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1. Introduction This Chapter Is Divided Into Two Parts. the First CHAPTER 4 WANGLING THE JET DEAL OR A CONFLICT OF INTEREST? 1. Introduction This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part provides a brief history of the arms deal and proceedings of the arms deal that are relevant to this research report. This is done to offer an understanding of the context in which the arms deal emerged and how its proceedings have related to the media in general. The second part of this chapter is an analysis of the articles on the alleged corruption in the arms deal that appeared in the “News” sections of the Sowetan and the M&G in November 2001. In analysing the articles, this chapter tests assertions made in the previous chapters. Various theories that are highlighted in the theoretical framework chapter concur to the fact that choices are made in producing news. 2. Historical background to the Arms Procurement Programme or “Arms Deal” The Arms Procurement Programme – known as the “Arms deal” in media and popular parlance— was negotiated and signed between 1996 and 1999. Between 1996 and 1998 the Cabinet scrutinised the South African defence and military needs and concluded that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) needed to be equipped with high-tech armaments. In November 1998, Cabinet announced a list of preferred suppliers of the proposed arms and in November 1999 the South African Minister of Defence signed the arms deal. The initial monetary value of the deal was R60 billion and the companies involved were British Aerospace Systems (BAe), Saab from Sweden, France’s Thompson-CSF (now known as Thales), Augusta of Italy, the German Frigate Consortium and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) (BBC News, Monday 28, May 2001: 12h07). In 2000 the Parliamentary watchdog, the Special Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), called for an investigation into the alleged corruption in the arms deal. SCOPA asked that Judge Willem Heath be appointed to lead the investigation process. In January 2001 there was a fall-out among political parties in Parliament after the ANC said that it did not prefer Judge Heath to conduct the probe into the arms deal. In the same month, President Thabo Mbeki excluded Judge Heath from 60 the arms deal investigations, arguing on the strength of a judgement of the Constitutional Court that a judge could not head the Special Investigation Unit. In March 2001, The Sunday Times published an article about the ANC Chief Whip, Tony Yengeni, and his luxury 4X4 vehicle purchased at a 47% discount from Daimler Chrysler, a company with an interest in the arms deal. Following this article and many others that came after it, the Scorpions and other anti-corruption units investigated Tony Yenyeni. In April 2001, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Bulelani Ngcuka, said at least 24 individuals were under investigation for alleged corruption and fraud in the arms deal. Furthermore in April 2001, EADS admitted that it had rendered assistance to 30 ANC government officials in acquiring huge discounts for Mercedes Benz vehicles from Daimler Chrysler, a major shareholder in EADS (BBC News, Monday 28, May 2001: 12h07). BAe also admitted that it had donated 500 000 British Pounds to an ANC-related project just after the aircraft contract was awarded to them. BAe said that the donation was their contribution to the upliftment of South African disadvantaged communities. Part of the arrangement in the arms deal contract was that the companies that secured contracts would invest in South Africa and provide employment and help through donations to uplift the living standards of South Africa’s previously disadvantaged communities. In July 2001, German investigators in Munich began investigations into EADS for allegedly offering kickbacks to South African government officials in securing the arms business (BBC News, Tuesday 26, July 2001: 01h10 AM). In November 2001, Tony Yengeni was arrested and released on R10 000 bail, and EADS head Michel Woerfel was suspended from the company on charges of corruption and fraud arising from the arms deal. In October 2001 the Scorpions raided various premises in France, Mauritius and Durban and confiscated documents relating to the arms deal. At this point, the cost of the arms deal was standing at R66-billion as the South African currency continued to weaken. In November 2001, the Auditor-General submitted a forensic investigation report into the arms deal to Parliament. 61 In March 2003, Tony Yengeni resigned from parliament and was found guilty by the Pretoria High Court for accepting bribery and using his position to influence the decision of the arms deal. This signals how the watchdog function of the media can assist in fighting corruption by government officials. 