Paper Tiger. Alide Dasnois

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      d.It would have been appropriate, after months and months of sustained attacks on the integrity of Sekunjalo, if the Cape Times had published on its front page the more accurate articles which were buried on page 18 of Business Report of 6 December 2013, that Sekunjalo had been vindicated, and that the company demanded an apology.

      In the premises our client demands a front page apology on Monday 9 December from both the newspaper’s editor Alide Dasnois and the journalist concerned, Melanie Gosling, and that proper prominence be given by the newspaper of the findings of the Public Protector concerning Sekunjalo.

      It is only appropriate given the history of aspersions cast on the company.

      If you fail to accede to this demand, Sekunjalo will issue summons on Tuesday against the individuals concerned in their personal capacity, as well as against the newspaper, for the recovery of damages suffered by the company.

      The company will also lodge a complaint with the Press Ombudsman for breaches of the Press Code if this demand is not met.

      Kindly be guided accordingly

      Yours faithfully,

      ENS AFRICA

      Whitfield could not believe his eyes. He tried to phone Howard but could not reach him. Meanwhile, he had to edit the Cape Times the next day. He had been editor of the newspaper from 2001 to 2006, but this time his editorship would last exactly one day.

      Melanie Gosling remembers that Sunday. ‘I walked into the Cape Times expecting much of our day to be taken up with the story of Mandela. There was still so much to be told,’ says Gosling. ‘As we usually did with big stories, I expected a special morning conference of brainstorming with editors and reporters about new angles, who was to do what, and the general buzz and activity that goes with a big story. It didn’t turn out that way – at least not for me.

      ‘As I walked in, I was surprised to see Chris in his office. He never worked on Sundays. And, even stranger, the general manager Sandy Naudé was in the office with him. Management was definitely not seen in the newsroom on Sundays. I wondered what was going on.

      ‘Then as I put my bag down at my desk I saw Alide’s office was empty. I turned to the other reporters and asked where Alide was. They said they didn’t know. I asked how come Chris was at work on a Sunday. They didn’t know either.

      ‘I soon found out. My phone rang and Chris asked me to come to his office. I walked down that strip of ugly brown nylon carpet that clashed with the blue, feeling a twinge of apprehension that comes from a sense of things not being quite right.

      ‘I went in and Chris laid it out. It was the Sekunjalo story. Iqbal Survé had fired Alide. He was threatening to sue her, to sue the Cape Times, and to sue me – unless Sekunjalo got what it demanded: a front-page apology from Alide and from me the next day.

      ‘I was stunned. What on earth? Alide fired? Me sued? All this because of the story on the Public Protector’s findings on the DAFF tender to Sekunjalo? I could not quite take it in. Alide had been fired because of my story. ‘But what was wrong with my story?’

      ‘“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Chris replied.

      ‘The company lawyer Jacques Louw had since been through my story, and through the Public Protector’s report, and had told Chris that there was nothing wrong with it.

      ‘“Jacques is with Iqbal now, trying to work something out,” said Chris.

      ‘So many questions were flying through my mind: Was Alide really fired, never coming back? Or was it just a fit of temper on Survé’s part? Who would edit the paper? Would I be forced to publish an apology? I would never do that. But would the paper do so anyway, in my name?

      ‘“So what do I do now?”

      ‘“Nothing for the moment,” Chris said. He would come and address the staff about Alide.

      ‘I walked back across that stretch of ugly brown carpet to my desk, and went into my emails to find the letter from Sekunjalo’s lawyers. I read through Sekunjalo’s complaints, and its demands. I had had threatening lawyers’ letters before – what journalist hasn’t? – but I had never had a letter from my own newspaper company threatening to sue me. A newspaper owner suing its reporters?

      ‘I stared out of the window at the Greenmarket Square traders. Everything looked the same as usual, but there was something that for me had changed forever.’

      At 11a.m. Chris Whitfield called together the newspaper’s staff for the usual morning conference. ‘Chris told the staff that Alide had been fired as editor. There was a stunned silence,’ says Gosling. ‘Reporters, photographers and subs stared at him, then at each other, trying to take it in. Then came the questions. Why had she been fired? Was it for real or would she come back? What would happen to the Cape Times? Who was going to be editor? Chris answered as best he could, and told us he would edit the Cape Times for the time being, and that despite what had happened, he knew the newsroom would carry on and bring out a good paper.’

      ‘There was shock, tears, disbelief,’ says Tony Weaver. ‘We went about our jobs, numbed by events, but journalists are journalists – when other people mourn, we report their grief, when disaster strikes, we roll into work mode.’

      ‘We produced a fine paper that day, miraculously,’ says Heard. ‘We pulled together. Delivered a cracker diary. Fortunately we had loads of banked stories in our holding queue.’

      After the 11a.m. meeting Whitfield asked Tony Weaver to come into his office: ‘Read this … never in my life,’ he said, giving Weaver a printout of the letter from ENS Africa.

      ‘I can’t do it. I am going to have to resign.’ However, Weaver persuaded him to wait and to address the issue with senior management.

      Whitfield phoned Howard and told him about the letter and said that he would not be running the apology. ‘Let me talk to him [Survé],’ said Howard. ‘I’ll get back to you.’ He never did. The apology never appeared and the issue was not raised by the company management again.

      Meanwhile, word of Dasnois’s dismissal had ‘spread like wildfire’, says Heard. ‘We tried to get Chris to have the company release a statement about Alide. No luck. An article appeared on the Mail & Guardian website, detailing the threat of legal action, and the firing.

      ‘Everyone was calling us. Chris could not take calls,’ says Heard. She remembers being phoned by Raymond Louw from the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) and by group political editor Angela Quintal. ‘It didn’t stop.’

      Sanef was later to release a statement condemning what seemed to the organisation like editorial interference and calling for clarity.

      ‘It was a ghastly day,’ says Gosling. ‘Staff were shocked, bewildered and angry.’ Around lunch-time Dasnois sent the staff an email.

      Dear colleagues

      I’m sorry not to be with you today working on the Mandela story.

      But I’m sure that whatever happens in the next few days the Cape Times team will focus on the only thing which matters at the moment: covering the Mandela story as well as we possibly can and producing newspapers which all of us will remember with pride.

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