Читать книгу My Only Story - Deon Wiggett - Страница 14

I make the two-hour flight down to Cape Town. I am nervous of going to Willem’s house; nervous that I will see him or, worse, that he will see me. And so I procrastinate by meeting some old friends and journalists; they tell me some gossip and some rumours and hearsay – or, as they call it in detective novels, ‘clues’.

Then I have lunch with quite a famous editor, Adriaan Basson, at an Italian chain restaurant. We are on Cape Town’s Foreshore and he has walked over from the tower where he works for Naspers. On the 15th floor of the Media24 building, he is now the editor-in-chief of News24.

I need someone with deep pockets to help me, and Adriaan is not who I wanted.

The first time I saw Adriaan, he was a bit of a twink. We were both the editors of our high-school newspapers, and both prominent at the Naspers National School Newspaper Project, where we quickly became great friends.

Until four years later, at the Stellenbosch student newspaper, where we had a hot-headed falling-out that was mostly my fault. To me, our relationship has been strained ever since.

But if I try to expose Willem by myself, he will use his considerable resources to interdict me and sue me and leave me humiliated while legal costs destroy me. I need someone else’s lawyers, and I have been asking around since 2018.

Over a hotel breakfast, Bob Woodward, known locally as Max du Preez, said to me: ‘Have you spoken to Adriaan?’

‘I don’t want to work with Adriaan,’ I replied. ‘I can’t do this with a Naspers title; it goes against everything this project is about.’

‘You should speak to Adriaan,’ Max repeated, ‘or maybe Pieter du Toit or Mandy Wiener.’

‘All of them work at News24.’

‘Talk to Adriaan. He’ll get it.’

For a long time I ignore the advice, even though it was thrilling to meet Bob Woodward.

‘So tell me your full plan,’ says Adriaan, as we wait for pizzas that will be limp and lifeless.

‘So obviously I want to nail Willem Breytenbach, but I want to do it very publicly so that it can mean something. I want to do a Serial-style podcast about the process, because all these boys get raped all the time and all these journalists know and nobody is doing anything about it.

‘Also, I really want to make Serial. My name is Deon Wiggett, and I’m Sarah Koenig.’

Adriaan gets it. He loves it. ‘Let’s nail the bastard,’ he says. ‘We’ll cover the legal costs, but it has to be watertight. Deeply lawyered, signed affidavits, the works.’

‘I’ll meet with the lawyers,’ I say, and in Joburg’s leafy Westcliff, a leading lawyer starts costing Adriaan money.

Then I say to Adriaan: ‘Can you help to pay for production costs?’

‘Well, if we pay for something, we have to own it.’

‘That is never going to happen. The podcast is mine completely, and you understand why it has to be.’

‘So here is the question I will be asked,’ says Adriaan: ‘What is in it for us?’

‘Redemption?’

We both laugh loudly and somewhat bitterly.

And so we come, as we must, to a fuckfest called Naspers, which is renowned for so much more than making Willem one of its most senior executives. Well before its contemporary sins, Naspers was created to create apartheid.

It is December 1914. In the European winter, troops from the Union of South Africa are fighting alongside other subjects of Britain’s George V. But in faraway Stellenbosch, it is summer and tranquil as sixteen Afrikaner men reach a momentous decision. The time has come for Afrikaans to find its own true voice, and so they know what they must do. They will start a Dutch newspaper.

Seven months later, De Burger is first published in Cape Town. (The name means ‘The Citizen’ in Dutch and became Die Burger in Afrikaans six years later, presumably when the penny dropped.) Its first editor, Doctor D.F. Malan, will become the prime minister who introduces apartheid.

One thing leads to another; Die Burger’s publisher gets into the habit, and Nasionale Pers (National Press or, reverentially, just ‘the Pers’) starts other newspapers and magazines, all of them religiously promoting the National Party line.

Nowadays, Naspers does not dwell on its eighty years of apartheid might, when it shared more than initials with the National Party. A joke from apartheid’s last decade is worth a thousand words: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President PW Botha are in a rowing boat in Table Bay to talk about a truce. Out of nowhere, a tidal wave appears and knocks P.W. out of the boat and under the waves.

Without hesitating, Archbishop Tutu steps out of the boat, walks on water, scoops up the apartheid president and lays him down safely in the rowing boat.

The next morning, the Cape Times leads with: ‘TUTU WALKS ON WATER!’

Die Burger has: ‘TUTU CAN’T SWIM’.

Unfortunately for Naspers, after eighty glittering years, apartheid runs its course. In the nineties, it finds itself in a new South Africa and on the brink of irrelevance. Its money-spinning television business, anti-competitively founded in the eighties, is there by the grace of the National Party. If the plucky Pers is to survive, it will need a lucky break.

It gets a lucky bet instead, so things work out even better. In its rush to buy something with all those apartheid profits, Naspers and its ‘transformative’ new CEO, Koos Bekker, buy a bunch of awful start-ups. One of them, Tencent, turns itself into a titan; all that Bekker and Naspers have to do is step in to collect the glory. Acumen does not get more passive than this.

In 2017, Naspers makes a video for investors, presenting the now-sanctioned revisionist view. ‘Our journey started more than a hundred years ago with the launch of a newspaper in South Africa,’ a male voice-over says. ‘Over time, we’ve been building, acquiring and investing in leading technology-platform businesses …’

In sweeps a female voice-over to create a sense of inclusivity: ‘… and today we stand as a global internet and entertainment group and one of the largest technology investors globally. This … is Naspers, a group that empowers people and enriches communities.’

The two relay on, him pointing out the 25 000 employees, her highlighting operations in 120 countries ‘across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Eastern and Central Europe and the Middle East’.

