JON ABBOTT IN BISHOPS COLLEGE's CLASS OF 51's RACE TO 100

 Dear Readers 

Jon

I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth which resulted in me being undernourished as a child. My dad owned Markhams, the men’s clothing business that had branches in Cape Town and Johannesburg when I was sent to Bishops. To prepare me for Big School I first went to the very fashionable Wet Pups (Western Province Prep School).

Dad had been the 1921 Bishops Rhodes Scholar, so as the eldest of three boys a lot was expected of me when I became a border in School House. Unfortunately I let the side down badly as I plugged matric. I’m now waiting for the pass mark to be reduced to 10% before trying again.

I redeemed myself slightly with some success in athletics not only at school but afterwards when I represented Western Province at the SA Junior Championships putting the shot and throwing the javelin. “All brawn and no brains,” was what masters at Bishops might have said.

          After a short time training to follow my Dad into Markhams I decided it was not for me. It was too boring measuring men for suites; asking them which side they hang and generally being subservient. My present wife Gayle is constantly reminding me that if I had stuck it out she could have been the wife of a millionaire now and not a struggle ex-journalist turned Private Eye. My old man sold out to the Foschini Group, which inexplicably changed the name to Markham (without the S) and now has close to 200 Markham outlets.

At aged 22 I spent a year criss-crossing Africa hitch-hiking alone to get to England to become a journalist. On the way I bought a dug out canoe from one of the locals and paddled 700 miles down the Congo that is reputed to be the deepest river in the world. This was by far the craziest part of my African safari because I had no life jacket and I can’t swim. If I had drowned Bishops would have been to blame for not stopping me from ducking swimming when I was there.

Kenya was being terrorised by the Mau Mau when I arrived, so to replenish my meagre finances I spent three months in the Kenya Police Reserve in charge of a Police post at 12 000 feet on snow capped Mount Kenya. That had its moments.

For instance some joker had ensured that there was an unexploded hand grenade down the long drop. It was never occupied for long that’s for sure.

My brief stay at Dr Albert Schweitzer’s hospital at Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa was a real eye opener. The sanitary arrangements for the patients and their hangers on would never have been allowed anywhere in his native France, and certainly not at a hospital. Yet it was the founding of this that was the main reason for him being awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.

I hadn’t cased the joint at all before I arrived in England. A great start for a would-be journo. The unions were very strong then and the one for journalists decreed that an apprentice started at 17. I would have had to have been paid as if I had several years experience, so papers were not rushing to employ me. Miraculously I got a job on the Melton Mowbray Times, a weekly that was so small it had missed the union’s scrutiny. The town is famous for pork pies of all things.

The paper consisted of a weedy little editor dominated by a Fleet Street veteran with long, nicotine stained finger nails, effectively running the show as the news editor with three reporters, a girl and one other chap about the same age as I was. It was a real sweat shop. The girl was in tears almost every day and after eight months I was the most experienced reporter.

I moved on to bigger weeklies and the Express and Echo, a daily in Exeter before joining two ex-Fleet Street journalists to form the Exeter News Agency.  It was a reporter eat reporter jungle in which we not only wrote for all the Fleet Street papers, like the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express etc, but also competed with their own West Country correspondents.

          I returned to South Africa to join the very conservative daily The Star in Johannesburg where I like to think I introduced investigative journalism. I won the grand sum of R70 for the best story of the year in 1971 for my tyre re-grooving expose`. From there I graduated to the Sunday Times to do investigations where I also wrote a hard hitting weekly column Business is Business for two years. Raymond Ackerman of Pick n Pay fame, the Patron of Bishops, who turned 90 in 2021, got a ticking off in one of them. We were in the same house at Bishops with him being a couple of years ahead of me.

Digging up the dirt on shysters earned me the runner up spot in the 1974 Stellenbosch Farmer’s Wineries National Award for Enterprising Journalism. In addition my muckraking resulted in two Government commissions of enquiry, a military board of inquiry and the first resale price fixing conviction several years after this was outlawed. It involved Pentax cameras sold by a subsidiary of Premier Milling.

