Guptas’ fake news onslaught exposed
Family’s bid to deflect negative narrative eclipses Info Scandal
UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger’s role in the construction of the Gupta family’s propaganda empire was part of a multinational fake news project to hide the family’s growing enrichment at the expense of South African citizens and taxpayers.
The Times, with the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting, has revealed for the first time the size and scope of a campaign that eclipses the apartheid-era Information Scandal in cost and political impact.
Bell Pottinger is facing a severe backlash as a result of its role. Today, the Public Relations and Communication Association in the UK is due to meet to consider the firm’s appeal against an adverse finding by the association.
This weekend, Bell Pottinger chief executive James Henderson resigned.
This investigation reveals a multichannel media empire that includes mainstream news outlets The New Age and ANN7, alternative news websites and a vast number of contributors to social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
It is the first large-scale fake news propaganda war in South Africa and has adversely affected South Africa’s politics and economy.
This network of fake news produced at least 220 000 tweets and hundreds of Facebook posts to confuse the public between July last year and July this year.
The longest period of sustained activity was spent on attacking former finance minister Pravin Gordhan last year to create a climate conducive to forcing his removal as finance minister.
Now the network has entered a new phase of heightened activity and has sharpened its attacks on Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
At the weekend, Ramaphosa was forced to defend himself against supposed revelations in private e-mails that had purportedly been hacked and leaked to the Sunday Independent. This followed a pattern similar to that characterising other propaganda conclusively linked to the fake news network.
The fake news network has started a separate and well-funded campaign to respond to the tranche of #Guptaemails in the form of #WMCLeaks, which features websites as well as social feeds that spew propaganda daily.
Analysts say it would require a full-time army of IT technicians, writers, editors and graphic artists to produce material on this scale.
Bell Pottinger was introduced to the Gupta corporate empire by an associate of the family, Fana Hlongwane, who got to know the public relations company as he battled exposés made against him during the arms deal.
He was introduced to Bell Pottinger by the father of Victoria Geoghegan, who was promoted to company vice-president in December.
She has since been fired as the company attempts to limit damage to its reputation.
The Gupta patrons and their political players began the campaign when their effort to instal Des van Rooyen as finance minister in December 2015 backfired spectacularly.
They needed a new plan – and the chronology of the #Guptaemails reveals how Bell Pottinger helped to package the new message.
Shortly after the narrative targeting white monopoly capital was bedded down, the fake news enterprise sprang to life early last year.
The disinformation campaign used a range of media to carry the propaganda – The New Age newspaper and TV channel ANN7, other news sites including Black Opinion, Uncensored and Weekly Exposé, pro-Gupta websites AtulGupta.com and TruthbyConnorMead.co.za, and websites and blogs, such as WMCLeaks, WMCScams, Dodgy SA Ministers and Voetsek.
What draws all the elements together? Investigations by Scorpio and Ama-Bhungane have revealed several of the sites were created or linked to the same Gupta employee, Himanshu Tanwar, via his company FutureTeq.
Our investigation also reveals the following similarities:
They are all promoted by the same fake accounts on Twitter and pages on Facebook;
They use similar Word--
press templates and layouts;
They share content through reblogs and syndication;
All the website “owners” are regular analysts on ANN7; and
They share website developers and creators.
The Mail&Guardian has reported, for example, that the Voetsek blog and TruthbyConnormead.co.za use the same e-mail service, software and service provider.
In addition, a News24 investigation revealed that Kapil Garg, the creator and owner of the most recent WMC Leaks campaign, has several possible links to the Guptas.
WMCLeaks emerged as a direct response to the leak of e-mails that have revealed the extent of state capture by the Gupta family.
At the end of last month, an increasingly desperate Gupta family sold its media assets to former government bureaucrat and Tiger Brands executive Mzwanele “Jimmy” Manyi.
The R450-million valuation of The New Age newspaper and ANN7 television station has come in for sharp corporate scrutiny but the sale reveals why Manyi is a significant influencer in the fake news campaign.
His is one of 19 authentic accounts that took the message from the black-ops world of an automated Twitter army into the networks of power in the real world.
The Black First Land First movement and its founder, Andile Mngxitama, are also commanders of the fake news army. Mngxitama was funded by the Gupta family and is a regular commentator on ANN7.
Bell Pottinger’s role in creating the fake Twitter and Facebook army will emerge only once the company reveals the results of an internal investigation.
But the UK PR company was central to the attempt to shift the debate away from state capture by President Jacob Zuma and his collaborators towards the purported dominance of the economy by white-owned or controlled businesses.
A range of hashtags was coined to coincide with a political campaign to change the leadership of the Treasury and the SA Reserve Bank, to put pressure on banks to reopen the Guptas’ accounts and ensure that former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report reached a dead end.
At least 15 journalists who wrote about state capture were lampooned in graphics as lapdogs of white monopoly capital under the hashtag #mediacapture via 3 418 tweets.
Like the Infogate campaign of the 1970s, this new version had specific political purposes.
This analysis shows the network’s primary goal was to capture the Treasury and the Reserve Bank.
Aside from this objective, significant energy was focused on setting up “white monopoly capital” as the enemy, rather than state capture, and on attacking critics of the Gupta empire and Zuma.
The Gupta family, via its spokeman Gary Naidoo, did not respond to calls and e-mails requesting comment.
The African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms. It works to strengthen investigative journalism and is incubated by Code for Africa.