (investigative category).