          I left journalism to become a self employed Private Investigator specialising in life insurance. For 20 years all the major life companies like Liberty Life, Old Mutual and others that have since been taken over or gone under had me chasing all over Southern Africa, and even to India on one occasion to get to the bottom of illegitimate claims.

On a personal level I was about as successful as I was in my matric. Journalism and marriage don’t mix, was my excuse. It took me two wives before I found Gayle, who has been such a glutton for punishment that she has stuck with me now for nearly 50 years. She was also responsible for typing miles of reports and doing the admin that was the backbone of our two person PI business.  She is a St Mary’s (Joburg) Old Girl (she’ll kill me for saying that).

Sadly in addition to my parents I have survived two ex-wives, my younger brother Michael and a half brother David, who were both at Bishops, and two grown up children Simon and Samantha. These are the crosses you have to bear the older you get. My youngest brother, health crank, artist and bridge teacher Anthony is still alive and at 80 is doing his best to catch up with me. If I could have had my life over again I would have taken him to task for embarrassing me at the old school by not only passing matric, but going to university as well.

My wife Gayle who 
deserves the biggest
Long Service Medal 
of them all

Gayle and I have a daughter Belinda married to Cam. A designing woman (aren’t they all) she is a fair dinkum Sheila now with her own fashion house in Melbourne. Then there are the older ones in South Africa, pretty Mandy, a former hairdresser now living a life of luxury married to Erick, an advocate and on the go transitional coach Sally; Gayle’s daughters from her previous marriage. Sally became a Covid leper after she survived it twice, but hopefully people speak to her now. The customers fortunately didn’t know that when she was promoted to a Brand Manager at Clover Dairy she fell with her bum in the butter. She is married to paddler of note Alan Witherden, who has been a canoe judge at the Olympic Games and other international canoeing events for as long any anybody can remember. He’s an international business consultant in his spare time. And to think that we once thought he had a steady job.

 Alan, who is almost as old as I am, didn’t go to Bishops and nor did the husbands of the other two. Obviously Gayle and I were not very happy about that, but I better shut up now because to say I am outnumbered would be a gross understatement.

From the Bishops magazine

For the last 12 years I have been far from gainfully employed on my DearJon-letter Blog. Google pays peanuts and I’m the monkey. My Blog might well be sited as the other woman if I ever get divorced again. I have written posts on a wide range of subjects from congratulating the Yanks for celebrating my wife’s birthday on the 4^th of July to an investigation into how Jersey BBC radio host, Murray Norton effectively cyber bullied my 47 year old son Simon to death. This was not long after his sister Samantha, who was living in England, had jumped off a car park building a few months after the birth of her first child. There is also one on how I might have become King of England if my mother had not been so picky.

I have self published two books Dearjon Exposed, a collection of the best posts from my blog and The Butcher of Rosebank. This is a true story about Dr Wynne Lieberthal, who was possibly South Africa’s worse orthopaedic surgeon ever. It was based on information I collected during one of my PI life insurance investigations, because he was not only a terrible doctor, but a crook as well.

My wife and I now live in Cape Town near Kommetjie in an estate appropriately named Imhoff’s Gift for us blue blooded Abbott’s. It’s made particularly picturesque by flocks of flamingos on the adjoining vlei with mountains in the background.

Regards,

Jon

P.S. Fellow OD Mike Mathews’ memory is better than mine (I haven’t yet found a surgeon who does brain transplants, unfortunately). This is what he told me. “I recall your letter some years ago to the old OD magazine calling for a change in its format, design etc and have been much impressed with the new-look, biannual magazine which resulted from that letter. Well done!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

         

 

Sunday Times reveals the BIGGEST MAMPARA OF THEM ALL

 Dear Readers,

Sunday Times Editor

          The Hogarth column in the Johannesburg based Sunday Times has made a name for itself by embarrassing the rich and famous with its MAMPARA OF THE WEEK selections. And if you happen to be singled out for this dubious honour it’s not something you can easily keep secret when it appears in this weekly paper with a readership of nearly 4-million.

          Finding somebody to brand as a fool of this calibre on a weekly basis is a dangerous game. It requires top notch reporting and editing if the paper’s reputation is to be maintained otherwise it’s like playing with a gun, it can so easily backfire.

