Daily Maverick Op-ed: Zunaid Moti’s tsunami of spin secures judicial gagging order against investigative journalists

Note: This op-ed was originally published in Daily Maverick and was authored by Nick Donovan, Senior Investigator at The Sentry.

Zunaid Moti’s tsunami of spin secures judicial gagging order against investigative journalists

In an unprecedented attack on free speech, a South African court has ordered journalists at amaBhungane to stop reporting on the Moti Group, a Johannesburg-based multinational that mines chrome and lithium in Zimbabwe.

The background to the court order is an investigation by amaBhungane and The Sentry into the Moti Group’s actions in Zimbabwe.

We found that, following a $120-million deal signed during Zimbabwe’s week-long coup in November 2017, the Moti Group’s African Chrome Fields (ACF) paid $1-million to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s farm and $2-million to a firm closely linked to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga. ACF also employed Mnangagwa’s son, entered a joint venture with the military, and paid millions of dollars to companies whose records are missing from Zimbabwe’s corporate registry…

Click here to read the full op-ed.