WRITING TRUTH POWER

We pay tribute to eight of the many women journalists out there right now putting themselves on the line for all of us.

Pauli vanWyk

INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST AT SCORPIO, DAILY MAVERICK

Why we think she’s brilliant: For her story on the SARS ‘rogue unit’, for tracing the money from the VBS Mutual Bank fraud to the EFF, and for pursuing dubious dealings at Insure Group Managers.

The back story: Pauli first started investigating the SARS state capture story in 2014. To recap: Johann van Loggerenberg was head of the hugely successful High-Risk Investigations Unit at SARS, and he was known to have sufficient evidence on illicit cigarette smuggling to turn the industry on its head. The companies implicated ranged from international players like British American Tobacco (BAT) and Phillip Morris, to smaller, seemingly independent local companies like Carnilinx and Gold Leaf. But the rogue unit narrative, in which the State Security Agency (SSA) had a hand, was a tale spun to discredit the SARS investigation and to pave the way for new SARS commissioner Tom Moyane to disband its internal and external investigations units, effectively removing the risk of any light being shone on wrongdoers.

Pauli’s investigation led to an apology and retraction from the Sunday Times, and to KPMG withdrawing its own report. Her story reads like a spy novel, complete with a triple agent laying a honeytrap (Belinda Walters, who worked for the SSA, BAT and Carnilinx) and a wronged lover (Van Loggerenberg).