PETER BRUCE | Please, General, name these rotten journalists

Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has become something of a folk hero since appearing in battledress at a July 6 press conference to denounce corruption within the police force.

As a result — or so it would seem — police on Thursday raided the home of Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya, head of the SAPS crime detection division. Even he suspects his arrest is imminent.

Mkhwanazi is quite a guy. Forceful and brave, he has captured the hearts of South Africans as he lifts the lid — at a commission of inquiry, and in parliament this week — on the routine abuse of the organs of the police to protect criminal syndicates.

It’s like we all knew it was happening but none of us had the wherewithal to actually know. How else could the levels of corruption here have spread so widely for so long? It was only when former police minister Senzo Mchunu shut down the political killings task team that Mkhwanazi began a mutiny which roused even President Cyril Ramaphosa from his usual slumber to sideline Mchunu.

Now Mkhwanazi is in full flow and Ramaphosa — once again — skates on extremely thin ice. How could he have been so blind to the scale of criminality in his own police?

I don’t think, as others do, that Mkhwanazi is suddenly a threat to democracy, but a call for a counterintelligence probe of the media was reckless.

But the general has still to put meat on many of the bones he has thrown at the inquiries, and we have yet to hear the other side of his stories.

And, he can be vague at times. No more so than this week when he called for a “thorough counterintelligence investigation into the South African media”, as if it were somehow part of the police corruption problem.

“I hope,” he said “that the ad hoc committee ... tasks the state security of this country to conduct a thorough counterintelligence investigation on the role of the media in this country, specifically specific journalists that are working … [A]s I’ve said, it’s not a media house but journalists, some they write for, I think, Sunday Times or City Press — one of those newspapers, but I know one of them, some of them, write for News24.

“Not long ago ... the inspector-general of intelligence was requested to [investigate] the purchase of properties within the counterintelligence, and that is within the domain of the joint standing committee on intelligence. But ... a few days back, that report was published by [a] News24 journalist.

“It’s a classified document ... about properties within the secret service account, so the question is, how did the journalist get hold of such? Who then gave the journalist it? I’m using this as an example. It’s not the only one.”

Hang on. He “thinks” it’s the Sunday Times or City Press? And the journalist who wrote the News24 story would never work again if they betrayed their source. Remember Watergate. But if Mkhwanazi wanted to know who gave the journalist the information, he surely has the power to access phone and diary records to get near the source.

I don’t think, as some do, that Mkhwanazi is suddenly a threat to democracy, but a sweeping call for a counterintelligence probe of the media was surely reckless. Does he have the names of journalists he suspects of enabling police corruption?

Please, for all our sakes, say the names. And, please, get it right. Why leave a cloud over a whole newspaper? Of course there are rotten apples in newsrooms. Usually they expose themselves — they’re lazy, inaccurate or get all their stories from one source. And money may change hands. But most journalists would be horrified to be offered a bribe to write, or not write, a story.

Mkhwanazi’s appeal for an investigation into the media won loud applause from the peanut gallery, but it was just noise from the usual media-haters.

“Everyone knows you’re all bought and paid for,” wrote DA leader John Steenhuisen’s former chief of staff Roman Cabanac on X. Thanks for that, from all the many diligent and poorly paid journalists I’ve had the honour of working with.

Public commentator Tebogo Khaas wrote perceptively on Friday that “our constitutional democracy rests on a delicate equilibrium between accountability and freedom. The state must be transparent and the media must be free; but both must be responsible.”

So, faced with reliable evidence — classified or not — that public funds are being used to enrich police officers, an editor has no duty to ask for permission to print. People can classify documents to hide their own malfeasance. Instead, editors would ask themselves whether the information is in the public interest, or merely of interest to it. If the reasonable answer is the former, then they must publish. It is always an agonising call. But newspapers, including this one, have paid heavily in the past for getting that balance wrong.