General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi testified at length last week about media companies being infiltrated by rogue intelligence and police actors seeking to scupper corruption investigations into some of the most senior politicians in the country.

The extent of the problem, and the threat it poses to South Africa’s democracy, was so acute that the general recommended that the State Security Agency conduct counterintelligence operations to clean out the rot.

The mainstream media reacted with outrage. The South African National Editors’ Forum, a lobby group of mainstream news editors, said that it: “condemns in the strongest terms comments made by KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi” and described these as: “an extraordinary attack on media freedom comparable to the oppressive tactics employed by the apartheid state to suppress truthful journalism.”

That’s a lie.

The general was quite clear that: “There are very credible journalists who are doing wonderful jobs who investigate cases of corruption, of murders of people, and they bring it to [public] attention.”

The general’s comments were explicitly directed at the small number of intelligence actors that have infiltrated media companies to scupper corruption investigations and threaten good, hard-working law enforcement officers in order to protect corrupt political actors.

Or would the editors’ forum have us believe this is not a problem in their organisation?

What about the Browse Mole report saga that was fronted by every mainstream media company in the country and brought down the Scorpions? Or the Cato Manor death-squad information operation that was reported so salaciously by major South African news portals, even as it led to the scuppering of investigations into massive corruption and the arrest of a brave and dedicated senior police officer? Or the South African Revenue Service rogue-unit information operation that was actively fronted by journalists working for rogue police and intelligence actors to protect corrupt figures who had captured the senior ranks of the revenue service?

Did these events not occur, or were they legitimate journalistic endeavours covered by press-freedom protections?

It is exactly this kind of behaviour that General Mkhwanazi flagged.

At this newspaper, we suspect another such information operation is currently being executed through mainstream media companies in order once again to scupper investigations into corruption.

This operation relates to media coverage doing the rounds of property transactions involving police crime intelligence. There are two specific aspects of that coverage that raise red flags.

The first relates to reports that flagged both those transactions and then went on to cheer the arrest for fraud of a senior police officer tied to those transactions. It is likely that the officer was conducting legitimate investigations closing in on corruption networks implicating senior politicians and that his tie to the property transactions, and the manner of the reporting thereof, was a ruse to justify him being arrested in order to stop those investigations.

The second relates to reports of an amount of around R20 million spent on a specific hotel in Pretoria. It is highly likely that the property in question was a police safe house from which very sensitive investigations into massive corruption were being conducted. But mainstream media companies published scandalous reports about that property, including photographs of it, while alluding to its location. Those reports sent a very clear message to the officers conducting those investigations: “We know who you are and we know where to find you.”

General Mkhwanazi testified to exactly this before Parliament last week when he said: “I worry a lot about the team in Gauteng the counterintelligence operations that are taking place in Gauteng I worry about their safety because they were put in a safe house the member of this house [referring to a Parliamentarian] and the others they publish photos of this house in the media so therefore their working place is compromised and I think even the names of those members are compromised.”

It is apt that the editors’ forum referenced the: “oppressive tactics employed by the apartheid state to suppress truthful journalism.” Testimony before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission revealed the extent to which South Africa’s newsrooms were infiltrated by intelligence actors to shield politicians from corruption and human-rights-abuse allegations while wholly misleading the public about what was truly occurring in the country. What General Mkhwanazi has testified to is dead in line with those tactics.