Over the past few days, there has been sustained media coverage of the unfortunate developments at the Public Investment Corporation SOC Limited (PIC), involving its Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Dlamini, and my resignation as Board Chairperson at the end of July. I feel compelled to set out my side of the story, hopefully for the final time, because some recent reporting has been inaccurate and appears to present one version of events as fact, leaving little room for alternative perspectives or voices.

An example of the reporting has been News24’s article recently which states that the PIC CEO Patrick Dlamini received Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC’s legal opinion in March and handed it to the Board in June. This is not correct and is a significant misrepresentation because it distorts the chronology, conceals a serious governance question and falsely attributes my subsequent actions to advice the Board did not receive from the CEO.

Mr Dlamini did not share Ngcukaitobi’s opinion with the Board. I do not wish to speculate on his reasons, suffice to state the fact: Ngcukaitobi’s legal opinion, which formed the basis of News24’s August 16^th article “Legal opinion recommends internal accountability, litigation in PIC’s R411 Lanseria deal” was only known to its authors and the CEO of the PIC.

I discovered that the CEO had been sitting on the opinion only while pursuing a separate legal inquiry into the PwC findings. I sought different legal advice, received it on 20 June 2026 and immediately acted on it by referring the Acupulco matter to the Special Investigating Unit. The referral and its rationale were publicly announced on 21 June.

News24’s version is therefore not a harmless error. It materially changes who knew what, when they knew it and who acted. It sanitises the CEO’s failure to disclose material legal advice to the governing body and then credits him with enabling action that followed separate advice sought by the Board of the PIC.

The obvious question is: why did the CEO not give the March opinion to the Board?

News24 should ask this material question. Apparently, investigative curiosity has limits when the answer may inconvenience the publication’s preferred protagonist.

This distortion follows News24’s report of 10 June which alleged that Dlamini had initiated legal steps to recover R411 million and that I had prevented him from proceeding. The writer, Norman Masungwini, boldly accused me of attempting to remove the CEO. He wrote “Dlamini’s attempt to chase the money through a route – the PwC investigation – is what led to the latest attempt to remove him.”

There was only one difficulty: the documentary record.

Dlamini’s own signature appears on the PIC’s letter of 9 October 2025 advising the GEPF that the arbitration award “should be honoured” and seeking permission to comply with it. The subsequent Board submission – approved by Dlamini – briefed the Board on the award and the legal opinions advising that a review had poor prospects of success and risked causing further losses for the PIC. Dlamini and I spoke publicly about this and were always aligned.  News24’s commitment to creating good cop versus bad cop is therefore unfortunate.

When the PwC produced new information, I obtained fresh advice and referred the matter to the SIU immediately. That is irreconcilable with News24’s earlier claim that I was determined to block investigation or recovery.

News24’s August 16^th article – in which it belatedly acknowledges that I, as Chair, took the matter to the SIU, now contradicts the premise of its June reporting. Yet there is no correction or apology. Instead, the narrative is quietly renovated: my actions are made to appear as the consequence of advice supposedly delivered by Dlamini.

The facts have changed, but News24’s chosen villain must apparently remain the same.

My concern with News24’s reporting goes beyond factual errors, serious as those have been. It concerns the method of journalism employed throughout this period: a method that appeared far more interested in politically useful leaks than in establishing what was actually happening within the PIC Board.

As Chairperson, I was never approached by News24 with a genuine inquiry about the Board’s deliberations, the difficult governance questions before it, or the considerations informing its decisions. I was not asked to explain the Board’s mandate, the competing arguments placed before it, or how it reached its collective conclusions.

Instead, I was repeatedly contacted only after unnamed sources had already supplied News24 with their interpretation of events. By then, the storyline had effectively been written. My role was not to provide information or context. It was to “respond” to a narrative constructed elsewhere, usually under artificial deadline pressure and frequently while Board members themselves had barely had time to process the full trajectory and implications of the meeting concerned.

This was presented as an opportunity to comment.

A right of reply is not a substitute for reporting. Nor does the ritual inclusion of a last-minute response cure a story whose premise, sources and villains have already been selected.

News24 displayed remarkably little curiosity about how the Board actually functioned. It seemed considerably more curious about what powerful political actors wanted the public to believe had happened inside it.

Are we to assume that this is the culture of certain media houses?

This question is important given that recently editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson and journalist Pieter Du Toit apologised publicly for taking sides in the confrontation between Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi and then IDAC head Advocate Andrea Johnson. Evidence before the Madlanga Commission demonstrated the danger of deciding prematurely who represents virtue and who deserves suspicion.

That apology should have prompted reflection. Sources are not saints because journalists find them persuasive. Those accused are not villains because a newsroom has invested in that characterisation.

The decent and professional action for News24 to undertake is to:

• Correct the false claim that Dlamini handed Ngcukaitobi’s opinion to the Board.
• Acknowledge that I obtained separate advice and immediately referred the matter to the SIU.
• Ask why material legal advice was withheld.
• Correct the allegation that I prevented the recovery of PIC funds.
• News24 rightly demands accountability from public institutions yet seems conspicuously unwilling to take its own medicine.

Unfortunately, News24 is not keen to carry this correction.

DR David Masondo: Former PIC Chairperson and Deputy Minister of Finance.