A report surfaced in 2020, named the De Kock report, falsely stating that I had refused to sign my MLA translated statement issued in 2018 and as a result, my signature was superimposed onto my translation.This is false as my statement was signed in the presence of a Greek magistrate, as the law stipulates (Email), in the native language of the country that the statement is obtained. The statement then returned to South Africa via the official channels and the South African justice department proceeded with an official translation.
When I was asked by the authorities of South Africa via an email to have a look out of courtesy at the translation, I merely pointed out three errors in the translation. At no time was I asked to sign the translated version of my statement, neither did I refuse to do so.
On 5 August 2020 an article about the De Kock report was published within Daily Maverick. The article once again attacked my name and character, that was based on fabricated repeated accusations in South Africa. I was once again never given the right to a reply. I complained to the Press Ombudsman in South Africa and after a hearing I won an apology and a reply linked to the original article.
The journalist responsible for this article was Jacques Pauw, an individual with questionable ethics and known issues related to drinking and financial problems, among others. Pauw engaged in a character assassination against me, leveraging his significant influence as a writer. He did so by reiterating the same falsehoods that Johan Booysen had propagated eight years earlier. Once again, I was neither contacted for comment nor given the right of reply—behavior typical of the compromised South African media. This time, however, I was prepared and did not need to maintain a low profile, as I had previously been advised to do by the South African NPA while their criminal case against Booysen was pending. After the case was withdrawn in 2019, I was able to defend myself against fake news publications in South Africa. Notably, with some exceptions, it was primarily the South African media that was compromised and captured. Fortunately, this was not the case with international journalists, whose unbiased approach and neutral investigative skills were evident.
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Ari Danikas Whistleblower of the week
The press hearing took place on 21 January 2021
What happened to me that day was unprecedented for the standards of the South African Press Ombudsman’s office.
History :
I decided to open a Press Ombudsman complaint against Jacques Pauw and Daily Maverick on the 13/08/2020.
I won the right to an apology and the right of a reply. However, I found the press council a bit unprofessional, ill prepered, as well as favourable towards Jacques Pauw.
Details of my complaint as well as a video of the hearing:
For starters it took nearly four months to get a reply from Jacques Pauw. He received preferential treatment as the rules clearly state that he needed to respond within 15 days. What Jacques Pauw did in the meantime was shockingly unethical and unprofessional. He went on a witch hunt campaign against me, in a desperate attempt to further character assassinate me. Instead of responding with evidence in support of his false claims, he contacted my allies, co-workers and NGOs I associate with and addressed them in a way that not only he further embarrassed himself, but he actually strengthened my case against him.
This is the email he sent to some of my colleagues and close associated including CIA whistleblower John Kyriakou.
This is my correspondence to the Press Ombudsman’s office regarding Jaques Pauw’s unethical practices to further discredit me after my complaint.
Kyriakou considered Pauw’s actions unethical and unprofessional. He told me he wants nothing more to do with Pauw.
Furthermore, Blueprint responded directly to the ombudsman, verifying my collaboration with them, emphasizing how helpful I was in advancing whistleblowing protection. Blueprint also verified that I had received a Special Recognition award from the NGO after they sent an expert to Greece to interview me and sent another expert to South Africa to interview people there. Transparency international didn’t even bother to engage with Pauw. Yet Pippa Green, the chair of the press ombudsman, conveniently left this crucial evidence out of her “detailed explanation” of the hearing process on the ombudsman’s website.
Pauw’s famous start of the hearing was :
Thankfully one of the panelists, Joe Thloloe, stopped Pauw and criticised him for not following the rules of engagement. I also objected. Pauw has never met me, never engaged with me prior to the hearing nor publication of his article and yet he had the audacity to try and describe my character to the panel.
Jacques Pauw desperately tried to divert attention from the facts, steering the conversation to unrelated topics, such as my qualifications, the spelling of my Greek name and the type of collaboration I have with major NGOS.
Pippa Green, indirectly allowed for a further smear campaign against me, as I was instructed by her office to ignore Pauw’s personal attacks on my character that were unrelated to my complaint against the article and I complied. However, in her summary of the ruling, Pippa very conveniently repeated Pauw’s false and irelevent allegations and attacks against me, but without including my responses that I had supplied to her. In effect, she allowed Pauw to smear me again, and robbed me of my right to reply.
