Max du Preez

Max du Preez   ( author,  columnist,  filmmaker)
Born	10 March 1951
Alma mater	Stellenbosch University

Max du Preez is a South African author, columnist and documentary filmmaker and was the founding editor of the Vrye Weekblad newspaper in November 1988.

Vrye Weekblad Online was launched on 5 April 2019, again with Max du Preez as editor.

Career

Political correspondent

Between 1982 and 1988, Du Preez was the political correspondent for various publications including Beeld, Financial Mail, Sunday Times and Business Day. He won the Nat Nakasa Award for fearless reporting in 2008.

Vrye Weekblad

Du Preez founded the Vrye Weekblad, an Afrikaans-language weekly newspaper, in November 1988 and its progressive successor Vrye Weekblad Online in 2019. During his tenure as editor-in-chief, the newspaper's offices were bombed and Du Preez received death threats as a result of the paper's opposition to apartheid.

He was sentenced to six months in jail for quoting Joe Slovo, the then leader of the South African Communist Party and a banned person.

The Vrye Weekblad broke the news of the Vlakplaas death squads and the role of its commander, Dirk Coetzee.

Dismissal by SABC

In 1999, Du Preez was dismissed by the SABC from his position as the executive editor of Special Assignment, an investigative television show, after he objected when a documentary was barred from being shown. Though initially it was simply stated that his contract would not be renewed, the SABC later said he had been dismissed for gross insubordination.

The decision led to a public campaign to call for his reinstatement and the handling by the SABC led to complaints to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa. The incident was seen as symptomatic of a public broadcaster voluntarily transforming itself into a state propaganda apparatus.

Disappearing diamonds

This is how Max du Preez described the importance of Gordon Douglas Brown's evidence against De Beers for the 'overmining' of diamonds in the lead-up to Namibia's independence in 1990:

"Early in 1984, the issue of CDM's 'overmining' of the Oranjemund mine was again mentioned at hearings into government corruption in Namibia. This time I got hold of a solid source, Gordon Brown, a senior man at De Beers who had serious moral qualms about what they were doing to the mine. He started briefing me on the technical issues and gave me a number of documents with explosive content.

"An understanding of CDM’s unique position in Namibia is important in order to grasp the overmining story. CDM mined the world’s richest diamond fields in terms of an agreement with the South African administration in Namibia which was bound to act in compliance with a League of Nations mandate to protect the interests of the people of the territory.

"The Halbscheid agreement stated: 'CDM when working an area pegged under this, shall conduct operatiaons as thoroughly and economically as it does on its other mining fields and shall carry on mining satisfactorily to the Administrator and not with a view to exhausting the superficial and more valuable deposits to the detriment of the low grade deposits.'

"The idea was that the diamond field should provide Namibia with a source of revenue and employment for as long as possible. CDM, I wrote in my first piece in the Financial Mail, was in breach of the Halbscheid agreement because it was in mining-speak 'picking the eyes out of the mine' preferentially mining the richer deposits at the expense of the mine’s future profits.

"I had CDM’s own documents to back this up. The smoking gun was a document called 'A life of Mine Review', drawn up by the then manager at Oranjemund Jack Forster in September 1981. Foster used these words: 'To me this is best described as a power dive and unless we have a conscious change in strategy effective some time in the future, we will power the mine into the ground and we will be unable to conduct the reclamation and cleaning operation which could extend the life of the mine by three or four years.'

"The morning of the publication of my story, Mulholland (the editor) walked to my desk, and slammed the magazine down and asked: 'What the hell do you think you are doing?' He said I knew nothing about mining: 'It is clearly news to you that mining companies are in the business for a profit.' I tried to explain about the 1923 agreement but he didn’t want to discuss the merits. He warned me to drop the story.

"I checked with Gordon Brown, who said my story was spot on. I vowed not to leave it there. A few weeks later, when Mulholland was out of town I wrote a follow-up story sticking to my line. Mulholland was livid. He accused me of damaging the reputation of the Financial Mail. I told Mulholland that I thought it was my ethical duty to follow through with the story.