          It was hardly surprising then that when Oscar Mabunyane the Eastern Cape Premier appeared in Hogarth this week as the Mampara there was not so much as a word about the other far bigger Fool in the column that ran down the entire side of  page 23. We couldn’t have that could we? That would have been far too embarrassing.

          However on page 25 the MAMPARA OF ALL MAPARAS was named under the tame headline Hogarth was wrong: it’s OK to drink the water.  The backfire I mentioned earlier had happen. In a 15 paragraph backtrack that was almost as long as the entire Hogarth column we were told that the KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala had been incorrectly called a Mampara. He had been ridiculed for tasting the water to show it was safe to drink while handing over boreholes as part of a multi-billion rand water scheme.

          

Sihle Zikalala Premier of KwaZulu-
Natal

           The paper evidently felt it could not risk suffering another Fool on its staff to produce an impartial apology to the Premier so it accepted Lennox Mabaso’s version. He is head of communications in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government.

          And he sure gave it to the Biggest Fool of them all.

          “The Premier was demonstrating that the boreholes are about free, safe, drinking and cooking quality water,” he wrote. “In Hogarth’s world, this water would be for the poverty-stricken Gin Lane as well as the affluent Beer Street.

          “Water is life. The Premier drank the water to celebrate freedom for rural communities, but Hogarth clearly was parading his drunken stupor as he penned his hogwash."

          He went on to say that the next time Hogarth sobers up he should remember that “Operating from the context of a single story line prevents us getting a more truthful view of a situation.”

          Who has just earned the title of the Biggest Fool of them all? It must surely be S’Thambiso Msomi the editor of that esteemed publication that has just shown it doesn’t know a Mampara if it sees one. Msomi was the same Mampara who published his personal email address in his weekly column and then didn’t answer the email I sent him.

          This week’s Mampara in the actual Hogarth column was…… well I’m not sure if I should tell you. I can’t be certain if the Sunday Times got it right and I don’t want to have to be forced by a lawyer to get Lennox Mabaso’s equivalent in the Eastern Cape to compile an apology for my blog.

          Anyway here goes. It tells us that the Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane was awarded the title for the little matter of helping himself to funds meant for the memorial service of Winnie Madikizela Mandela and that he used R450 000 to renovate his home. He claimed this was actually a loan he got from the ANC provincial treasurer Babalo Madikizela.

Regards

Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman.

P.S. One thing the Editor has definitely established and that is that the sub heading It takes one to know one that appeared with the Premier of the Eastern Cape’s elevation to Mamparadom does not apply to him.

P.S.S. The paper’s lack of impartially was shown by the fact the latest Hogarth did not contain anything to refer the reader to that huge Mampara apology a couple of pages further on.

 

TWO CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY IN A MILLION

 Dear Readers and Bishops' Old Boys,

Richard Brasher

          Richard Brasher, who has just retired from Pick n Pay after eight years as CEO of this 1945 store grocery chain never ceased to amaze me.

          He doesn’t know me from Adam, yet when I sent him an email to his personal email address on a Saturday this year at 02.07 pm he replied less than half an hour later at 02.30.

          I asked him to pass on the following email to Raymond Ackerman as I did not have an email address for him. It went like this:

Dear Raymond,

Congratulations on your 90^th. I presume you are going for your century. Thanks again for the attached. It brought back good memories of somebody like you who could fit my little triumph into your busy schedule. Well done for making your 100^th – in anticipation.

Raymond Ackerman & his wife Wendy

Yvonne Cummins, who I assume is his PA, replied: “Mr Ackerman sends his sincere thanks for the birthday wishes sent to him via Richard Brasher. He really appreciates you thinking of him and he had a very special 90^th”

        

           The attached I referred to was this letter (those were the days when the postal service worked) he sent me in 1974 congratulating me on being the runner up in the Stellenbosch Farmers' Wineries' National Award for Enterprising Journalism for my series in the Business Section of the Sunday Times about crooked business. "This was a first-class effort and I think you can deserve all the congratulations you can get for your forthright reporting," Raymond wrote.

          I would never have thought that he would have been following my career like this. Alright we did go to school together at Bishops in Cape Town where we were borders in School House, but he was three years ahead of me. And that’s a life time at school. I can only assume he read about it in the paper.