Some logos, then an understatement: ‘And to help us drive the next phase of growth, Naspers Ventures identifies opportunities where we can partner internet businesses in exciting new areas with high potential and help them scale globally.’

He says: ‘One of our most valuable investments is Tencent, listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange and managed by a great team. It is one of the largest internet companies in the world and a leading provider of internet value-added services.’

More logos; more claims (‘one of the largest internet companies in Russia!’); until the film reaches the very bottom of the barrel.

Her: ‘Finally, there is Media24, South Africa’s leading publisher, and Novus, a market leader in the commercial print industry. Media24 publishes a wide variety of magazines, newspapers and books. And to embrace the future, it is developing new digital services such as [now rebranded] fashion site Spree and Careers24.’

As the library music surges for the big ending, the woman says: ‘This is our group …’ even though that much is obvious to anyone still watching at 6'11" in.

Now if, like me, you are finding the Naspers film a tad glossy, you may be interested in my rigorous rewrite. As my Naspers investors’ film starts, the male voice-over says:

‘Our journey started more than a hundred years ago, when apartheid was still a fantasy and Afrikaner nationalists had to turn it into reality. And so, for eighty years, we supported, instructed and invested in businesses to promote apartheid. It is no surprise that Nasionale Pers and the Nasionale Party have the same initials, because until the mid-nineties, they were the same.’

Her: ‘Today, we largely stand as the result of our fortuitous investment in Tencent in the scramble for relevance after the fall of apartheid. This … is Naspers, a group that empowers the powerful and enriches the wealthiest.’

Him: ‘Almost one in every one person in China uses WeChat and other Tencent products to regulate their daily lives, and the Naspers companies work passionately to bring customised experiences to governments …’

Her: ‘… with operations in Russia, Latin America, Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, the Middle East, India and our beloved China.’

Him: ‘It is only acquisitions that help us drive the next phase of domination – please do not ask about the things we tried to invent ourselves – so Naspers Ventures buys up cheap internet businesses. We are always on the hunt for another Tencent, so if we have bought something that won’t be Tencent, we’ll close it down swiftly.

‘Our valuable investment is Tencent, of which we own over a third. It is managed by a team that is not us. Tencent is one of the largest facilitators of internet surveillance in the world and a leading channel of government censorship.

‘We also value our deep bonds with leaders in Russia, India, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the UAE (big up for the UAE!), Saudi Arabia and, off the beaten track, brutal Central Asia.

‘Finally, there is the tiny matter of Media24. For eighty years, Naspers was synonymous with Die Burger, which told the National Party what to think, and then in turn unleashed the party’s thinking across the body politic.’

‘These days,’ she says, ‘Die Burger is a shadow of what it used to be, reduced to a dwindling daily rag that sees its content aggregated on Netwerk24, which is Naspers’s online centralisation of three daily newspapers, each of which once brought its own unique voice to the struggle for apartheid.

‘But even as our South African businesses recede behind us, our culture lives on in Naspers-Media24, a subsidiary so wholly owned by us it has only ever been us.

‘This is our group!’

For an organisation as morally neutral and enterprisingly psychopathic as Naspers, Breytenbach was a natural fit. Entering the group via Die Burger, he rose through the ranks in a glorious nineteen-year career. After editorial promotions to Port Elizabeth and back to Cape Town, he left Die Burger as news editor to become a hands-on marketer and publisher.

In 2005, amid dark whispers, Naspers moved him suddenly to New Delhi, India. He returned to the Mother City in 2008 and, at the height of his powers, was publisher of Huisgenoot and YOU and Drum, using the former’s dominant position in the Afrikaans magazine market to make or break young male artists.

In 2014, he used the Pers as a launchpad for his own murky digital-media empire, and used first Lumico and then Lightspeed Digital Media as a grooming ground in place of Naspers, Die Burger and Huisgenoot.

In an Italian restaurant near the Naspers tower, I tell Adriaan about something that is nagging at me. I am trying to orchestrate a shaming by media, which can only be achieved by having elite connections. You may, and should, ask what makes my rape so special that I get to mobilise the media to pursue my trespasser.

The answer is: absolutely nothing. My privileged, upper-middle-class rape occurred under privileged conditions, for a rape. Much of humanity has suffered much more.

But I cannot do anything about the other injustices. I can do something about the continuing rapes by Willem Breytenbach. Moreover, if I catch him just right, maybe I can make an example of him – maybe extract some meaning from the boyhood and decades I lost.

Picking at pizza with Adriaan, I say to him: ‘Look, the very valid criticism we will get is, “Why are you talking about some middle-class, white boy’s rape when women and children in the townships face much worse? Why are you not talking about that?”’

‘We talk about that all the time,’ says Adriaan. ‘We never talk about the kind of story you want to tell here.’

‘That’s quite a good point,’ I say. I may be warming to Adriaan.

But now I have run out of ways to stall. It is a mostly sunny Wednesday on the Cape Peninsula. I am in my rental car and, as I round a certain bend, I see Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain on my left and the Atlantic on my right. In front of me is Three Anchor Bay and its warren of narrow one-ways, and also the house where Willem lives.

As I get closer, I get tenser. This seems like a terrible idea now. The risk is massive, and for what? Knowing what a renovated house looks like?

I am on a one-way and I have missed the turn-off for Mutley Road, and now the road back out is in front of me and my personal monster is at my back. It is time to get the hell out of here.

But somehow I find myself circling back to the same one-way. I see the Mutley Road turn-off, and despite myself I turn left as Kate (UK) on Waze says: ‘You’ve arrived at your destination.’

There, right before me, is the thing I have been dreading. A car is parked in front of his house.