The price I paid for exposing a fraud

Exposing fraud exposed Zimasa Matiwane to ugly attacks on social media

Zimasa Matiwane on how she was bullied on social media for reporting about bogus doctor

Dear black people, we are not doing the black race any favours when we defend black people who do wrong. This is common sense, but on cyberbullying’s ground zero, Twitter, vicious attacks are launched against anyone who dares uncover the side of blackness some pretend does not exist.

Recently I became a casualty of this silencing tactic for reporting truthfully, ethically and — despite a lack of co-operation from institutions that had all the answers — being on the right side of the story.

It came as a total shock that my credibility was then sacrificed on the altar of protecting “black women”. I had never felt that I was a danger to black women. I am a black woman.

The South African social media landscape has been polarised for some time now. Deliberate narratives have been used to sow discord and foster lame attempts to protect the legacies of people who have brought the country nothing but destruction.

They create a deceptive sense of who is on the side of reclaiming and protecting blackness, often to the detriment of blackness.

In a normal society, a story exposing someone as a high school dropout who pretended to be student doctor or medical intern would prompt concern and outrage and propel citizens to demand answers from those in authority, in this case the health department.

The real victims — the women, men and children who are rural, poor and dependent on the government for health care — needed our collective focus in holding those responsible, accountable.

It could even have been a story of mobilising psychological and legal assistance for the subject of the story, Nokwanda Ndlovu (those services have since been provided by the state).

These were my expectations, prior to publishing. In an online society that claims to care for black people, it should never have been a story that ended with me being denigrated to the point of panic attacks and my child being targeted and needing psychological help. But the gatekeepers of blackness decided I was an anti-black-excellence tool of “white monopoly media”.

It went on for over a week — from tweets to Facebook posts, WhatsApp texts and threatening calls to my office landline and cellphone.

But the defend-her-at-any-cost badge of honour worn by my tormentors is nothing but a symbol of self-hate from a people who have no real desire to hold each other accountable, even for their own sake.

I refuse to accept that this is how we respond to the pain inflicted on us for generations by oppressive minority white rule.

This is not how we reclaim blackness. Our resilience as a people is not a platform for fraudsters and unsavoury characters to thrive on.

Bullying is often accompanied by an alternative narrative, concocted to tarnish the name of the “sellout”, who in this story is me. It is the same script that has been used to insult black women colleagues who make “blackness” uncomfortable.

It is simple — when you are a woman, there must always be a man you are sleeping with who will benefit somehow from whatever story you write. If you are black and from a working-class background, you must have been paid.

When you are a black woman from a workingclass background, it becomes a double-edged sword. In the eyes of the self-proclaimed defenders of blackness, we are not capable of doing our jobs on our own without a sinister agenda sponsored by powerful men.

It stung more than the insults to suggest that I was handed information to destroy someone, because nothing was handed to me. To give you a sense of how difficult it was to get to the heart of this story, it was the first time in my career that I came across not one, not two, but four people refusing to speak to me, even off the record, because they were afraid of being bewitched.

These were medical professionals who had worked with Ndlovu at four health-care facilities.

By this time, I had knocked on so many doors. I had been to her high school.

I had been to her home and spoken to her mother. Over a period of 15 days I had made more than 177 calls chasing elusive facts.

On a number of occasions I had left home at 4am and returned at 9pm with nothing. I was exhausted, frustrated. Many times I was on the brink of quitting this story because nobody wanted to tell me anything. To suggest that I was handed information to destroy Ndlovu hurt me the most.

The department of health — which to this day has failed to account for this travesty — has been let off the hook. I was made a sacrificial lamb — the evil woman paid to “attack a successful black child”.

Over the past few weeks I have reflected on what ensued and I have this to say to say to black South Africans: if Nokwanda Ndlovu is your idea of black excellence, you have a bigger self-inflicted problem on your hands.