If, by now, you have not read Ed Herbst’s piece ‘The Tiger Tiger Five: Story of a race hoax’ you either don’t live in Cape Town, or you don’t have an internet connection, or both.

Despite the case of 52-year-old Delia Adonis and the so-called Tiger Tiger Five having lain dormant for a while, the analysis, published in Politicsweb on 16 October, went about as close to viral as one can get in South Africa, and attracted a slew of comments and tweets that were largely positive, congratulating Herbst as something of a hero. It appears that Herbst’s fans in Cape Town, having felt collectively defensive after a series of accusations of racism in the city, somehow felt vindicated themselves – relieved that the horror story wasn’t true; that at least one post-apartheid bogeyman was back under the bed.

There is nothing very wrong with all this. It’s human nature. But somewhere behind all the Twitter timelines are five young men who have faced criminal charges and fears about their future, a mother of six who has faced medical bills and ongoing physical pain, and her son, who has faced a confusing period of violence and probing questions surrounding his own place in the world. It is an uncomfortable and painful situation for all, and I assure you that once we have all finished Tweeting about it and gone back to lunch on the wine farms, their lives will continue to be changed.

For those who may have forgotten the details of the case, the brief outline is as follows. On the night in question, Adonis, a cleaner, alleges she saw the five boys beating 21-year-old Duncan Hendry outside the club. She intervened. The boys allegedly beat her severely, shouting racial slurs, until her son, Tesh-Lee, stopped them. In Herbst’s version, Adonis sustained only a cut to her face and walked away almost unscathed; in Adonis’s version, she was beaten senseless and would have died had Tesh-Lee and another stranger not stepped in. The boys were charged with attempted murder, but the charges were dropped after their attorney, William Booth, made representations to Director of Public Prosecutions Rodney de Kock. De Kock declined to give details regarding his decision.

I will give Herbst this: I do not disagree with all of the comments he made regarding the way the case was reported, and many readers and media professionals alike have voiced valid criticisms regarding a certain lack of thoroughness and/or balance that tends to surface at various publications. Many of these criticisms are pertinent to the Adonis case, and sensationalism is not the goal.

It is also absolutely fair to request that the word “allegedly” be used in reports regarding ongoing cases – especially those of a sensitive nature – as noted in Mark Povey’s recent complaint to the Press Ombudsman.

However, I draw the line at calling Herbst’s piece – as one commentator put it – a “superb investigative piece”. It is not an investigative piece, and it is not superb. Unfortunately Herbst, despite having the extensive credentials referred to within the piece, has given readers little more than a nodding acquaintance with the case. Had he examined more perspectives, or even mentioned all the information that was a matter of public record, he may have written a very different feature.

Furthermore, Herbst is guilty of many of the same mistakes he criticises in others.

I say this not to take sides in the Adonis versus Tiger Boys case, but to illustrate that Herbst is either intentionally editing out the facts that do not suit his conclusion, or else passing judgment without due diligence. Either of the above requires revision.

For starters, Herbst criticises Independent for not placing ‘race attack’ in quotation marks; it is interesting to note, then, that ‘hoax’ is not placed in quotation marks in his own piece. By (not very subtle) implication, he is openly accusing Adonis, her son and Nathan Johnson – as well as the reporters involved – of intentionally lying; bamboozling the public.

Herbst and his fans, speaking out on social media, took issue with the painting of Cape Town as a racist city. Certainly incidents of racism regrettably still occur just about everywhere in South Africa, as do acts of kindness and justice. However, it is also worth inserting a reminder that there have been a number of race-related incidents in Cape Town, ranging from the exclusion of patrons at restaurants, to the student who urinated over the balcony (also of Tiger Tiger) onto a black man’s head, allegedly while making racist remarks, to a somewhat saddening report by EWN that at least 10 cases of race-related violence were being investigated locally at the time. As a city paper, it is surely to be expected that the Cape Times would report on such incidents.

As far as relevant omissions go, it’s also worth mentioning that the police officer who originally worked on Adonis’s case was suspended and, among other things, investigated for allegedly accepting a bribe in order to “make the charges go away”, after which a new detective was assigned. Additionally, Johnson, the state prosecutor, said at the time that he was contacted to say Adonis had withdrawn the charges. The thing is, she had not. Throughout, she was adamant that she did not want to withdraw charges.