"CDM’s next move was to invite me to a briefing where they would explain everything at 44 Main Street, the Anglo head office in Johannesburg. We met in their impressive boardroom. Mulholland introduced me. As I heard the names and titles, it dawned on me that this was the entire upper hierarchy of the De Beers empire, including the chairman, the Oranjemund mine manager and the top man of the Central Selling Organisation in London.

"I wanted to explain the documents I had in my possession. Clearly annoyed, they explained some of the technical stuff and at more than one point they said that the details would be difficult for a lay-person to comprehend. But Gordon had briefed me well, and I did follow the arguments. I started putting more documents on the table to counter what they were saying, especially the mine manager’s statement that CDM was ‘powering the mine into the ground’. Mulholland silenced me, thanked the De Beers bosses profusely and apologised for my stubbornness. I was ushered out. This showdown meant the end of my career at the Financial Mail.

"But it wasn’t the end of the CDM story; it was the beginning although the FM would no longer take part in the expose. The FM’s opposition magazine, Finance Week had by now taken up the story as had the Namibian press.

"Mr Justice Pieter Thirion soon expanded his inquiry into mal-administration in Namibia to include an investigation into the Diamond Industry and the workings of the Diamond Board. Gordon Brown came out of the shadows and gave devastating evidence before Thirion. The Thirion report published in March 1986, vindicated every word I had written, and more. The documents Brown had given me were extensively quoted in the report – and they were given Brown’s interpretation which I in turn used in my reports and in the sham briefing with CDM. Justice Thirion found that CDM had breached the Halbscheid agreement by excessively depleting the Oranjemund diamonds for at least twenty years. The excessive depletion of the deposit was preferential depletion of the more valuable deposits to the detriment of the low grade deposits. The probabilities are that the effect of the excessive depletion of the deposit will be to shorten the life of the mine and to detrimentally affect its profitability towards the end of its life.

"The next year Gordon Brown was the star of a powerful Granada documentary shown on ITV, titled The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds. It found that De Beers had secretly stripped Namibia of 3 billion rands worth of diamonds through overmining. Brown went on to appear in the BBC documentary 'The Diamond Empire', and became a central figure in the authoritative book by Laurie Flynn on violations by Southern African mining companies called 'Studded with diamonds and paved with gold'. But Brown was to pay a heavy price for blowing the whistle on De Beers: first with the reports he gave me; then by giving evidence to Thirion; and finally by appearing in the documentaries.

"An elaborate trap was set for him. He was asked by an acquaintance, a dealer in rough diamonds, to evaluate a parcel of diamonds. Gordon Brown was given an assurance that these were legal diamonds from Angola, and the necessary permits had been issued and the legal requirements complied with. The Diamond and Gold Branch of the Namibian police then pounced and arrested him on an illicit diamond buying charge. He was found guilty in court and sent to jail. Brown claims he was denied the fundamental right to a fair trial. He says his conviction was based on the perjured testimony of a single witness, a De Beers employee. This witness subsequently confessed in an affadavit made to Namibian justice department officials.

"Shortly after his incarceration, Gordon Brown was released on bail pending an appeal hearing. He tried his best to get the police and justice department to investigate prosecutorial irregularities and misconduct, but nobody would do anything. Brown says he then lost faith in the justice system in Namibia and decided to skip bail. He actually had to swim across the Orange River to his freedom in South Africa. He continued to work in the diamond industry in South Africa.

"As long as De Beers appointees sit on government regulatory bodies and their security people hold top position in the Gold and Diamond Branch of the Namibian Police," Brown told me, "no serious critic of De Beers can survive criminal charges from the police or De Beers themselves, and you certainly cannot expect a fair trial on such charges.’

"That’s what happens when you mess with Anglo American."

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References

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