Pubdate: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 Source: Sunday Times (South Africa) Copyright: 2004 Johnnic Publishing Contact: http://www.suntimes.co.za Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1335 Author: Henriette Geldenhuys, Johannesburg BIZARRE EFFORT TO HIDE DRUG BUST ROBS TOWN OF NEWS 'The whole town was in a frenzy and everyone was looking for the paper. I didn't even have a copy myself' A PLAN by a group of men to stop publicity of a drug bust by buying 7000 copies of a Kimberley newspaper flopped when the mass purchase made even bigger headlines. The city's Diamond Fields Advertiser (DFA) was sold out as it hit the streets on Tuesday when the group bought every copy available. The DFA's managing editor, Johan du Plessis, said the men had spent about R16000 on 7000 to 8000 copies of the newspaper. Shopkeepers and residents of the city said some of the buyers were pictured in the drug-bust story on the front page of the newspaper. They said they believed the men were hoping to prevent people seeing the story about their arrest. But, because of the mass purchase, the newspaper decided to print the same front page a second time the next day, and apologised to its readers if they had not managed to buy a newspaper the day before. The court appearance of Schalk van Rensburg, Joel Junius, Lodewyk de Ridder, Elizabeth Jacobs and Carl van Heerden in the Kimberley Magistrate's Court on Monday was reported by the newspaper on its front page on Tuesday. The other front-page story involved a policeman, Cornelius Abhew, who allegedly strangled his wife and burnt her with boiling water. But thanks to the mass buy-up of the newspaper by the men, few of Kimberley's residents got to see either story on the day. "It was clearly an attempt to suppress information," said Du Plessis. "Unfortunately [for the buyers], it had the opposite effect." The group hit street vendors, supermarkets and the newspaper's circulation department before 7am on Tuesday and bought every copy they could lay their hands on. They then loaded the newspapers onto bakkies and drove off. The Sunday Times has established that two of the men pictured in the drug story are sons of prominent Kimberley businessmen. A Kwikspar owner, Johan Mostert, said a man bought all 40 copies left in the shop early on Tuesday. "Afterwards I regretted selling them all to one guy because the whole town was in a frenzy. Everyone was looking for the paper," said Mostert. "I didn't even have a copy myself." The owner of Shell Ultra City, Pieter Dreyer, said he saw a man standing at the tills at 6am holding 30 copies of the newspaper. "I said: 'Wait a bit. I can only give you three copies because I have to keep the others for my regular clients.' "He was very disappointed," said Dreyer. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek