Damning Independent Media report leaked

SA's second-largest media house, Independent Media, has launched a secretive plan to help topple President Cyril Ramaphosa as leader of the ANC in December. A document detailing the Independent Media group's strategy for covering the ANC's December elective conference has been leaked to News24. The plan, titled Operation Hlanza, which means ‘cleanse’ or ‘clean’, was shared with senior editors and political journalists in the group, that owns titles like IoL, The Star, The Mercury and Cape Argus, at a meeting in Durban last Monday. Authored by The Star's editor, Sifiso Mahlangu, the document is clear in its anti-Ramaphosa stance and preference for Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to take over as leader of the governing party. Legalbrief reports that today’s lead story in The Star (under the screaming headline ‘CR’s DISMAL 5-YEAR TERM’) claims that crime has soared under his administration and civil society and opposition parties are ‘expressing their unhappiness with the President’s lack of leadership’

The leaked Independent Media report states Ramaphosa’s election ‘was a disastrous tenure for the fourth estate' and 'for Independent Media it was a reason of its weakening’. ‘In the past five years, Ramaphosa and his cabal have attempted every trick in the book to shut down Sekunjalo Holdings, the target was and remains Independent Media,’ writes Mahlangu in the ‘context’ section of the Operation Hlanza document. Owned by businessman Iqbal Survé's Sekunjalo group, courtesy of loans from PIC and two Chinese state-owned companies, Independent Media has singled out Ramaphosa for criticism in its titles, but this is the first, official proof of a concerted campaign by a media house to unseat the President. News24 reports that under Survé's ownership, the group has withdrawn from the Press Council of SA, that self-regulates local journalism through the office of the Press Ombudsman. The company initiated its own ‘press code’ and appointed an internal ombudsman.

Full News24 report