A free advertisement for the ANC's controversial AIDS policy has caused a major rift between commercial and editorial managements in Independent Newspapers Holdings Ltd (INHL), the South African wing of Dr A.J.F. O'Reilly's publishing group, Independent News and Media.
As put forward by President Thabo Mbeki, the policy, which questions the link between HIV and AIDS, has been the subject of intense criticism from the medical community internationally and in South Africa, where incidence of the disease has been increasing extremely rapidly.
Mr Tony Howard, the group's chief operating officer in South Africa, justified the free advertisement as being in the public interest and said he would have "no hesitation" in doing so again.
"Independent Newspapers will have no hesitation in future in taking decisions which we believe might contribute to winning the desperately serious battle against a pandemic that threatens the very future of the country and the lives of millions, or any other matter we believe to be in the public interest," the statement said.
But Mr John Battersby, editor of the Sunday Independent, widely regarded as the country's most serious and responsible newspaper, has taken a very different view.
In an editorial last month the newspaper told its readers that the ANC had bought space in the paper to explain its controversial stance following an interview by Mr Mbeki in Time magazine.
But in the paper's latest issue Mr Battersby revealed in an editorial titled "Apology to Readers" that he has since learnt "the advertising space was given to the government free".
Mr Battersby is understood to have angered commercial management by publicly attacking its decision to give free advertising to the ANC-led government. He said: "This newspaper wants to state categorically that it is against its policy to offer the government - or any other body - free space when the content is of a contentious political nature."
In what appeared to be an attempt to pre-empt a repetition by management of its contentious decision, Mr Battersby stated: "The Sunday Independent apologises to its readers and the editor gives the assurance that the error will not be repeated."
Well-placed journalists in Independent Newspapers affirm that Mr Battersby's fellow editors in Independent Newspapers Holdings Ltd newspapers in Johannesburg and Cape Town were similarly not consulted about the free ANC advertisement.
They were surprised and dismayed by it, especially since its contents were covered in the news columns of their newspapers.