By Feroza Petersen
In the last few weeks Ann Crotty, a journalist with Financial Mail and Business Live (part of the Arena Group and a competitor of Iqbal Survé led Independent Media), has written several factually inaccurate and defamatory articles against Survé, and his associated companies or entities.
Crotty’s stories have focused on the recent Public Investment Corporation (PIC) / Ayo Technology Solutions (AYO) settlement agreement, deliberately distorting the facts, quoting selectively from the court case and only where individuals had made statements against AYO, thus ignoring the overwhelming evidence that was in favour of AYO winning said case.
A prime example was Crotty’s reporting of British Telecommunications’ CEO, Bertrandt Delport evidence, which completely misrepresented his sworn testimony.
Likewise, she has now launched a similar campaign in the Sekunjalo Group banking court matters against several of the country’s banks. Again, she has taken the trouble to selectively quote extracts from the legal papers thus not giving readers the broader context from which they can determine their own properly informed opinions.
It has become self-evident that this tactic is deliberately aimed at defaming Survé, and those companies associated to the Sekunjalo stable. How is this journalism? And how is it in the public interest when the facts are not fully conveyed?
The latest articles focusing on the banking cases, seem to be designed to specifically promote the banks’ agenda and are again heavily biased in their favour. Critically, she reports that the banks had stated that they continue to do business with the likes of the disgraced and guilty EOH, Tongaat Hulett and Steinhoff as they had allegedly implemented “remedial action”. Yet, she does not ask what “remedial action” was required of Sekunjalo nor of which company? Nor, how it could be that all companies under the Sekunjalo banner can be grouped as one when they are in fact separate legal entities?
The answer is of course that none of the Sekunjalo Group companies have been found guilty of any wrongdoing, nor has any remedial action been recommended against any of these companies – not by the Mpati Commission nor by the banks themselves.
She also did not report that the Competition Tribunal in 2022, ruled in favour of Sekunjalo’s application precisely because none of the companies have done anything wrong, thus putting paid to the banks (and the media’s) use of the Mpati Commission report as an excuse to write factually inaccurate articles about Sekunjalo.
Crotty and co and their continuous ignoring of these critical facts are purposeful obfuscation.
Why would a journalist, like Ann Crotty, who has had by and large a reputable career as a business reporter, choose to ignore the ethics of her profession in favour of a biased, one-sided narrative and what seems to be a vendetta against Surve?
Perhaps the answer lies in the 2013 acquisition of Independent Media by the Sekunjalo Consortium, which scuppered her own plans for the publisher. Round about 2012, Ann Crotty and the former Cape Times editor Alide Dasnois, along with some colleagues tried to put a consortium together to acquire Independent Media.
They had written to the PIC via the head of Personal Finance, Bruce Cameron asking the then-PIC CEO, Elias Masilela to fund their acquisition of Independent Media. They had used the attorneys ENS and its chair Michael Katz for this purpose. They had also approached Iqbal Survé and at a meeting at a coffee shop in Claremont called Starlings, Alide, Ann Crotty and a business advisor of theirs put forward their proposal and request to be included in the consortium of Iqbal Survé to acquire Independent Media.
They did not, however, meet the criteria of the consortium and this proposal was unable to proceed.
Nevertheless, when Survé took over in 2013, Crotty and Dasnois had enough respect for him to asked him to replace former CEO of Independent Media Tony Howard, but Survé could not because the agreement with the funders was that Howard would remain as CEO for two years post the acquisition.
A further factor, which appears to have contributed towards Crotty’s growing bitterness and dissatisfaction, was that together with Alide Dasnois, editor of the Cape Times, Crotty had been working on damaging the reputation of Sekunjalo prior to Sekunjalo concluding the acquisition of Independent Media. All had not gone as planned on this front either.
At the time, a Sekunjalo subsidiary was involved with a contract with the Department of Fisheries, which the public protector investigated. The interim report, which was false and leaked, claimed Sekunjalo had been implicated. Based on this leaked interim report, which also coincided with the death of President Nelson Mandela, Dasnois decided to use the media conference of then public protector, Thuli Madonsela, to denounce Sekunjalo believing Madonsela would announce Sekunjalo’s wrongdoing. This did not happen.
Madonsela, instead, absolved Sekunjalo, during her press conference on the matter. This left Dasnois with a quandary, and even though Mandela, the father of our democracy, had died, the Cape Times pages had been prepared for the day of the 7th of December with a story on Sekunjalo. Dasnois then made the decision to have a go at the Department of Fisheries and Minister Tina Joemat, resulting in the Cape Times being the only paper not to carry a front-page story on Mandela’s passing.
It is now a matter of record, how angry and disappointed Survé was at this lack of judgement by an editor who was already due to be replaced. It is also a matter of fact that Cape Times readers were equally disgruntled by this appalling lapse of professional respect for the statesman and the paper’s constituency, demanding too, that she be relocated.
Back to Crotty though.
When Survé took over the Independent Media group he found huge discrepancies between white journalists, management and employees, and their black counterparts. One such instance was Crotty’s two-month annual vacation allowance at the time. Elias Mnyandu, appointed by Survé as editor of Business Report, questioned why it was this special privilege accorded to only her was the case. Survé gave him the right to regularise her employment in line with company policy and other employees, which was another contributory factor in Crotty’s decision to resign, and her subsequent banding together with what are known as “Independent Media Detractors”.
The ultimate irony of Ann Crotty’s current line of reporting against Survé and any Sekunjalo related company of course, is her turning of a blind eye to her current paymaster’s own wrongdoings and alignments. Arena Holdings was a significant focus of the Mpati Commission, they are the majority shareholders of EOH for example, which defrauded government of billions of Rands, and have been implicated in bribing ministers, and if rumours in the market are true, the Arena publishing business is battling to cope with the revenue demands of an ever-evolving digital news world.
There is a well-known saying that speaks to the need for hypocrites to first remove the plank from their own eye before worrying about the speck in another’s – perhaps Ann, it is time to have your eyes tested so they can see things clearly…
* The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.