The two are charged with publishing falsehoods in breach of section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.  Matshazi who is the deputy editor and his reporter, Ncube, are jointly charged with Sifikile Thabete, legal secretary of Alpha Media Holdings publishers of NewsDay. Â
 background
The case in point arose from a story published by NewsDay titled: CIO “secretly†get bonuses. On 6 January 2016, NewsDay reported that the government had last year ‘quietly’ paid CIO operatives their annual bonuses despite postponing, several times, paying the salaries of civil servants.