#TwoBits: Breaking a lifelong habit

The history of what happened to the Times, followed by the groundbreaking "Guptaleaks" disclosures of state capture is brilliantly recorded in a new book by Wits University journalism professor Anton Harber.

Every Sunday on the way home from church, my father would stop at the Greek café for the Sunday Times, Sunday Tribune and – our Sunday treat – a bar of chocolate.

The morning would then be spent ploughing through a mass of newsprint, starting with the comics of course, followed with four squares of chocolate after lunch.

My favourite part of the Times was Joel Mervis’ The Passing Show column with its Goonish humour and nonsensical punchlines – “Drinking slivovitz, waiting for war to break out” and “Drink Eau de Pippleparrot and Be The Baas!” – being two of his favourites, and gently poking fingers at politicians and businesspeople.

One of his characters was Stanley, Ace Reporter, a take on the top Times journalist Stanley Uys, who I was privileged to work with in London in the early 80s.

I also got to know Mervis in later years and enjoyed his sly humour.

Reading most newspapers religiously has been important my whole working life, but I have not picked up a copy of the Times in yonks.

Partly for the price of news that I struggle to connect with, but more because of their disgraceful campaigns starting 10 years ago against Pravin Gordhan and SARS, Johan Booysens and the so-called “Cato Manor death squad” and many other stories that were proven to be completely false.

Sure, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones and all papers make mistakes, but even when it became obvious that some of their reporters were being used, paid off or had their own agendas, their bosses were in denial.

When the management finally apologised in a grudging way a few years ago and the guilty reporters had been fired or left, it was about five years too late for me.

Its credibility was beyond redemption.

And it is still too expensive.

The history of what happened to the Times, followed by the groundbreaking “Guptaleaks” disclosures of state capture is brilliantly recorded in a new book by Wits University journalism professor Anton Harber.

We worked for the Rand Daily Mail at the same time.

He was a quiet, thoughtful young man then and with his book “So, For The Record” he proves to be a formidable researcher and storyteller.

Media intrigues and gossip may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

I’ve been in the newspaper business for 50 years so the book is mother’s milk, but it’s also a really upclose account of the unfolding of state capture by Zuma and the Guptas that should fascinate any follower of politics.

I’ve always wondered how the trove of thousands of Gupta emails were discovered, and he tells how they were discovered by accident on a damaged computer hard drive.

It was by pure luck, followed by a dogged determination of a few incorruptible people, that we discovered just how much was stolen from this country.

And even then, we may never know the full extent of that corruption.

But, what we do know is that Guptaleaks spelled the end for Zuma, the beginning for Ramaphosa and, thank God, new life for the Hawks and other forces of law and order.

* * *

As I finished writing the above on Monday, a rather plaintive press release arrived from the municipality.

Across a picture of our last week’s front page headlined “Hawks grill KDM officials”, was stamped “Unvalidated information”.

Strangely, the press release went on to confirm the salient points of our story about the Hawks’ investigation of possible unlawful awards of PPE contracts, but disputed our choice of words that the offices had been “raided”, their officials had been “grilled” and the Hawks had “seized” documents.

They would have preferred we said the Hawks arrived and interviewed the Mayor and five others, and that the Hawks “expressed gratitude” (their words) for the material provided by KDM.

Pull the other one! You don’t have the option of refusing an interview with the Hawks unless you want trouble, their questions aren’t social chit-chat and when they say they want a document, do you argue?

They’re following the orders of the President, who said he wants the guilty found and punished.

The municipality questioned the Courier’s objective in publishing this story.

Well it’s quite simple: our objective is to keep ratepayers informed of developments in KDM and that the cops are asking hard questions. We never said anyone was guilty, so why react as if we did?

* * *

What is it with the traffic lights in this town?

And why is nobody prepared to listen when older and wiser heads say that traffic circles, roundabouts, call them what you will, are by far the better solution for traffic control?

They don’t break down, don’t need electricity and keep the traffic flowing.

So far there don’t appear to have been any serious accidents, but my heart is in my mouth every time I enter these “four-way stop” scenarios.

I can just imagine some idiot shooting through from a blind spot and broadsiding me.

Or idiot me causing an accident by taking off out of sequence. Jrrrr!

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