          In 2017 in my role as a Consumer Watchdog on my blog I was trying to get a promised refund of R320.50 for our daughter Mandy from Aramex Couriers that has drop boxes in Pick n Pay branches, but all I got was the same run around as she was given. In desperation I sent an email to Richard asking him if he could get somebody to sort this out. The following day on the 25th working day after Mandy had been promised payment within 7-14 days I got the proof from Aramex that she had been paid.

          I then asked Richard: “Was this your magic? Just after my email to you R320.50 was paid into our daughter’s account. Thanks a lot.”

          He replied: “We are always happy to help.”

          My email to him was sent at 07.30 am and he replied at 09.39 from his iPhone the same day. How’s that for top notch service.

          After buying four stores in Cape Town trading as Pick n Pay in 1966 Raymond built them into one of Africa’s largest supermarket chains. He was Chairman until 2010 when he stepped down in favour of his son Gareth.

          I evidently didn’t pay as much attention as Raymond when I was at Bishops or I just didn't have what it takes upstairs.  

           My career was as a journalist on various papers including the Sunday Times where I did investigations and also wrote a hard hitting weekly column Business is Business for two years. My newspaper days ended when I became a self employed private eye specialising in life insurance.

          At a function at my old school to mark the 60^th anniversary of my year a former master who was organising it said to me: “I couldn’t find anything about your matric.” He had evidently researched the school records of those who attended.

          On another occasion my wife and I went to a lunch for Old Boys like me at the school and on the wall inside the building where the function took place there was a list of Bishop’s Rhodes Scholars. I had a job finding it and at one stage I said to my wife "Was my Dad making this up?"

But sure enough there it was: the 1921 Bishop's Rhodes Scholar - Cecil Willoughby Abbott, who went up to Oxford I think.

It must have been rather embarrassing for him having his first born at this very expensive school where he had done so brilliantly plug his matric. Putting the shot and throwing the javelin to provincial standards was no compensation. This might explain why I never became a millionaire like Raymond.

Regards to you all and here’s hoping you can keep Virus free,

Jon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOBS ADVERTISEMENTS TELL A STORY OF A BLOATED INCOMPETENT GOVERNMENT WITH A SHADY SIDE

 Dear Readers,

William Hlakoane

          I get the Johannesburg based Sunday Times every week and it is noticeable in pages and pages of expensive career ads that the private sector, which is supposed to be the driving force behind South Africa’s economic recovery hardly features at all. They are mostly for positions in local and provincial government and state owned enterprises, where just about everyone seems to be a director or deputy director.

          The most recent one that I came across that turned out to be extremely dubious was for a Group Chief Executive Officer for Denel our government owned arms manufacturer that has virtually imploded with the help of the Guptas, as it is struggling to pay its staff.  The half page ad which cost around R100 000 appeared on Sunday February 21 with a closing date of 5 March.

First thing the following morning the Board headed by Monhla Hlahla announced that William Hlakoane, the current Chief Operating Officer had been appointed acting CEO for six months. Does she think that will be long enough to turn Denel around? Clearly he must have been the chosen one before the ad even appeared, so how legitimate is his appointment. Is it another jobs for the boys appointment? Don’t these, particularly high powered ones like this that involve a salary of several million a year, have to be properly advertised before someone is named?

The Board is still looking for a permanent head. Hlakoane, who replaced the interim CEO Talib Sadik whose contract expired, is the 9^th CEO or acting CEO since the ANC came to power in 1994. Sadik was the CEO some years ago.  To add to Denel’s problems 4 directors resigned in the last couple of months making things rather lonely for Hlahla, the former Airports Company of SA Chief Executive who became chairperson of the Denel Board in 2018. Airports to a high tech arms company is a very incongruous move. 

It’s seems it’s more important to waste a huge amount of money on an ad that was clearly place for show when a decision had already been made, than paying staff.  What the hell it’s only tax payer’s money so who cares.

Monhla Hlahla

Among the 12 Qualification and Experience Requirements in this Denel ad was: “Proven experience and exhibition of achievement in Business Turnaround Strategy Implementation” I find it difficult to believe that Hlakoane complied with this or some of the other ones on the list. 

