Joseph Aranes has led a private campaign to unseat Nomaindia Mfeketo which stretches from the newsroom of the Argus, through individual reporters and diarised items on the Weekend Argus to the daily rag the Daily Voice where he was instrumental together with Ashley Smith in having rubbish about an alleged affair between Blackman Ngoro and the executive mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo published.
Aranes's brief was to help destroy Nomaindia Mfeketo’s career as a politician through Blackman Ngoro and pave the way for a Coloured candidate for executive mayor of Cape Town. The Coloured candidate could come from either the Democratic Alliance or the ANC. However the hopes of the group working to end the so-called Africanists in the ANC were pinned on Kent Morkel.
The biggest question Aranes had been asked to find out about Mfeketo always was whether Nomaindia Mfeketo, was to stand as a provincial executive candidate and also as an executrive mayor for the City of Cape Town. The answer to this question was central to the strategy which the reporters' circle put together to run the Kent Morkel campaign for executive mayor would adopt.
It was unfortunate that Kent Morkel's brother Craig formed his own politial party for his own reasons for whatever reasons they were put paid to Morkel's aspirations to be the Democratic Alliance nomination for mayoral candidate.
In the beginning both Aranes and Smith claimed one of them was supposed to take the job Ngoro was offered when he came into the executive mayor's office in 2003.
Aranes and Smith started a whispering campaign using an old newsroom joke which came about during Stephen Wrottersley's times as a news editor. Stephen Wrottersley was commenting on the fact that before Ngoro came into the newsroom in 1997/8 at the time of the ceremonial mayor, the Independent Newspapers (Cape) which at that time had produced negative reports on Mfeketo, no interviews were being granted them. When he came in the group started getting the interviews, so there had to be something more to it than that.
It is no lie that when Ngoro arrived at the Independent News (Cape) in 1997 the story was that no senior reporter ever stayed there for longer than necessary. Ngoro was at that time replacing William Gumede.
Professional jealousy seemed to run in Aranes' veins as demonstrated by the whispering campaign he started in 2003 that the job Ngoro was taking in the mayor's office was intended for either himself or for Ashley Smith. Naturally the allegation of an affair with Nomaindia Mfeketo came in handy for the whispering campaign.
It also served the purposes of the Democratic Alliance. Kent Morkel informed me that he knew all about the these whispers and that he had told the Democratic Alliance in the city that it was important to be professional and stick to questioning whether the appointment procedures had ben followed.
Then someone stole private docuiments from my office in September 2004 and gave this information to both Aranes and Smith, who have never publicly denied it but who will not say who gave them the stolen documents.
But obviously Aranes and Ashley Smith had duly informed their political bosses of the possible use of a certain matter concerning the mayor and Ngoro in a political campaign to unseat her and the ANC.
It was therefore important for Aranes to gather all the possible resources he could influence in the Independent Newspapers (Cape), first the Weekend Argus, then the rag, then the Argus itself followed by the Cape Times. This way Mfeketo would be closed out and she would have no way out but down.
Their strategy was that the allegations of alleged impropriety must first appear in the rag in order for their more “respectable” newspapers to touch the story so they could say it appeared in the rag.
This strategy didn't have much success until they dug into my website. This time they hit the jackpot. Using an insider in the executive mayor's office with dubious credentials the net was spread to all newspapers in the Cape including Afrikaans newspapers and television stations. So why didn't the strategy work? They underestimated Mfeketo's resolve to fight back.
But Ngoro knows everything about that strategy and how it was supposed to work. It may not be an official strategy of the Independent Newspapers (Cape) but one which is its senior reporters together with political leaders in the Democratic Alliance have spun together.
When the Big Bay scandal hit the headlines there ws conserted effort to bring more pressure against Mfeketo's administration so that things became eally unbearable enough for her to resign. Thats when they decided the time was ripe to make the story about the alleged affair between Ngoro and Mfeketo hit the headlines. So first they sent in a black reporter, Mylolisi Gophe who knew not what was going on and and that he was being used in a grand political strategy. He was dispatched allegedly by David Briar but in fact by the Aranes who was doing the behind the scenes manipulation.
Later on Aranes tried to sell Ngoro that the story had been David Briar's and his side-kick Myolisi Gophe, the news editor and reporter at the Weekend Argus respectively.
Aranes told me in advance all the time the stories about the story pretending to be the good guy while all the time he was feeding the newspapers with the hatred of an illiterate man. I told Gophe I would sue. The Weekend Argus stopped the story but obviously passed it on to the Daily Voice. The alleged taxi driver, Elliot Sylvester, made a tape recorded interview with me about your questions to him. It is no coincidence that you spoke to him after Myolisi Gophe had already called him.
The consipracy was on. So I'm suing you guys individually in your roles to defame me and loss of income and as the Independent Newspapers.
Though the Weekend Argus dropped the story from its page Aranes had already told me what the headline would be and on what page the story would be, how had he known all this. He claims the news diary was circulated by Briar. Does Briar always circulate the diary? In any case that is immaterial. When I tried to get hold of Briar and question him about these allegations he refused to see me saying he never meets "newsmakers". I thought to myself what a sorry excuse.
The hit Mfeketo with scandal campaign in order to get a Coloured as executive mayor has been maintained by a very unprincipled persona whom I'm ashamed to call a a journalist. I wonder what Elliot Sylvester calls himself?
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