ACCOUNTABILITY

MEDIA24 PUBLICLY ADMITTED THAT THERE IS NO TRUTH IN THE ALLEGATIONS IN THEIR BOOK “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”, IN WHICH THREE FORMER MINISTERS, BAREND du PLESSIS and the late MAGNUS Malan MALAN and JOHN WILEY WERE FALSELY ACCUSED OF BEING PAEDOPHILES. MEDIA24 WITHDREW THE BOOK AND ALSO PUBLISHED APOLOGIES FOR THE UNTRUTHS IT CONTAINED and the damage the DEFAMATION and SLANDER IT INFLICTED.

1. Dire Consequences
• Accountability for Intensified Damage
  
  The disregard that the Directors of Media24 and Naspers displayed towards the dictates of the Companies Act and King IV report in the process of publishing their book “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”, must have greatly dismayed and perturbed their shareholders and institutional asset managers.
  
  With full knowledge about its contents, the Directors allowed a libellous book that clearly from its inception was destined to become discredited, to be published. Their subsequent dishonourable withdrawal of “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”, not only intensified their accountability for its publishing, but substantially escalated the damage it already had caused Media24 and Naspers’ erstwhile honoured brand name in book publishing, called “Tafelberg”.
• “Responsibility” vs “Accountability”
  
  The Companies Act, as well as the King IV Report, are explicit regarding the responsibilities and accountabilities of company directors, in particular where the holding company is the sole shareholder of all its subsidiaries, such as with Media24 and Naspers.
  
  Responsibilities can be delegated from top to bottom, but accountabilities of Directors of a holding company like Naspers, individually and collectively, cannot be delegated to Directors of subsidiary companies in order to render the holding company’s directors unaccountable. Consequently, Media24’s accountability in the fiasco of the publishing of “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”, cannot be delegated down to National Book Publishers or Tafelberg.
  
  The Act does not accommodate the concept of “plausible deniability”, such as “I did not know, so I am not accountable”. Whenever a director becomes aware of a situation with accountability complications relating to the board of which he/she is a member, or to that of a fully owned subsidiary lower down in the hierarchy, he/she becomes accountable for it.
2. Media24 Board’s Disregard for Companies Act and King IV Report
• Verification Neglected
  
  Publishing and then having to withdraw “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”, which Tafelberg misleadingly classified as “Non-Fiction”, will forever stand as a telling example of the dire consequences for Directors of media companies, when due research into the purported veracity of a potentially controversial book and the background and integrity of its authors, was either not carried out at all or managed naively and completely incompetently by the Publisher.
• Blind Eye Turned
  
  Despite early public exposure to the falsifications in the book, the Directors of Media24 and Naspers turned a blind eye to the massive and irreparable injustice they for almost 18 months allowed their very profitable book “The Lost Boys of Bird Island” to inflict on the reputation of former Minister Barend du Plessis and the legacy of his two deceased former colleagues Magnus Malan and John Wiley.
• Malicious Intent
  
  The Media24 and Naspers Directors’ lack of responsibility, negligence and obvious malicious intent are clearly illustrated by the way they dealt with two very important incidents:
  
  
  • Firstly, the impunity with which they rejected the validity and significance of the damning analysis of “The Lost Boys of Bird Island” by the award-winning and respected investigative author and forensic journalist Jacques Pauw. What is more, Tafelberg’s Maryna Lamprecht, with full knowledge of her superiors, elaborately defended the book, “standing by” every word in it;
  • Secondly, they wilfully ignored a very significant e-mail message, (see paragraph 2.4 below), dated 1 August 2018, intentionally sent by co-author Mark Minnie a mere three days before launching of “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”.
• The Message
  
  In a, for him, unfamiliar moment of truth, Minnie addressed the message below to his co-author Chris Steyn, and copied it to Media24’s Publisher Maryna Lamprecht. Since she reported to Eloise Wessels, Managing Director of National Book Publishers, it can be assumed that Maryna immediately made her superior aware of the potential disastrous implications of the following message:
  
  We have no concrete evidence to the effect that any of the three ministers sexually molested a victim. We need a victim to come forward and make and accusation followed by an identification.
  
  
• NO Evidence at All, Yet Published as “Non-Fiction”
  
  So, a mere three days before the launching of “The Lost Boys of Bird Island”, co-author Mark Minnie confessed that they all along had had no evidence for their book. This statement confirms that the Publisher Maryna Lamprecht, with full knowledge of her Board of Directors and Marianne Thamm, in completely unprofessional fashion, had placed complete reliance on the misleading, false and fabricated contents of the successively constructed and embellished manuscripts of the two co-authors, Mark Minnie and Chris Steyn.
• Cover-up and Dereliction of Duties
  
  How could it be that neither Maryna, nor her superiors or legal advisor, clearly never insisted on written proof and concrete evidence, which would have revealed the non-existence thereof, as Minnie divulged. It also would have scuppered the book’s publication timeously, avoiding Tafelberg’s character assassination on Barend du Plessis and his and his deceased colleagues’ families, as well as huge Brand-name damage for Media24.
  
  Not surprisingly, Maryna and Thamm covered-up Minnie’s “blunder”, by allowing Steyn to instruct him in future to obtain their clearance before passing information to the media. They then launched a book with false content and classification, misleading consumers.
  
  This neglect constitutes a massive failure by the Directors of Media24 and Naspers, to properly carry out their obligatory fiduciary duties to ensure the integrity of their “Non-Fiction” publications, to respect their bond of trust with shareholders of the Group and adversely affected persons’ constitutionally protected Human rights.
  
  Some Directors may feel they were not accountable for subordinates’ failures, but in a group structured like Naspers, accountability is deemed upwardly mobile in terms of the Companies Act and King IV.
  
  It took the leadership of Mr Ishmet Davidson, Chief Executive Officer of Media24, who was appointed as CEO in 2018 only AFTER the book was launched to finally say: enough is enough – we take full responsibility. Under his leadership the book was withdrawn from the market and are steps being taken to rectify the wrong that has been done to Barend du Plessis, Magnus Malan and John Wiley.

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