          Another smelly ad was from the tiny municipality of Nkandla, a name made notorious by its high profile resident our former President Jacob Zuma. While in office he quite illegitimately had his homestead there upgraded with R246-million of our money.

          Although the municipality is surprisingly now controlled by the Inkatha Freedom Party,  as opposed to Zuma’s ruling African National Congress, it is following, in its small way, Zuma’s example of how to squander public funds.

          It’s ad for a General Worker at a salary of R9000 a month cost R10 520 for one insertion in the paper. It made no sense to spend this amount to place this in a national paper when there must be any number of people in Nkandla capable of making the tea and doing the cleaning and the job was for somebody at the bottom of the employment ladder.

          The ads also paint a dismal picture of municipalities and even provincial Governments like Mpumalanga that are still in the dark ages. Their job applications can only be submitted by post and with our broken postal service there must be a huge number of positions that remain vacant before any applications arrive. The last time I was sent a letter by post I got it three months later.

           The comical gobbledygook job descriptions for some of the highly paid jobs explain completely why our local government is in such a mess with numerous municipalities and the like under administration. For instance the Chris Hani District Municipality in the Eastern Cape wants a Director, Health and Community Services (5 year fixed performance contract, salary negotiable).

The following Competences are required:

·      Critical competences that drive the strategic intent and direction.

·      Core competences that drive the execution of critical competences.

·      Working in a team to advise Council & Committees.

          If this is what the ‘team’ produces heaven help the people in that area who rely on this humpty dumpty organisation. No faxed or emailed applications will be accepted. They had to send them to a Private Bag address or hand delivered them.       

          In a whole page ad that probably cost about half a million the Mpumalanga Provincial Government called for applications for 46 posts that included 3 Directors (R1 057 326 p.a.), 4 Deputy Directors (R733 257 p.a.), 4 Assistance Directors (R376 596 p.a.) and 16 cleaners at R102 234 p.a each. Helpfully would be career cleaners were told that the requirements included “Ability to work under pressure and to remain focused towards productivity” and a “Basic knowledge on utilization of cleaning equipment will be an added advantage.”

          Among the requirements for the Directors  was “Honesty and integrity.” They don’t seem to know that both words mean the same thing. This is evidently not necessary for anybody below the rank of Director because it doesn’t get mentioned again when HONESTY should be the number one requirement for anybody joining the public service. No wonder there are so many who don’t seem to have heard of it.

          The various departments have such little confidence in their abilities to pick the right person for the job that all the top salary earners are employed on 5 year contracts.  Is this the Government’s way of preventing top officials from remaining on suspension forever on huge salaries? Mind you even five years could cost the fiscus a fortune.

          The Employment Equity Act seems to be causing a great deal of confusion. Here are some interpretations.

          Magalies Water ad for a Chief Operations Office and Payroll Manager: “Preference will be given to African females, Coloured, Indians, White males and people living with disabilities.”

          City of Johannesburg ad for Group Human Capital Management: “This is an employment equity targeted position and preference will be given to African males, White males and African females and White females, including people with disabilities."

          National Gambling Board ad for a Researcher and a Legal and Stakeholder Engagement Intern at salaries of R12 000 a year – not much more than cleaners get: “In terms of the Employment Equity preference will be given to Coloureds, Indians, Whites and people with disabilities.”

          Nyandeni Local Municipality, Eastern Cape ad for a Senior Manager: Infrastructure Development: “Females, Coloureds, Indians, Whites and People with disabilities are encouraged to apply.”

          Most stated they abide by the Employment Equity act or did not comment on it at all.

 Regards,

Jon, a Consumer Watchdog and Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman.

 P.S. Anybody who still believes that apartheid is dead does not live in South Africa. When are we going to grow up enough to be able to employ the best person for the job regardless of their colour?