In fact Pippa Green personally wrote to me reassuring me that : “The hearing will stick to what is in the article and the basis of your complaint. We will not permit it to stray into other areas that are not relevant to either the article of the complaint“. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Reference, email instructions from the ombudsman office :
Although, it was allowed Booysen to appear as a “witness” for Daily Maverick and Jacques Pauw, it was purposely delayed revealing Booysen’s identity, and only released it to me, on the 17th December 2020, just a day before the proposed hearing! This was the main reason that there were postpones on the hearing from my behalf as Pippa clearly “emphasized”, however she conveniently skips the reason behind them.
Regrettably, it was allowed for Booysen to remain for the duration of the hearing, “sipping his scotch” while attempting to intimidate me further, even though he was just a witness for Jacques Pauw. Shockingly, he ended up dominating and bullying the hearing by trying a textbook interrogation on me. At one point, he was even allowed to dictate the terms of the apology by the Daily Maverick!
To try to defend his story against my complaint, Jacques Pauw asked Booysen to supply the Press Ombudsman with a post-dated affidavit to support his story.
In this affidavit, Booysen repeated many lies and fabrications about me without providing any evidence. In essence Booysen committed perjury once more and Jacques Pauw relied on his poor choice of investment in Booysen’s reputation to support his claims against me! It was proven during the hearing by Booysen’s own confession that the only source of the false allegations against me in Pauw’s article was in fact Booysen himself!
One has to wonder, why a veteran South African journalist like Jacques Pauw would ignore basic journalistic principles and rely solely on a single source—a white policeman with a documented history of human rights violations and extrajudicial killings of people of color during his service in the Apartheid era—to write his story and attack me.
That was their biggest downfall. Regrettably Pippa had been played by Booysen and Jaques Pauw, allowing them through a public platform, ( The Press Ombudsman hearing ), to attack me with false naratives, just as many more South African journalists were played by him in the past.
Some of Johan Booysen’s lies :
It is worth mentioning that Johan Booysen lied in his Affidavit to the Ombudsman by claiming that he had no ways of contacting me. In fact I have evidence that he obtained my new secret email address from a Greek/South African doctor back in 2012 without my permission. He also obtained my Greek cellphones number and tried to call me in 12-10-2016, a few days prior to signing my MLA statement in Greece. Here is the email correspondence between me and the Greek doctor, where I complain to him for leaking my email address to Booysen. This was also confirmed by Tilly Brown in an email to me. Here is a screenshot of Booysen calling me at the time. Regrettably, Pippa did not bother to look at the evidence I supplied to her previously, and she confused the public knowledge of my previous South African contact details, which everyone, including Booysen was aware of, with my new and confidential Greek contact details, including my Greek new cell number that was leaked to Booysen illegally and without my consent. Pippa labeled this confusion of hers as ‘an inconsistency of mine.‘
Booysen further intentionally lied in his affidavit concerning the year of the tragic death of my former silent partner in South Africa, following his false accusation that I had ‘stolen money’ from her. He attempted to deceive in order to cover the numerous inconsistencies in his false allegations against me. During the Press Ombudsman hearing, I presented a death certificate that proved Booysen was lying once again.
To make matters worse, the Press Ombudsman failed to perform even the most basic journalistic investigation regarding Jacques Pauw’s further smear campaign against me. Here are two examples:
1. Jacques Pauw attacked my English, accusing me of speaking “broken English” and misspelling my own Greek name.
2. He questioned my qualifications in electronics, denying the existence of a South African private educational institution named Omnitec Institute.
Pippa commented that she did not have a Greek keyboard to verify Jaques false claims! This excuse is not only laughable, but it also exposes her lack of basic computer literacy. Switching from English to Greek or any other keyboard language is a simple task that can be accomplished with minimal effort. Basic computer skills would have allowed her to make the relevant Greek letters available on any non Greek keyboard, using visible virtual keyboard settings.
Regarding my qualifications, Pippa indirectly supported Jacques’ false accusations by merely referencing an obscure index, claiming that an advertisement appeared in her search of Omnitec but the phone number on the advert was not available. Had she conducted a simple search on LinkedIn by typing “Omnitec South Africa,” she would have found numerous professionals listing Omnitec as part of their qualification. By doing so, I found 111 professional profiles of South Africans who listed Omnitec as part of their qualifications.
Update 2024:
My Press Ombudsman case and unfair treatment was indead used as part of a univeristy PHD paper reference in South Africa, titled ” document on media accountability mechanisms in South Africa” credit by Taryn Isaacs De Vega, Doctor of Philosophy (DLITT ET PHIL).
