Statement by Jan de Villiers MP – DA National Spokesperson:
The Democratic Alliance will submit a complaint to the Press Ombudsperson over the entirely unfactual and shoddy “article” by Daily Maverick journalist, Rebecca Davis today, which belongs more in a gossip column than a news platform.
Davis has attempted to create a conspiracy that the DA Leader and Minister of Agriculture, John Steenhuisen, is somehow in cahoots with the Chinese Government to advance an illicit wildlife trading racket. That is patently and obviously untrue and outrageous.
In the original version of the “article” published earlier today, Davis used a picture of Steenhuisen welcoming the Vietnamese delegation to the G20 in Johannesburg as a “gotcha” moment or evidence of this made up racket, falsely claiming that Vietnamese officials were “Chinese.” – The racial ignorance of this toward Asian people is an offense in and of itself.
Already the corrections and retractions have begun, as Daily Maverick has now taken down the incorrect photographic annexures. But this does not go nearly far enough.
Rebecca Davis has falsely implied that the DA’s Federal Executive was convened (implying it was done by Steenhuisen) while Steenhuisen was in China as another form of “evidence” that he and the DA have been captured by this Chinese racket, which is also utterly laughable.
The truth is that only the Chairperson of the Federal Executive, Helen Zille, can convene a meeting of the DA’s Federal Executive, not Steenhuisen, and while Steenhuisen may have been in China for Government work to open new markets for farmers that have been cut off from the United States, the timing was quite simply coincidental.
What Davis and the Daily Maverick won’t tell South Africa is that at no point were any questions put to Steenhuisen by the Daily Maverick that his government work or the removal of Dion George as a Minister had anything to do with abalone and lion bone. They undertook this gossip article without ever asking Mr. Steenhuisen about these odd and unfounded accusations.
The writer exposed herself for this unethical practice with her own words, where she slanders a Minister of State based on [her words] “claims doing the rounds”.
This is entirely dishonest of Davis and the Daily Maverick and in violation of the Press Code.
The SPCA may choose to litigate on this matter, and to ensure that we comply with the law, the DA has directed them to follow it. Somehow adhering to the law is described by Rebecca Davis as a “lack of transparency.”
This is ridiculous and should be dismissed.
It is time to call “enough” on the Daily Maverick couching as “fact” what is without qualification a gossip column.
On this basis, the DA will be referring this to the Press Ombudsperson for a ruling.