In the latest instalment of her "Backstory" series, Gill Moodie writes exclusively for journalism.co.za:
 
Lucky for President Jacob Zuma and First Lady Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma that the World Cup came along and shifted the country’s attention from the recent allegations of infidelity in the extended presidential household.
 
Or perhaps the timing of that remarkable letter (claiming that MaNtuli, as she is known, had had an affair with a bodyguard who then committed suicide) faxed to newsrooms around the country is auspicious. The eve of a big international event such as a World Cup is a choice time to embarrass the president if  that was the intention and it’s possible that those behind the anonymous letter did not realise how the soccer jamboree would swamp SA’s media to the extent that it has.

This shouldn’t surprise us as all political leaders have enemies and Zuma would have more than most, given the bitter battle he waged and promises he made to get the top job. And of course, information is seldom leaked to journalists without an agenda. But this was all looking suspiciously like a smear campaign into which the press were suckered with abandon until it also started looking like it was true. 

Though the mainstream press have found it hard to nail down independent corroboration of the allegations, I’m convinced after speaking to Eric Ndiyane  – the editor and news editor of the KwaZulu-Natal isiZulu-language newspaper Ilanga that broke the story – that it is indeed true.

Ndiyane said the paper found three independent sources to corroborate the allegation that MaNtuli had an affair with bodyguard Phinda Thomo, who then allegedly took his own life after the affair was discovered. (If true, this puts the paternity of MaNtuli’s unborn child in doubt. Her pregnancy was confirmed recently.)

Like everybody else, Ilanga was faxed the letter on Monday, May 31, and it spent the next couple of days nailing down independent corroboration so that the paper could break the story on Thursday, June 3.  Later on that day the Johannesburg-based national Sunday paper, City Press, took the unusual step (for City Press) of putting a story up on their website, which then forced everybody’s else hand. Except for the Mail & Guardian, almost everyone, his blog and his dog piled gleefully into the story, citing Ilanga though few had their own independent sources for the story or had probably even read the original in isiZulu. 

This raises a number of interesting questions about journalism in South Africa. Was it irresponsible for those to publish the allegations on the say-so of someone else? Can the president’s wives expect some measure of privacy? Was it necessary to name the bodyguard? While you can’t defame the dead, the hurt caused to his family would have been great but, on the other hand, what kind of privacy can a presidential bodyguard expect if he is allegedly caught having an affair with one of the first ladies?

Having spoken to Ndiyane, City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes about how they covered the story, I can say the decision to publish was not taken lightly at any of these newspapers.

While Ndiyane was confident and happy with the corroboration his reporters came up with, not all in the newsroom felt it was right for Ilanga to publish what seemed a disrespectful story about Zuma. Additionally, there was discussion over whether the paper should name the bodyguard.

Ndiyane decided that because there were many unnamed sources in the story, he felt he had to name the bodyguard as it would firm it up considerably in the eyes of the reader. He also decided it was right to publish the story and, he said, the fact that the Zuma family did not later dispute the alleged facts of the story but merely that the letter had come from them vindicated his decision. He said he took flack from some of the paper’s readers, who felt that the story ridiculed the president uneccesarily.

“It was not an easy decision,” Ndiyane said. “The purpose of the story was not to embarrass or ridicule Zuma but the nation should know what is happening in the president’s life... I think we need to debate what is private when it comes to the president.”

Dawes, meanwhile, said he was not comfortable publishing the allegations of the affair without the paper’s own corroboration and instead went for a broader story of unhappiness in the household that led to the gift of a goat to the Zuma family.
It sounds like both Ndiyane and Dawes made the right call so why, then, did the highly respected Haffajee decide to publish when it appears that the paper did not have much more to go on than the M&G?

Haffajee pointed out that the story had been coming out in dribs and drabs for quite some time. Haffajee got word the week before from her own sources that this story was going to start surfacing and she sent two reporters down to KZN the week the story broke. Then when Ilanga – which has a relationship with City Press as it is printed by City Press owners Media24 – broke the story,  Haffajee’s reporters spoke to Ilanga and decided its sources were solid.

Haffajee consulted a lawyer and the story was written very carefully to reflect that Ilanga had reported it first. She also tried not to report the story in a salacious manner, she told jocoza, and to reflect that there was an apparent smear campaign against MaNtuli. 

Haffajee decided to break the story online rather than wait for Sunday, she said, as she is seeing more and more value in online. (She added the paper will be breaking more stories online in the future.)  

Sounds like she made the right call.

Haffajee  and Dawes are both firm in their belief that this was squarely in the public domain. Both believe that it is disingenuous that the president invites the public into his private life when it suits him (think of the access the press got at the recent weddings) but cries foul when stories such as these emerge. Further, both editors point that taxpayers’ money is used to pay the "spousal support budget" of Zuma’s three wives.

I’ve thought long and hard about it myself and believe that if you’re going to be polygamous – in a society where monogamy is the norm – and parade your wives around at public functions, you’re asking for it. Zuma has not – as most expected before his election – chosen only one wife to accompany him consistently on state occasions. More importantly, we all know very well that he cannot afford to foot the bill for this large extended family (few people could) which leads to patronage from wealthy businessmen. And we have seen from the trial of Zuma’s former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, that this kind of patronage is one short step to corruption.

In many ways, points out Haffajee, South African journalists are faced with the same dilemmas that French and Italian journalists wrestle with reporting on their leaders, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi.

“I think when you’re sitting in our shoes it’s a hard call to make – to decide what’s in the public domain,” says Haffajee. “I would prefer not to tell this story in a tabloid way but I’m certainly not going to be scared off by the presidency saying this is all private domain because I can show you numerous ways in which it is not. Zuma’s private life has an impact on the way he governs the country but also there is a massive fiscal impact because we are now paying for a very large extended family.”

One thing’s for sure: We certainly have one of the most interesting presidents on the planet. Tantalisingly, Ndiyane says that Ilanga has more up its enterprising sleeve on this saga. The paper is keeping it under its hat for now for fear of being drowned out by World Cup fever. But the rest of the country’s media would do well to watch that space very closely.

* The "Backstory" series is exclusive to journalism.co.za.  Gill Moodie is a freelance journalist who is also responsible for the website http://www.grubstreet.co.za