Sometimes an official statement carries more than the weight of government protocol—it carries the exhaustion of a country that has watched its name being dragged through the mud. That is the feeling behind the recent declaration from Azerbaijan’s Media and Broadcasting Council, which has forcefully rejected foreign media reports linking Azerbaijan to an ongoing investigation involving August Hanning, the former head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, the BND. In the council’s own words, the information is fake, and it forms part of an intensive smear campaign that has been waged against Azerbaijan in the international information space. The statement does…

News24’s investigation into the Department of Correctional Services is not another dry audit story. It is a story about how an institution built to hold people accountable spent years refusing to be accountable itself. The title alone says it: “False, altered or not authentic.” Those are not adjectives a citizen ever wants to hear about public records. They are the words forensic investigators used after examining the department’s books, and they describe a pattern of manipulation, not an accident. Correctional services manages South Africa’s prisons, houses more than 150,000 inmates, and employs thousands of officials. It is supposed to be…