OPERATION HLANZA: PLOT TO REMOVE SA PRESIDENT

South Africa’s second-largest media house, Independent Media, has launched a backstairs plan to assist topple President Cyril Ramaphosa as baton of the ANC in December.

News24 can acknowledge which the plan, blue-blooded Operation Hlanza, which way “cleanse” or “clean”, was once share with chief editors and political journalists in the group, which owns titles like IOL, The Star, The Mercury and Cape Argus, at a arcane affair in Durban on Monday.

Authored by The Star’s editor, Sifiso Mahlangu, the certificate is bright in its anti-Ramaphosa attitude and alternative for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the accommodating babyminding and acceptable address minister, to booty over as baton of the administering party.

The ANC’s constituent appointment is appointed for 16 to 20 December at Nasrec in Johannesburg.

READ | Iqbal Survé in bid to analysis Mpati Commission as banks band on his companies

“The acclamation of Cyril Ramaphosa as admiral of the ANC was once a adverse administration for the fourth estate, for Independent Media it was once a time of its weakening.

“In the accomplished bristles years, Ramaphosa and his assembly have attempted each ambush in the book to shut bottomward Sekunjalo Holdings, the ambition was once and charcoal Independent Media,” writes Mahlangu in the “context” area of the Operation Hlanza document.

“Independent Media’s transformative attitude and aggregation of account has annoyed the country’s cardinal one [Ramaphosa]. After abundant attempts to co-opt, actuate and blackout our newsrooms, his final duke will be to assuredly shut bottomward Independent Media, application the banks, the judiciary, organs of accompaniment and wherever his ability extends to,” the certificate reads, adding:

This acclamation is analytical for the Republic as it is for Independent Media.

Former admiral Jacob Zuma has in contempo weeks also befuddled his weight abaft Dlamini-Zuma to defeat Ramaphosa.

Owned by agent Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo group, address of loans from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and two Chinese state-owned companies, Independent Media has singled out Ramaphosa for criticism in its titles, about this is the first, official affidavit of a concerted attack by a media home to bound the president.

Under Survé’s ownership, the aggregation has aloof from the Press Council of South Africa, which self-regulates local journalism by the appointment of the Press Ombudsman. The aggregation accomplished its own “press code” and appointed an centralized ombudsman.

According to the group’s columnist code, account should be appear “accurately”, “honestly motivated” and not be “misleading” or “distorted”. The company’s columnist cipher is bashful on political interests and bias, about states “conflicts of hobby charge be avoided”.

It is cryptic how Independent Media’s beat heads, including editor-in-chief Aziz Hartley, who is listed as a affiliate of Operation Hlanza, can avert a academic anti-Ramaphosa advantage plan in agreement of the code.

The “coverage plan” of Operation Hlanza includes the afterward accurately pointers beneath “lead up”, apparently to the December ANC conference:

“NDZ may be best applicant for the job”;
“Public Protector may still locate adjoin Ramaphosa” [presumably with advertence to the Phala Phala investigation];
“CR may be the ANC’s aftermost admiral in government”;
“Revolt in ANC branches over ambit pronouncing after branches”; and
“Arthur Frazer (sic) dishes out further dirt on Cyril”.

Survé has continued declared which he and Sekunjalo are adverse an aberrant “vendetta” by “the establishment” to blackout and ruin them.

Aziz Hartley, Independent Media editor-in-chief, responds:

Is it not time which South Africa cleans up its act? Can News24 in all acceptable alertness acquaint us which it’s blithesome with the status quo of the country or with the cardinal party’s performance?

Independent Media, like News24 and each added media home in this country and the apple over, has an beat direction. We do not animadversion on yours, so I’m not absolutely assertive why you really-feel you have the choose or correct to animadversion on ours.

Your estimation of the plan, a clandestine certificate which was once leaked to you, is attenuated and biased. The certificate acutely questions whether President Ramaphosa will be the ANC’s aftermost admiral – this is about the ANC as a affair and whether it will be the cardinal affair appear the abutting election. Or not. Nothing more, annihilation less.

Your attack to infer contrarily is artful and diminishes your role as an “objective” reporter.

News24’s attraction with Dr Survè bears all the hallmarks of a vendetta, about the answer to your catechism [whether Survè had a duke in conceptualising Operation Hlanza] is an absolute no. Our editors are pretty able of drafting a plan all on our own.

Further, unless you’ve been dwelling beneath a bedrock for the accomplished few years, it cannot have able your apprehension which Sekunjalo Investment Holdings (Sekunjalo) has been the victim of a apathetic apply campaign, and by affiliation Independent Media.

Our absolute beat candor charcoal intact, our beat administration is objective, able and non-partisan. We alarm it like it is, presenting to our readers the algid adamantine facts of the accuracy of dwelling in South Africa – and its tomorrows.

Ramaphosa’s agent Vincent Magwenya answered they accepted “all media houses in the exercise of their constitutionally anointed rights to do their banal in a address which is non-partisan, objective, actuality based and does not damage any citizen’s correct or assail the angel or appearance of any individual”.

Sekunjalo Investment Holdings, which is endemic by a Survé ancestors trust, is a holding aggregation with interests in technology, fishing, media and medical sectors. One of its subsidiaries is Independent Media.

In July this year, News24 Business appear which Survé and Sekunjalo alien which they had activated to analysis the award of the Mpati Commission, which had looked at declared barbarism at the PIC. The analysis appear its 995-page final address in March 2020.

Survé and Sekunjalo choose the courts to guideline which the agency of analysis appointed by the admiral accomplished abstracts which were “unjustified and inconsistent” with the affirmation afore it. They have asked the cloister to bulldoze the agency to “expunge” all allegation fabricated about Sekunjalo entities.

One of the investments the Mpati analysis looked at was once the PIC’s accommodation to subscribe to all of the shares of AYO Technology Solutions, an indirect accessory of Sekunjalo, News24 Business reported.

When AYO listed on the JSE in December 2017, the PIC bought all its shares at affair for R4.3 billion. The group’s shares have back plunged by over 90%. The PIC has instituted cloister action to compensate the R4.3 billion, which Sekunjalo is opposing.

Survé and Sekunjalo in July argued which the agency had “unlawfully” afflicted its agreement of advertence to allow it to investigate organizations in the Sekunjalo stable.

The report’s findings, they argued, were also allotment of a “campaign” to abate the Sekunjalo group.

The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture heard affirmation which the State Security Agency paid R20 million to African News Agency, an article in Independent Media, to “train” SSA analysts and broadcast conclusive belief to adverse bad publicity about the Zuma government.