Mngxitama goes on Twitter rant against Media24
The BLF leader calls the latest exposé 'fake news' and revenge for an unrelated Press Council ruling.
BLF leader Andile Mngxitama. Picture: Gallo Images
Despite the fact that a news report linking Black First Land First (BLF) founder Andile Mngxitama to instructions from the Guptas was not actually written only by Media24, Mngxitama has blamed the reportage on the company and the chairman of its parent company, Naspers, Koos Bekker.
The article ran as the lead on News24 and other sites on Monday morning.
The report was produced by independent investigative group amaBhungane and the Daily Maverick’s investigative unit Scorpio in collaboration with News24.
In it Mngxitama was allegedly exposed as “taking instructions” from the PR company, Bell Pottinger, that was contracted to work for the Gupta family and its businesses.
The trove of #GuptaLeaks emails contains alleged evidence that Mngxitama was sent at least one request by a shared email account used by the Guptas, their staff and Bell Pottinger to discuss their media campaigns.
Mngxitama, however, told the investigative reporters that he did not know what they were talking about.
As far as he is concerned, this is all sour grapes because Media24 recently lost their media ombudsman appeal on a completely different matter against the BLF.
In May, the Press Ombudsman ruled that an article published in City Press and News24 was misleading. Mngxitama and Njabulo Sithebe had complained that the newspaper had incorrectly and misleadingly quoted Prof Chris Malikane, adviser to Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba, “as saying that if the Constitution could not be changed, ‘to achieve what we want to achieve, we need to go that route [take up arms]…’”.
The ombud, Johan Retief, found Mngxitama was correct in his complaint, as the professor had not advocated for the taking up of arms. Retief found that: “The impression that Malikane favoured the taking up of arms to solve the land reform issue misrepresented him, was unfair to him, and unnecessarily associated him with a position which, if taken to implementation, would have consequences too ghastly to contemplate.”
City Press and News24 were directed to “apologise, unreservedly, to Malikane in particular and to the public in general, for misleadingly and unfairly creating the impression that Malikane favoured the taking up of arms to solve the land reform issue”.
The paper appealed and lost the appeal on Thursday, much to Mngxitama’s pleasure.
He called the latest #GuptaLeaks article on him “fake news” and revenge for the Press Council loss. He challenged the company to run an article on the Malikane matter.
Mngxitama reiterated a call for a media tribunal as, in his view, the “white-owned media” can’t regulate itself.
Mngxitama and the BLF have threatened and intimidated several journalists over the past few weeks, to the point that he and his group have been interdicted by the high court from continuing to do so.
Note: An earlier version of this story stated that News24 was not a co-author of the Mngxitama story. However, the website wrote the article in collaboration with amaBhungane and Scorpio.
https://twitter.com/Mngxitama/status/889371322031255553
https://twitter.com/Mngxitama/status/889369105157029888
https://twitter.com/Mngxitama/status/889368693083426817
https://twitter.com/Mngxitama/status/889362162417885185
https://twitter.com/Mngxitama/status/889358671259590656
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