2.1 The Arms Deal and the media On 20 July 1997 one of the companies involved in the arms deal, Denel, laid criminal charges against The Sunday Times, The Sunday Independent, The Sunday Tribune and The Sunday Argus newspapers. The charge came after these newspapers published details of the arms deal and revealed that South Africa was buying weapons from Saudi Arabia (these newspapers did not disclose the name of the country at that time, but disclosed it at a later stage). On 24 and 26 July 1997, Denel succeeded in obtaining a temporary court order against the M&G and Sunday Independent newspaper and its sister newspapers. The court order prevented these newspapers from naming the Middle East country involved in the deal. On 3 August 1997, The Sunday Independent newspapers defied the court order and named Saudi Arabia as the Middle East country that was selected to provide arms to South Africa. These newspapers argued that the public had the right to know about the arms deal transactions. Denel's lawyers based their argument on the 1968 Armaments Development and Production Act. The Public Protector, Mr Selby Baqwa, also used the same Act to prohibit the media from broadcasting one of the hearings on the corruption in the arms deal. In his judgement against the presence of the media at the hearing he used Section 118 (a) of the 1957 Defence Act and Section 11 of the Armaments Development and Production Act 57 of 1968. The former Act stipulates that the media require the permission of the Minister of Defence before it can convey certain aspects of the operations of the Defence Force. The 1968 Act prohibits the disclosure by any person, including the media, of any information relating to the supply, marketing, and export of armaments for the benefit of the government. When the Act was promulgated in 1968, the government by then was the apartheid government and it aimed at ensuring the secrecy of the South African arms trade because of the UN mandatory arms embargo on export to, and the pressure on the international community to avoid arms imports from South Africa (Willett, 1994) 62 The use of the above pieces of legislation signalled how the South African democratic government and the bidders to the arms deal used apartheid laws to prevent the media in the transitional period from publishing information regarded as significant to the public interest. The right to information is regarded as the cornerstone of democracy because it ensures that members of the public are informed of their constitutional rights and the activities of the government, thus helping them to make informed decisions when exercising their democratic rights (O' Regan, 2001). 3. Analysis of the Sowetan and the M&G news articles of November 2001 This chapter therefore aims at investigating how choices of selecting languages and viewpoints are integrated into news through gatekeepers’ choices of language, why certain words and meanings get preference over a vast existing and possible meanings and words. The chapter is based on the assertion that language is a semiotic code thus the selection of words in language is not innocent, it is influenced by beliefs and ideas. The chapter therefore looks at: • Articles’ headlines and words selected for these headlines by each newspaper and the implicit and explicit meanings of these. • Metaphors appearing in each of the articles under review. The research report restricts the definition of a metaphor to the simple and lexicalised one that defines a metaphor as a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity (Goatly, 1997). Similarity in this research report is used from a common sense point of view to refer to entities that have certain characteristics that may or may not share with other entities. The reasoning implies that an entity referred to metaphorically lacks at least one or more features possessed by the conventional referent of the word used. • Type of information foregrounded and backgrounded in each article from the newspapers under scrutiny: Whose voice is backgrounded and whose is foregrounded? This research report restricts foregrounding and backgrounding to refer to linguistic approaches by which certain information and voices are given certain prominence by their textual location. The rationale for this analysis stems from Short’s (1973) argument that arrangement of information and voices in news reports emphasises (foregrounds) certain views (by giving them textual importance) and 63 de-emphasises (backgrounds) others. Short (1973) argues that the top-down orientation of news reports pronounces sentences appearing early in the news as foregrounded while those appearing later as backgrounded. Short indicates that readers understand texts through sentences hence important meanings are constructed from sentences. In constructing sentences, writers create a point of view that influences the readers’ opinions (Short, 1973). At this level, foregrounded and backgrounded information and voices have ideological implications for readers hence what people read first registers importance in their minds and will hold it as such.
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