Simpiwe Piliso: Award-winning reporter bound for great things
1974-2016
SIMPIWE Piliso, who has died in East London at the age of 42, survived a horrific car accident to become an award-winning Sunday Times journalist who was involved in some of the most sensational exposés in post-apartheid South Africa.
He won the print news category at the 2007 Vodacom journalist of the year awards for a series of articles on the Elephant empowerment consortium’s 2005 purchase and subsequent secret sale of a 15%, R9billion stake in Telkom.
The story sparked a national outcry as it exposed the scramble for those billions and the politically connected players behind it, including the then head of the Presidency, Smuts Ngonyama, who threatened to sue Piliso.
Said the award judges: “This journalist was fearless in reporting the facts on what the consortium wanted to hide.”
Piliso was working on the Daily Dispatch in East London in 1996 when he and his cousin set out for the Transkei. In heavy rain they went off the side of a bridge on a remote stretch of gravel road. His cousin was killed and Piliso’s arm was trapped under the car.
After about seven hours he managed to free himself and find a farmer, who drove him to hospital, where he stayed for six weeks, two of them in a coma. His right arm was amputated.
He learnt to write and type with his left hand and got back to work, expecting no special treatment or favours and laughing heartily — nobody who heard his laugh ever forgot it — at corny newsroom jokes about his disability.
Piliso was born in Port Elizabeth on June 24 1974 and enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Mthatha and Umhlanga Rocks in Durban. His father, Mncedisi, was a director-general in the government of Transkei leader Bantu Holomisa, and Transkei’s ambassador to South Africa.
He matriculated at Mthatha High School and completed a diploma in journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
He cut his teeth in journalism at the now-defunct Eastern Cape News Agency in Grahamstown before joining the Daily Dispatch in East London and quickly becoming one of its star reporters.
In 2000, he joined Drum magazine and also worked on True Love before returning to the Daily Dispatch as news editor in 2002. In 2004, he joined City Press as deputy news editor. After a month he joined the Sunday Times, where he was involved in breaking a string of extraordinary stories.
In 2007, he won a Mondi award for investigative journalism for his role in two stories — “Selebi named in explosive dossier” and “Selebi and the cop mafia” — that revealed then national police commissioner Jackie Selebi’s contacts with the underworld, terminated his career and led to a 15-year jail term.
Also in 2007, Piliso was joint winner of a Sanlam award for economic and industrial reporting. His awardwinning stories included a piece about “black diamonds”, black people who were categorised as middle class but couldn’t afford the lifestyle associated with this.
This, as he showed, challenged statements about the size of the black middle class in South Africa and suggested they gave a misleading picture of real economic growth.
Other stories reflected the skill with which he wrote about property. He made property sexy as a beat with his ability to read trends and turn them into relevant stories that reflected changes in society and gave an insight into how the truly rich lived.
He was widely respected in the property industry for his understanding of complex issues and his accuracy. This was a hallmark of his reporting on all subjects.
Piliso also blew then SAA CEO Khaya Ngqula out of the sky with a front-page lead exposing in meticulous detail his extravagant use of a private helicopter to commute between his office and nearby home and attend meetings well within driving distance.
Ngqula was forced to resign not long afterwards.
Piliso was regarded as an editor in the making. But he had one flaw, which proved his undoing. This was his heart. He was often short of breath. In 2013, doctors told him he had the heart of an 89-year-old. In January this year, he had a heart transplant in Cape Town.
Piliso’s greatest talent was perhaps his ability to connect with people and win their trust. This made him an excellent reporter and highly popular with his colleagues. He was mildmannered, never angry and had a wonderful sense of humour.
This even extended to the fact that the donor of his heart was a biker who was killed while returning from the funeral of a biker who’d been killed in a biking accident.
He said that while he was waiting on a gurney to go into the operating theatre for his transplant, an elderly man was wheeled up alongside him who looked like he needed a new heart more than Piliso did. He didn’t want to ask the man what operation he was having, he said afterwards, because he knew that he was getting the heart.
Piliso, who died of heart failure, is survived by his wife, Sange, daughters Ongezwa, 23, Afikile, 6, and Siwonge, 2, and son Simbusisiwe, 11. — Chris Barron
Piliso was regarded as an editor in the making. But he had one flaw, which proved his undoing. It was his heart