Complaint against Mail & Guardian by the Patriotic Alliance dismissed

The Deputy-Ombud dismissed a complaint by Juwairiya Kaldine and the Patriotic Alliance against the Mail & Guardian. Illustration: Lisa Nelson

There’s an open piece of publicly-owned land in Eldorado Park that has apparently been used for all sorts of unlawful activity, from serious crimes against the person, to the dumping of trash. In December 2023, Juwairiya Kaldine, a ward councillor in the City of Johannesburg, wrote to the Eldorado Park Taxi Association indicating that she had no objection to the association developing a taxi rank on the land.

Kaldine, who is a member of the Patriotic Alliance (PA), is also the chairperson of the City’s section 79 committee on development planning. Section 79 committees are also known as portfolio committees, and according to the City’s website, “monitor the delivery and outputs of the executive”. Being chairperson of this particular committee is something that appears in her profile across various social media accounts.

In her letter to the taxi association, Kaldine is said to have written this:

“If the City of Joburg, through its future development plans, needs to develop during [the taxi association’s] occupation, through my office, it’s important that the City of Joburg communicate and afford three months’ notice where the owners of the land won’t assist the association to move.”

In an article published in April this year, titled “PA councillor ‘fraudulently’ transferred land to taxis”, the Mail & Guardian reported that Kaldine “ha[d] been accused of fraud by a civil society group after signing approval to give land owned by the Gauteng government to a taxi rank development without following the law”. Lodged with the speaker of the city council by a group known as the Community Accountability Gatekeepers, the complaint called for action against Kaldine.

A read of the article as a whole makes it clear that Kaldine did not transfer any land to anyone, and – whether rightly or wrongly – was understood by the taxi association as giving them permission to occupy, build on, and use the land as a taxi rank. According to the article, an official or officials within the Gauteng human settlements department also shared that view. For the record, the land in question is not City property; it is owned by the provincial government.

In a complaint lodged in April with the Press Ombud, Kaldine and the PA alleged three violations of the Press Code: section 1, which requires the media to “take care to report news truthfully, accurately and fairly”; section 3, which – as the ruling notes – deals “with the obligation to take care with matters involving dignity and reputation”; and section 10, which – among others – requires headlines not to “mislead the public and … [to] give a reasonable reflection of the contents of the report … in question”.

Because the complaint “[did] not make a specific argument about dignity or reputation”, the allegation that section 3 was breached was not taken any further. In so far as the section 10 complaint is concerned, the ruling concludes that “[t]he headline reasonably reflects the substance of the report”, because it “clearly presents the accusation of fraud as a claim.” That may well be true of the online title (“PA councillor accused of ‘fraudulent’ Joburg land transfer”), but not necessarily the case with the print headline.

That leaves the section 1 claim, which was the nub of the complaint. In his ruling, the Deputy Ombud noted that “the newspaper did not publish the claim unchecked”, put the allegations to the City and the provincial government, conducted a deeds search to determine who owns the land, relied on internal notes of the relevant provincial department, provided evidence of the taxi association’s building on the land, and gave all parties an opportunity to respond.

In his view, “the newspaper discharged their responsibilities in dealing with the matter”.

“In a matter of public interest, as this undoubtedly is, journalists must be able to shine a light on allegations that are formally brought to the attention of relevant authorities. Only if they are completely spurious would one recommend caution. I do not believe the claim is as ludicrous as the complainants say.”

The ruling leaves one somewhat unsatisfied, in large part because the complainants’ central concern – the allegation of fraud – was not tested in the article. There is simply nothing even to suggest that Kaldine acted fraudulently, something the article does not say. And no land was given away. At most, based on what’s reported, Kaldine may have acted inappropriately in suggesting that the land could be used, without making it clear to the taxi association that she had no authority to authorise its use.

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