We retract and apologise for a story suggesting that Bosasa had paid money into a crowdsourcing fund to support the SABC8, a group of journalists at the public broadcaster who had been suspended without pay after speaking out against censorship of protest footage.
The crowdsourcing was initiated by the SA National Editors Forum in response to widespread outrage at the suspensions. In a story published on January 22 2019, “Leaked e-mail: Did Bosasa donate R100k to journey fund?", we reported that Bosasa - which was in the news at the time after testimony to the Zondo commission by its COO Angelo Agrizzi - appeared to have donated R100,000 to the fund. Sanef's denial that it had received money from Bosasa was reflected in the story.
After publication, Sanef commissioned Deloitte to perform a forensic review of the payments received. Deloitte found no evidence that any payment was made by Bosasa or any entity or person related to Bosasa.
Though we published a follow-up story on the Deloitte report at the time, we did not retract or apologise for the original story. However, the findings by Deloitte undermine the original story to such an extent that the story cannot stand.
We accordingly retract it and apologise to the SABC8, Sanef and our readers.
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