Irregularities in the case were not only reported by the Cape Times.

It’s also worth remembering that prior to Adonis pressing charges, the boys involved had allegedly offered to pay medical bills and transport fees if she agreed not to press charges, fearing expulsion from university. Adonis opted to press charges. One can interpret this either as the actions of fearful boys wishing to do the right thing after an unpleasant incident, or of guilty consciences – we’ll leave you to decide. The point is, Herbst should have mentioned it.

And fourth, it’s worth mentioning that in her statements, Adonis was adamant that she had been called a “coloured b*tch” and a “coloured c**t”. This, too, was referred to in the reports Herbst takes issue with. Given this testimony, it is not unreasonable that the reporters concerned concluded that, firstly, there might be an element of racism involved; and secondly, given the examples listed above, that this might be contextualised more broadly within an atmosphere of prejudice and inequality. At the very least, it’s unsubstantiated to dismiss the whole issue as a ‘hoax’.

Herbst is further somewhat selective in his choice of sources. In asking whether Tiger Tiger is a nice, decent spot, two of his sources are the club’s own manager, and ward councillor Ian Iversen, whose daughter used to go there “years ago”. According to his sources, the club is “classy”. Now, I’m not saying it’s an opium den, but there are varied opinions out there, and some of them are closer and more current. (Exhibit A: urinating over the balcony to be “funny”, paragraph 10.) I’m therefore not sure it’s entirely the reporters’ fault that not all Capetonians think of the club as the Ritz for 18-year-olds. (Mark Povey, I’m looking at you.) Upmarket may be its target, but a nightclub is a nightclub.

I would be curious as to whether Herbst, in his investigation, spoke to Adonis, the detectives, or Johnson. His piece does not reflect their testimony.

Certainly the Tiger Tiger boys themselves deserve the opportunity to give their version of what happened, both via the justice system and the media – should they wish to do so. Their lawyer is absolutely right, too, to defend their characters to the media; it is his job. In this respect Herbst is right; it’s fair enough that he includes character witnesses for them, as well as some of the evidence in their support. This is how democracy works. But he is also wrong, because his own piece does not afford the same respect to those he criticises. One of the roles of the media is to give a voice to the voiceless, and in many ways Adonis – a cleaner, elderly, living in one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the Cape – embodies the voiceless.

The media have and had a duty to be fair to the young men, who were, I am sure, terrified by the situation in which they found themselves. It is, to me, a terribly sad indictment of our society as a whole that we are having this barney at all: a disenfranchised grandmother versus a group of young men with their whole lives ahead of them, with the reputation of one of the country’s most beautiful and potentially prosperous cities at stake. It saddens me greatly, and I imagine it caused enormous suffering and stress to the parties and their families on both sides. I can understand that we, as South Africans, would prefer not to consider that the dregs of apartheid survive among us – the terrible triplets of racism, inequality, and a justice system we don’t always trust. But it remains that, all things being equal, the boys had advantages Adonis did not. They could afford a top defence lawyer. They could afford a private investigator. They could afford to offer her compensation.

If the tables were turned, the same would not apply.

And therein lies the rub.

Meanwhile, ill feeling continues to simmer. Reports surfaced in the media that the boys and their attorney, Booth, were considering a counter-charge; now there is the complaint laid with the press ombudsman. And Adonis has insisted publicly that she wants to see the evidence that led to the charges being dropped.

I am not a judge. I was not there. I can only say that Herbst’s analysis had missing pieces; offer these, and further offer the hope that justice – whatever that may mean – will prevail.

But justice means different things for different people. From what I can observe, the tide is turning against Adonis, and while the boys will probably land on their feet, she may not.

I’d like you to consider that prediction without making any value statements; without taking sides. First imagine the boys were most at fault, and ask what recourse they would have. Then imagine Adonis was most at fault, and ask yourself the same.

Then ask yourself, honestly, if apartheid is really as dead as you’d like to believe. DM