EDITORIAL: Insider or outsider?

For a book publisher to get to the point of having secured an author, conceptualised, edited, printed and distributed a book to then pull it off the shelves is to take all the costs of publishing and none of the profits. It’s a grenade in the balance sheet.

Many have seen the removal from sale by Penguin Books of a biography of ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba, The Outsider by Prince Mashele, as being a source of considerable amusement. It may not be quite so funny.

Mashaba is the leader of ActionSA, a small but important political party that positions itself — as the title of the book suggests — as unencumbered with the baggage of corruption and inaction associated with the ruling ANC.

Revelations that Mashaba is said to have paid Mashele to write the book, which has been sold and marketed as “unauthorised”, and therefore as an independent and critical view of Mashaba’s life, does raise questions about the integrity of everybody involved, not least the man who will want to play a part in a governing coalition after the elections in 2024.

Mashaba has said that paying for the book did not necessarily give him editorial control, but as Penguin has demonstrated, and as anyone in publishing knows, if you’re paid to write a story it’s public relations, not journalism. Mashaba would do well to clear up his role in this affair.