Tall order stretches Gupta spin team
POLITICS is dirty. The attacks by Donald Trump’s campaign on his Democratic opponent in the US presidential election in November, Hillary Clinton, have been appalling. They question her health, her appreciation of national security, her association with big banks, her judgment, the fact that she’s not a man and her husband’s infidelity 20 years ago.
Yes, Hillary recently nearly fainted (unlike George W Bush, who once actually vomited into the lap of a Japanese prime minister). She did use a private server to store some e-mails when she was secretary of state. And what Bill did was bad.
The fact, though, is that Hillary is, by far, the most politically and technically experienced candidate to run for the White House in a century. Her policy positions are detailed and thoughtful, her relationships with world leaders unparalleled and her political pedigree and experience peerless.
But she may lose in November to Trump, a rich, incoherent racist who openly endorses Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who regards the US as his country’s No 1 enemy.
What Trump and the people chasing Hillary want is to shift reality, to create a slightly new one, for just long enough to take them through the election. They want to build doubt about what is true. Not to prove anything, but just to make things fuzzy. I watched a Trump supporter on TV the other day demanding to know where Barack Obama was on 9/11. Politicians love guys like that. George W used to say: “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you’ve got to focus on.”
I had an evening drink with three excellent people the other day. They work for a big UK public relations firm called Bell Pottinger. Tim Bell, now ennobled, still oversees the firm. He was the advertising guy who made Margaret Thatcher, that great antiapartheid activist, Britain’s first female prime minister.
The Bell Pottinger team I met are here to tell a story and shift reality. That is their job — just like it was Barry Roux’s to defend Oscar Pistorius. Their clients are the Gupta family or, more specifically, Oakbay, their listed company.
We all know the Guptas have a deeply unhealthy relationship with President Jacob Zuma and his family. The air around them is thick with evidence of influence peddling and enrichment. So bad is the stink that South Africa’s normally tolerant big banks have closed all Gupta accounts.
To date, the Guptas have declined to sue the banks in court and have instead announced they’re leaving the country. We will see. I doubt the Bell Pottinger people are here to help them pack.
The team I met are smart. They know that in South Africa’s febrile politics, where plot has replaced policy, a little doubt goes a long way. The Guptas can’t sue, not because they’re scared, you see, but because it would ruin their relationship with the banks if they won. What could be more reasonable? What about Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas? Was he really offered the finance minister’s job by the Guptas? Can he name the people in the room at the time? According to Atul Gupta’s passport he was out of the country.
My new friends were the same people who, we learnt last week, tried to leak a cabinet statement on behalf of the lamentable Mosebenzi Zwane to News24 suggesting action be taken against certain ministers (read Pravin Gordhan) seven weeks before the mineral resources minister, unable to contain himself, released it himself.
You have to feel for the Bell Pottinger people in a way. The Guptas have not given them many brain cells to work with.
Ultimately, the client wants to get rid of Gordhan in favour of a pliable finance minister who’ll allow the looting of the state to speed up.
Never forget Des van Rooyen’s first words after being made finance minister last December. “We want to make the Treasury more accessible,” said Van Rooyen, hours before being fired. He meant more accessible to what Julius Malema deliciously calls the Zuptas.
There is still a lot for the UK team to do, but I’m not sure they’ll get far. The Guptas are bad news for South Africa and their decision to leave comes not a moment too soon.
There is, as the background to Zwane’s foolish statement shows, deep Zupta plotting afoot, but I fear the Bell Pottinger team may have rendered themselves less than optimally functional through one rookie error. They have become the story.
And it isn’t going very well.