 

 

             

EDITOR THREATENS JOURNALIST WITH LEGAL ACTION FOR QUESTIONING HIS PAPER'S ETHICAL STANDARDS

Dear Newspaper Readers,

Terry Worley

          I have recently exposed the Northern KwaZulu-Natal Courier on my blog for accepting an advertorial from ponzi scheme promoters that the paper itself had named as crooks. That was my first post on this subject, Newspaper Behaving Badly - the Courier exposes Ponzi Schemes and then takes their Tainted Money for an Advertorial

(Newspaper Behaving Badly)

          It was followed by another one Newspaper’s Embarrassing Lesson after Libelling Engen (Newspapers Embarrassing Lesson) in which I took the paper to task because of the Engen logo that appeared, among others, in the advertorial. This was included, it would seem, to give readers the impression that the members of the De Beer family, who are behind the Coin-It and CommEx ponzi schemes, are very reputable business people.

         But like their ponzi rip-offs, this too was fraudulent. Engen has absolutely nothing to do with any member of this family or any of its companies I was told by Gavin Smith the firm’s External Communications Manager.

          In this post I included a very prominent link to my first story so that readers could see the explanation the paper gave for carrying the advertorial in the first place.

          Before posting my first story I sent an email to the Editor Terry Worley at the paper in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal asking him why they had accepted that advertorial that painted Coin-It as a ‘do good’ charity organisation.

          “The Courier has just gone one better than the Sunday Times for appalling double standards just to make money,” I told him. You have also completely blown your belief “in the community newspaper being the trustworthy watchdog of the community.” This was one of his own quotes.

            I was referring to the fact that the Sunday Times carried two advertising inserts from CommEx and My House, ponzi schemes promoted by the same people as Coin-It, a few days after its sister publication had revealed that Coin-It and CommEx had been raided by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), which has since closed Coin-It. 

          Worley referred me to their advertising department without giving me the name of somebody to contact. He did however say: “Thanks for that. To be pedantic it was a half page ad, not a full page. PS. Loved your piece on Rowena’s (a ponzi investor I wrote a post about) plight, very well written. It appears as if the investigation has become stagnant with the Hawks but we are following up and apparently more investors, who have not received money need to make statements. We are told not even 15 have made statements and there are apparently 27 000.”

          Of my own volition I sent a similar email to Rod Skinner, the Regional Editor for this Caxton Group newspaper after establishing his credentials on Google. This time I added: “Surely that was the antithesis of good newspaper ethics. The message it sent was that your newspaper only cares about making money, not ethical behaviour.”

          He replied saying: “In fairness we had to give Coin-It a right of reply. They however insisted they wanted to reply in this manner. It is not for us to dictate how they as a company wish to exercise their right of reply. Nothing in the advertorial solicits business for the scheme.”          Since when have outsiders, particularly crooks, had an automatic right to tell a newspaper what and how they want something published?

          After posting my story about Engen I sent a link to Rowena James the anti-ponzi scheme activist who has been doing her best to get these ponzi promoters behind bars. I had also featured her several times on my blog.

          She then put a link to this on Facebook where she has a group called: The Truth - Exposing the Dundee Ponzi scheme boss.

In an interaction between her and Terry Worley that followed he stated: “You may like to know we are taking legal action against this person. Thank you.

“He himself followed no journalistic ethics to the ‘other side of the story’. We suspect his motives.”

Rowena then commented: “Terry Worley feel free to express your side of the story here, if you so wish.”

He replied: “It’s fine many thanks. It is out of my hands now as it has been escalated to our legal department in Johannesburg.”

After Rowena told me about this I replied saying that if I was to write about this threat I would obviously have to mention her in view of where it was made. I asked if this was okay as she could not be blamed for what I wrote about the Courier.

“I’m not scared of Terry,” she answered. “He probably was hoping for me to remove the post. I won’t do it.”

A few days later I received this odd email from Terry.

“Just a correction to your blog, our paper is paid for.” I had mistakenly stated that his paper was a free one. I immediately deleted the word “free” from the sentence that included “which has a weekly free distribution of 15 000 copies.”

He finished his email with this: “Meantime, thanks for all the free publicity. Best Terry. PS Check PMB High Court Dec. 4 Liquidation bid against Coin-It resumes. I assume you will cover this on your blog.”

 In my email reply I told him I had made the correction and asked: “What’s this I see on Facebook about you threatening legal action against me. It would not make much of a case if your only complaint about my reports (Totalling 1637 words) so far is that I got one word wrong.”

