There is much to be said for the adage of not speaking ill of the dead, but the media has a societal responsibility that supersedes niceties.
Having read five tributes to Dick Foxton, including two in your publication, it is striking that none mentioned that Foxton’s company was cited by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) as a beneficiary of state capture-related malfeasance (“Salute to Dick and the Foxton charm package”, June 24, and “Fare thee well, Foxton”, July 2).
Specifically, that it received a R1.2m tender irregularly awarded to provide public relations consulting services to controversial SABC CEO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
This was only revealed publicly thanks to a parliamentary process. Strangely, many media outlets and editors who have otherwise loudly called for accountability for state capture were silent on that revelation.
That Foxton then married the former public protector who produced the original “State of Capture” report merely added further intrigue.
Since the last parliamentary mention of the Foxton Communications matter in 2019 I often wondered why the purportedly robust, anti-corruption media failed to provide updates on those SIU cases.
A reasonable reading of recent tributes provides a possible answer: Foxton had so many editors at his beck and call that it was a given that their publications would never report negatively on him. None of which does much for media credibility.
Dr Seán Mfundza Muller
Johannesburg
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