You’re right on one count: the Guardian did run an article saying the SA government denies knowledge of the document – on Friday August 24, three days after I posted this piece and NINE days after the government first denied knowledge of the report.

You’re wrong about another thing though: I don’t believe in a great anti-African conspiracy by The Guardian.

Furthermore, I didn’t say you had made no attempt to get comment from the government – I wrote that there was NO INDICATION in your piece that you’d contacted the government for comment. Your readers would have been as blissfully unaware of your efforts to verify the information.

The original report did not appear in the Guardian. It appeared on Reuters five days before my own, and a version appeared in South Africa’s Sunday Independent a day before. So the first mention in the South African press was not in Business Day.
How does Brand know I made no effort to verify the report? He never called me to ask. (Or perhaps media ethics lecturers don’t have to worry about the basic leg work of reporting).

Reuters and myself did indeed attempt to get a response from the government. There was none, just as there was none I and other reporters tried to get comment after the Sunday Times broke its stories on the health minister. Two days after my story appeared, one South African official called me to say he still couldn’t get a straight answer from the foreign ministry.

The Guardian has indeed run an article saying that the South African government denies knowledge of the document. Mbeki’s ANC internet letter though came remarkably close to expressing its sentiments.

I suppose Brand could be right, it could be a great anti-African conspiracy by the Guardian (just as our Israeli coverage is allegedly an anti-Semitic conspiracy and our Iraq coverage supposedly anti-American). Or maybe not.

As to Mbeki, he is hardly alone. Indeed, the news of a standing ovation for Robert Mugabe by premiers at the SADC summit is reason for despair.

However, I don’t think his treatment of the media, or his paranoid reaction to their reports are the worst problem. I think there is a far more important reason why journalists who are not close to the presidency are willing to believe just about anything.

They’re utterly perplexed at the endless silence over Zimbabwe and his implicit defence of Mugabe. Mbeki is cosy with some of the worst tyrants and communists the world has to offer, and South Africa has on several occasions acted accordingly on the international stage – most notably by sending Aziz Pahad to express solidarity with Saddam Hussein, and by vetoing a UN Security Council resolution condemning the abuses of the Burmese (Myanmar) military junta. Worst of all, perhaps, Mbeki is known to have adopted some pretty crazy ideas about Aids from snake-oil salesmen.

These things have done his credibility among the world’s media no favours.