Mastering the art of conspiracy invention in bid to distract from the truth
The propaganda strategy that the Guptas have unleashed is a marvel to behold. You have to give credit to Bell Pottinger, the expensive UK public relations company best known for the $500m it was paid to produce fake news videos in Arabic during the US invasion of Iraq.
The Guptas’ money is not going to waste. Bell Pottinger’s success in clouding and obfuscating the reality of what their clients have been up to has revealed an excellent sociological analysis of SA.
How do you get the public to ignore their clients’ willingness to do anything for profit? Invent the concept of “white monopoly capital” (WMC) to exploit the racial animus and suspicion about big business in SA. Suddenly, the Guptas’ ripping off of Eskom, Transnet and other government entities seems less of a problem – the real problem is WMC. How do you get people to ignore the Guptas’ inveigling of government departments and state-owned organisations, directing business to their cronies rather than through open, competitive tenders?
Invent a conspiracy that Johann Rupert has “captured” the state already, and therefore their clients couldn’t have. How do you get the public to ignore that banks have shut Gupta accounts out of fear over money laundering? Twist the narrative to one of thousands of jobs at risk (never mind that Africa Check could find less than half the employees the Guptas were claiming).
Interestingly, Rupert’s Richemont used to be a client of Bell Pottinger and his Remgro is the largest shareholder in Mediclinic, which was also a client of Bell Pottinger until recently. Might the arbitrary choice of Rupert as the fall guy for statecapturer-in-chief reflect some historic animosity between him and the firm?
Over at Bell Pottinger HQ, the chapter in the propaganda bible most thumbed must be the one entitled “false equivalence”. This is in an old strategy – to downplay whatever evil you’re accused of by arguing it is no different to what others have done. Fox News in the US loves doing it, claiming its right-wing bias is no different to the “liberal bias” of the mainstream media. Philosophers use the Latin term tu quoque, which translates as “you too”. The argument has the form: whatever evil I’ve done, you’ve done it too, so who are you to criticise?
Of course, the Guptas can’t be seen to do this themselves. As the strategy was being unleashed, several “foundations” suddenly appeared on the scene with murky sources of funding as well as names based on wolfwhistle terms. One of these, Black First Land First, has laid criminal charges against Rupert and a string of business leaders, alleging corruption. Another, the Decolonisation Foundation, led by former government spokesman Mzwanele Manyi, has filed criminal charges against former finance ministers Trevor Manuel and Nhlanhla Nene, current Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and former public protector Thuli Madonsela. Tu quoque, the Guptas can shout, whenever fingers are pointed at them.
Twitter seems to be the main channel for the dissemination of the propaganda. Some excellent sleuthing by Twitter user Jean le Roux identified 106 Twitter accounts that automatically retweet tweets that are proGupta and anti-Madonsela.
Journalists at The Times, Roxanne Henderson and Nomahlubi Jordaan did some more digging and found the accounts had been opened in bursts all close to each other. These “bots” are dedicated to retweeting messages such as “#TalkLeftWalkRight Johann Rupert is Stellenbosch Mafia. Rupert give EFF money to defeat Zuma” (sic).
Of course, the problem with false equivalence is the false part. Is Rupert’s business really analogous to what is claimed of the Guptas? Rupert runs a global luxury goods empire in Richemont that is subject to the oversight of thousands of regulators. And if you are claiming equivalence, while describing Rupert as “mafia”, isn’t that tantamount to admitting that is what you are?
Seems to me that a far better analogy for the Guptas is former mining magnate Brett Kebble. Like them, he charmed his way into political circles. He donated between R10.8m and R22.2m to the ANC and its youth league. The ANC eventually paid R1.7m of this back to Kebble’s estate rather than be dragged to court where the details of the alliance between Kebble and the party would have come to light. While all this was going on, Kebble was systematically defrauding Randgold Resources and JCI, extracting billions of rand from shareholders.
Kebble was a clever propagandist too. But he operated in the time before social media, which has heralded a new dawn for the peddling of fake news. The Guptas have mastered the art with their able helpers.
The era of fake news is part of the “postfact” world we now seem to live in. It won’t last – only the truth can ensure we make decisions that are best for our society.
When we realise how wrong we’ve been, we’ll have an incentive to change the way information spreads.
For now, the Guptas’ efforts make it much harder for people to understand the facts. But, in the long run, the truth always comes out.