Sunday Times Need Not Apologise for Self-Corrected Errors

The Press Ombud reprimanded the Sunday Times for inaccurate and distorted facts in articles about Rev Dr Vukile Mehana and Dr Naledi Mbude-Mehana, but ruled the headline and coverage were in the public interest.

Rev Dr Vukile Mehana and Dr Naledi Mbude-Mehana were married in August 2022. At the time, Mbude-Mehana was the suspended head of the education department in the Eastern Cape. Mehana was the executive chairperson of Sizwe Africa IT Group, a company that had earlier been contracted to provide IT services to the provincial department.

Mbude-Mehana resigned from her position in May 2023, and was later employed as a deputy director-general in the national Department of Basic Education.

A short while before their marriage, the provincial department made a payment of R330-million to Sizwe IT. As it turns out, that payment was “for historic debt and not for any new contract awarded to Sizwe IT whilst Mbude-Mehana was either the acting head or permanent head of department”.

It also turns out that the payment was unrelated to Mbude-Mehana’s suspension or resignation. That said, both husband and wife are currently under police investigation.

A series of articles published by the Sunday Times in late 2024 and early 2025 focused on the payments made to Sizwe IT which the publication alleged “were negotiated when Mbude-Mehana was head of department in 2021 and 2022”.

Aggrieved by the articles, the Mehanas lodged a complaint with the Press Council. After a criminal complaint that Mbude-Mehana had previously lodged was withdrawn, the complaint before the Press Council was able to proceed.

By the time the Press Ombud made a ruling, the Sunday Times had already “published a clarification and correction of its articles”. But this did not satisfy the complainants, who persisted in seeking a full retraction of the articles, and an apology.

In their view, as the Ombud noted, “the articles were sensationalised, inaccurate, and unfair”. They complained about a misleading front page and headline, inaccurate and distorted facts, a failure to provide them with a right to reply, and reputational harm.

On all aspects of the complaint other than the allegations regarding inaccurate and distorted facts, the Ombud ruled in favour of the Sunday Times.

In so far as the headline of the first article was concerned, the complainants claimed that the reference to them getting married shortly after the payments were made suggested that their marriage was simply transactional. In this regard, the print edition used the headline “For love of money: Deputy DG married IT company chair soon after R330m paid to his firm”.

The Ombud found that “the headline simply referred to the two interconnected issues being, a) the business relationship between the department formerly headed by Dr Mbude-Mehana and the company led by Rev Mehana, and b) their romantic relationship.” He held: “The insinuation is a question of possible conflict of interest”, which did not mislead readers about the article’s contents.

Regarding the alleged failure to afford a right to reply, the Ombud found that the original article reflected the complainants’ version in numerous respects, which was then amplified in the published clarification and correction, as well as in follow-up articles. Accordingly, he held that there was no breach of clause 1.8 of the Press Code, dealing with the nature and extent of the right to reply.

On reputational harm, the Ombud found that clause 3 of the Press Code, which makes provision for the publication of material that may harm reputations when it is in the public interest to do so, was not breached. In particular, he held that the “public interest in the subject matter was manifest”, with the sting of the article being “the allegation of a conflict of interest”.

That left the issue of alleged inaccurate and distorted facts, a number of which were conceded by the Sunday Times, and corrected. The Ombud found that there had still been a breach of clause 1.1 of the Press Code, which obliges the media to “report news truthfully, accurately and fairly”, as well as clause 1.2, which – among other things – guards against the distortion of facts.

In terms of sanction, the Ombud took into account the fact that the publication “corrected the factual inaccuracies and distortions out of [its] own volition”. Although noting that the publication had committed tier 2 transgressions, which are considered to be serious, he merely reprimanded the Sunday Times for its breaches of the Press Code, and directed it to update its article correcting and clarifying the original publication to reflect both the ruling and the reprimand.

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