          He answered: “Our legal department is taking it up.”

          The Courier is part of the Caxton Group, one of the largest publishers and printers in South Africa. Its revenue this year was R6321-million with a profit of R452-million. So it has plenty of money to enable it to throw its legal weight around in this David and Goliath encounter.

          Let the truth prevail, because that’s what really seems to be what’s bugging the Courier, otherwise its Editor would surely have contacted me by now with a far more substantial complaint than that I had a word wrong that made absolutely no material difference to the main thrust of what I had written.

          Regards

          Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman

         

      

NEWSPAPER BEHAVING BADLY - THE COURIER EXPOSES PONZI SCHEMES & THEN TAKES THEIR TAINTED MONEY FOR AN ADVERTORIAL

Dear Readers,

How is this for dubious newspaper morality? The Northern KwaZulu-Natal Courier, a community paper in the Caxton Group carried three exposés about the activities of members of the De Beer family’s Ponzi businesses Coin-It Trading and CommEx Minerals.

          The first one early last September was headed Drama unfolds as Coin-It and  Commex Minerals are raided. It was about how the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) had launched an investigation into these two companies.

          Its next report was headlined: Investment scheme maintains everyone will get paid.

          Then on September 18 it announced: Coin offices closed pending FSCA probe. Readers were told that it was too early to say what will happen to investors in Coin-It and CommEx Minerals following the raid by the FSCA.

          Soon afterwards the paper, which has a weekly free distribution of 15 000 copies in the coal mining town of Dundee (Population 34 000), carried the half page, controversial paid advertorial headed Coin-It Traders Speak Out! It would have earned the publication something like R7 000. 

This is how the Courier coined it & how
the advertorial began

          It was a huge puff extolling the good deeds these Ponzi scheme promoters had done for the people of the area as if their kind of business was perfectly acceptable.

          After weeks of controversy, Coin-It Trading appeals to the community to not forget all the good it has and is still doing, the ad began

          Speaking to the Courier, it went on, Coin-It’s representative, Peter Estrice said, “The public was not informed in the past on the big scope of activities that were taking place and the participation of social activities carried out by Coin-It.”

          Coin-It described itself as a huge part of the Dundee community and as such had aided many people.

Peter Estrice

          He claimed that when “last year’s terrible floods took away five lives, including three children, from a family in Sibongile (a Dundee township) Coin-It was there. We played a big role in helping the needy and even went to the extent of repairing some churches that were damaged.”

           Small businesses that relied on Coin-It had been enormously affected.

          “Other companies have also lost revenue when we stopped our service, such as the buying of trucks,” Estrice maintained. “Our hardware companies can no longer continue with business as everything has come to a standstill. Coin-It has donated signage to schools in the area and will continue to assist schools in other districts in the future.”

          Referring to the pending FSCA investigation Estrice stated: “As much as Coin-It is taking a beating it is also affecting our small businesses and individuals who relied on Coin-It. Our clients come from different backgrounds such as government officials, working class and the unemployed and Coin-It takes care of them.” He promised that they would have a "ceremony with our clients once everything had been sorted." 

          The advertorial concluded with the logos of the businesses the De Beer family evidently have an interest in.  

          In an email to the Courier’s Editor Terry Worley I asked how his paper could expose the Coin-It Ponzi scheme and then take this advertorial that promotes it.

          “The Courier has just gone one better than the Sunday Times for appalling double standards just to make money,” I told him. "You have also completely blown your belief in the 'community newspaper being the trustworthy watchdog of the community.'”

          I was referring to the fact the Sunday Times carried two advertising inserts from CommEx and My House, another Ponzi scheme promoted by the same people, a few days after its sister publication had revealed that Coin-It and CommEx had been raided by the FSCA.  (Heartless Sunday Times)

          Worley told me to refer to their advertising department. In a subsequent email he started that the Hawks investigation appeared to be stagnating, but they were following up because more investors who had not received their money still needed to make statements.

          “We are told not even 15 have made statements and there are apparently 27 000,” he added.

          I sent a similar email to Rod Skinner, Caxton’s Regional Editor for the area that includes the Courier asking why that controversial advertorial was accepted. “Surely that was the antithesis of good newspaper ethics,” I told him. “The message it sent was that your paper only cares about making money, not ethical behaviour.”

