Dear Adri,<\/p>\n
Your attack on me<\/a> in Business Report<\/em> last week was proof that, while the heart may still beat at Independent, the soul is dead.<\/p>\n From distorting basic reportage, to abusing your editorship for cheap propaganda, it was an object lesson in what has gone wrong at Independent since it fell to Dr Iqbal Surv\u00e9.<\/p>\n Your attack did five things.<\/p>\n Firstly, it repeated the slur cast by Surv\u00e9 when he used an SABC interview to pursue the \u2018Stratcom defence\u2019, by asking me, as you put it, \u201cto publicly state his involvement in apartheid journalism as a young reporter\u201d.<\/p>\n Secondly, you misrepresented my answer<\/a>, given the next day, when you wrote: \u201cTo summarise, he was making all sorts of excuses for being a trooper in the army, and during, or after, that he wrote some articles that I think he is ashamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirdly, you accused me of lying.<\/p>\n Fourthly, you peddled the rumour that I \u201cam being paid to write positive stories about certain companies\u201d.<\/p>\n Finally, trivially, you suggested I need to get out of my \u201ccomfortable air-conditioned office\u201d, and meet people in the townships, the way Surv\u00e9 does \u201cif he isn\u2019t attending a global meeting\u201d.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s unpack your allegations.<\/p>\n Perhaps you didn\u2019t see the Skype interview<\/a> where Sakina Kamwendo struggled to keep a straight face at the sight of my office, which is a small space under my garage \u2013 and is storage for camping equipment and other junk, as well as files about apartheid murders and post-apartheid malfeasance.<\/p>\n It does not have air-conditioning.<\/p>\n Your assumptions about my office underline a bigger mistake about my decision to subject myself to military conscription. It was precisely to confront the ugly reality of apartheid, rather than run away from it.<\/p>\n My only involvement with the apartheid security services, ever, was during those two years \u2013 from mid-\u201884 to mid-\u201886.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t a journalist then, I was a private in the infantry, which was deployed into townships in the Eastern Cape during two states of emergency.<\/p>\n I got to see just how vicious the system was \u2013 and that propelled me into journalism as a means of fighting injustice and exposing abuses.<\/p>\n I wrote my first article, secretly, while I was still in uniform. It was an expos\u00e9 of what the police and the troops were doing in the townships.<\/p>\n It was published anonymously in the International Herald Tribune <\/em>after I mailed it to an address given to me by Janet Cherry of the End Conscription Campaign. You can read about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I am not ashamed of that story, I am proud of it.<\/p>\n My \u201cstuttering\u201d as you called it, was not a mark of \u201clying\u201d, but betrayed the emotion of having to defend myself from such a grotesque distortion of my life and work \u2013 as any honest observer will appreciate.<\/p>\n The attempt by you and Surv\u00e9 to deflect legitimate scrutiny by smearing me is a mark of desperation.<\/p>\n Surv\u00e9 is in the spotlight because of what he\u2019s done, not who he is.<\/p>\n What he\u2019s done is damage, perhaps irretrievably, the health, integrity and credibility of Independent, once one of the pillars of our news media.<\/p>\n Investigative journalism takes time and money. Help us do more. Be an amaB Supporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n The notion that I\u2019m being paid to write \u201cpositive stories about certain companies\u201d is such poorly conceived slander, it\u2019s laughable.<\/p>\n