There are several key points I will be addressing with Pippa Green regarding the comments uploaded on the Press Council website that were inaccurate, if not biased. I am particularly concerned about the alteration of a specific date, which incorrectly referred to the Press Council hearing analysis as my departure from South Africa. This date was changed from 2008 to 2006, and then back to 2008 after I contested it with the Press Council in 2024. I would like to understand who made these changes and why this discrepancy occurred. Notably, Booysen deliberately utilized the incorrect date on his latest character assassination fake news website in 2024 to discredit me. However, after I pointed out this error to the Press Council and it was corrected, the date was also magically corrected on Booysen’s website!
A few days after the hearing Johan Booysen conveniently alleged that he became the victim of, what he said was a ‘failed assassination attempt’, at his residential complex. One of the men pointed a gun at him and Booysen alleged that man pulled the trigger but the gun failed to go off. The following day, after video footage of the incident was released, Booysen was forced to change his story and admit it could have been a ‘failed hijacking’. I believe Booysen orchestrated the entire incident himself, as a public stunt, since just a few days earlier, the hearing had taken place and it had exposed him of lying.
You can see a video of the incident here and judge for yourselves.
Just the following week after the hearing, Jacques Pauw was arrested in the Cape Town waterfront, intoxicated and while in the company of a “young” female.
Pauw spent the weekend in jail, and in a fit of rage, he once again did what he does best: using the power of his pen to attack and tarnish the reputation of others with fake news. However, this time there were witnesses and video surveillance. When confronted with the video evidence, Pauw was compelled to change his story, just as Booysen had done previously. The Daily Maverick had enough of his misconduct and decided to terminate his employment.
You can read all about it here:
Jacques Pauw Affair: The Story, The Facts, The Fallout and The Future
John Clarke makes a very accurate and detailed analysis here :
It is worth mentioning that Pauw’s defence at the Press Ombudsman hearing was that the rumours against me were “widely published” by the media ( false) and there was a statement by Booysen confirming them, and therefore it was legitimate for him to publish these rumours. Using the same logic, newspapers would be justified in publishing the claim made in an affidavit by a witness at the Zondo Commission that Pauw had engaged in illegal activities.
Here is a copy of the statement on Page 11 Clause 7.3.
Jaques Pauw continued to harassing me with false accusations and I had to refer to an attorney in South Africa in order to deal with his nonsense.
The way that Pauw and certain journalists in South Africa acted, shows them to be biased, and unwilling to recognise and rectify their mistakes, especially regarding whistleblowers who risked their lives for the public interest and who might introduce a different narrative to theirs.
Journalists need to maintain a neutral approach, non-biased and reflect the views of all parties involved. Most importantly, whistleblowers need to feel safe, as well as protected sources to the journalists covering their story.
I consider myself a case study in South Africa of how NOT to treat a whistleblower, both by the media, jurnalists and the judicial authority. Mistakes were made, but will lessons be learned? The sad part is that the journalists mentioned above, including others such as Jessica Pitchford, Jacques Pauw and Anton Harber, are not willing to rectify their mistakes, retract and apologise to me. Their careers, reputation, ego, and financial gain takes precedence over the truth. But at what cost?
Final thoughts :
The Cato Manor Death Squad was real. The racist “blue eye boys of the SAPS” were real. The black mamba unit, as they used to be called by the terrified African communities, was real. The victims and their families in KwaZulu-Natal need closure and justice to be served and regrettably the South African government, judiciary, and media, let them down. I hear from many that the South African society is not yet ready to face the truth, but if we do not face the truth of our history, we will never progress as a free and democratic nation.
I strongly believe that a lobby of prominent South African white journalists and authors exist, who maintain a biased narrative and have compromised professional relationships with the corrupt police officers I exposed. This is clearly evident from the examples provided above, as all of them violated a fundamental rule of journalism by deliberately choosing not to give me a right of reply when they engaged in character assassination against me, a whistleblower with a differing narrative from theirs.
The South African books written without ever contacting me for comments or a right of reply:
-Jacques Pauw wrote a book about the State Capture in SA.
-Anton Harber also wrote a book.
-So did Jessica Pitchford.
As Joe Thloloe, a legendary journalist in South Africa said during the press hearing:
“Always reflect both sides of a story, always provide a right of reply.”