          He replied saying: “In fairness we had to give Coin-It a right of reply. They however insisted they wanted to reply in this manner. It is not for us to dictate how they as a company wish to exercise their right of reply.

          “Nothing in the advertorial solicits business for the scheme. Our investigative team is still investigating it along with several others in Northern KZN.”
                                     *     *     *

          Regards

          Jon, a Consumer Watchdog and the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman.

P.S. The Caxton Group is no stranger to accepting adverts just to make money regardless of the morality of what it is doing. For years The Citizen, its daily paper that circulates mainly in Gauteng has been carrying Herbalist ads, when even one of its editors conceded to me that they are not believable.  Full of people claiming to be doctors, professors and the like when they are clearly nothing of the kind they offer services like “100% win lotto” and “manhood enlargement.” These are obviously nothing else but lies. (Lies,lies and more lies)

P.P.S. An advertorial is an advertisement written in the same style as a newspaper article. So it’s not hard to guess why the Ponzi promoters wanted their ad in this form.

   

INCREDIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE FROM SHAHEID ALEXANDER, THE MAN YOU MIGHT NEVER SEE

Dear Readers,

A rare pictu

         It’s scary in the dark when a North Wester could be battering your windows with sheets of rain or the South Easter is threatening to blow just about everything away. Not to worry you’ll still get it.

         They didn’t call this part of the world the Cape of Storms for nothing.

         You probably will never have seen how your paper arrives, but when you wake up in the morning it will be in your driveway, just like clockwork no matter how foul the weather is.

         If you are a newspaper subscriber in Cape Town’s Southern suburbs you will have experienced that mystifying miracle daily or at week ends.

         Ten years ago Shaheid Alexander gave up his conventional job as an administrative assistant at the Cape Town City Council for a will-o`-the-wisp existence of sleepless nights delivering papers.

         He starts his night at around 10.30 p.m. and doesn’t get back to his home in Mitchells Plain until four or five in the morning. He and his team of two deliver Business Day and the Financial Mail during the week and the Sunday Times, Economist and the Financial Times at the week-ends.

         It’s a 30 km drive from his home to the industrial area of Paarden Eiland where they collect the papers and that’s before he even starts his delivery round to customers spread across suburbs from St James to Noordhoek, Fish Hoek and Simonstown.  

         Shaheid alone travels something like 200 km a night. He is constantly haunted by the Fourth Industrial Revolution that is threatening to eliminate printed papers. His team was also delivering The Times, a daily that was an offshoot of the Sunday Times, but when that went digital only two years ago the two drivers who work for him lost out to some degree. They only deliver the Sunday Times at the week-ends now to more than 300 homes.

         They get paid per copy as well as a transport allowance. Shops are not on their route as they only deal with subscribers.

         My wife and I have been getting our Sunday Times delivered to our home in Kommetjie ever since we arrived here 10 years ago and before The Times ceased being printed we got that every day during the week as well.

         It was uncanny the way Shaheid’s service was virtually faultless. On the rare occasions that our paper didn’t arrive as expected due to something  beyond his control I would phone the Sunday Times’ Cape Town office and low and behold within an hour or so we had it.

         A couple of Sunday’s ago there was no paper, but not long after I phoned Shaheid was ringing the bell at our gate. He had driven the 30 km from his home just to bring us our Sunday Times.

         It was the first time I had ever set eyes on our mystery paper man.

         “I have to see to my clients,” he told me. “They come first.”

         Aged 57 he is married with three grown up children and four grandchildren.

         “We don’t meet our clients, but I love this job,” he said. And it certainly shows in the way he does it.

         His parting words to me were: “It was nice to be of service to you, Sir.”

         You could not get a better example of a job well done.

         Thanks a million Shaheid.

         Regards,

         Jon, a Consumer Watchdog who finds it such a pleasure to meet a shining light like Shaheid at a time when bad service is very much the norm.  We need many, many more Shaheids. The owners of the Sunday Times are lucky to have him.

P.S. Any firm in the service industry wanting to improve its image could not do better than to get its staff to follow Shaheid’s example.