GET RID OF DISHONESTY

View

BELL Pottinger is a festering boil at the heart of the moral corruption of the British ruling class. It is not for nothing that this notorious public relations firm has been referred to as “the scum of the Earth” and, in South Africa, as Bell Pottinja.

The firm’s founder, Lord Bell of Belgravia, rose to prominence as Margaret Thatcher’s spin-doctor. After that he worked for Thatcher’s close friend, the notorious Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Since then, his company has worked for a vipers’ nest of arms dealers, frackers, corrupt politicians and a host of rightwing dictators. Their clients have included the National Party in apartheid South Africa and the CIA and the Pentagon in occupied Iraq – for whom they fabricated news articles and videos for the media in the Middle East.

Bell Pottinger have real influence in the British ruling class and a team of people to edit Wikipedia and set up fake Twitter accounts. They also have ways to get their clients’ propaganda at the top of any Google search.

They are, no doubt, responsible for why websites like Black Opinion, come up at the top of so many Google searches despite being riddled with wildly dishonest and defamatory statements. Google’s complicity needs to be seriously examined.

The PR firm’s conduct in South Africa has been scurrilous. They have exploited real injustices to offer ideological cover to a corrupt and rapacious group of gangsters who have captured our democratic state to enrich themselves.

If we lose the battle against the Zuma faction and the Guptas and collapse into a dictatorship, Bell Pottinger will carry much of the blame for the end of the democratic experiment here.

They already carry a significant part of the responsibility for the capture of the Treasury, and various parastatals by the gangster state.

It is undeniably true that the gangster cabal has looted to make themselves fabulously wealthy. Whatever our future may hold, Bell Pottinger cannot deny they have worked to support people whose conduct is so grossly unethical that it is difficult to find a polite term to describe it, although the phrase “scum of the Earth” comes to mind.

Bell Pottinger have poisoned our public sphere, normalised dishonesty in public discussion and given real impetus to a growing fascist current in our politics.

The good names of decent and competent politicians, journalists and academics have been besmirched. Many of our media outlets, and one of our academic journals, have been persuaded to publish outright fraud.

Some of the propaganda work has been so crude that it has had little impact. After all, who takes ANN7 or The New Age seriously?

But the dark arts of Bell Pottinger have been effective when their propaganda has been able to enter credible publications, once-credible organisations, such as the ANC Youth League and the MK Veterans’ Associations, or to exploit genuine injustices.

Black First Land First (BLF) has been the most aggressive part of the propaganda project that has tried to present Zuma and the Guptas as the authentic answer to historical and contemporary injustice.

The argument is, of course, entirely absurd. The massive enrichment of two families is hardly the answer to our history of black dispossession. But by using intimidation, including personal attacks on critics of the Zuma faction and the Gutpas, BLF has managed to close down space for free and open debate.

Lindsay Maasdorp of the BLF was a prominent figure in the student movement at UCT. The BLF has been present on a number of other campuses too. Serious questions need to be asked about the extent to which the student movement was penetrated by the Zuma-gupta project.

The physical intimidation of the media by a handful of people calling themselves “a movement” happened after Bell Pottinger’s retreat from South Africa.

Although Bell Pottinger cannot be held accountable for the BLF’S recent thuggery, they are certainly accountable for setting the stage for recent events.

Bell Pottinger did not end their relationship with the Zuma and Gupta families as a result of a sudden attack of conscience. On the contrary, their decision to retreat from a lucrative account was a direct result of a massive pushback by South Africans of all races.

It was not viable for a “reputation management” company to have their own reputation come under such sustained attack. This was an important victory in a longer struggle against the mafia state, a victory that shows that ordinary South Africans will not stand by while their country is stolen and their democracy destroyed.

Now they have issued an apology and fired a few staff, including Victoria Geoghegan, the mastermind behind the “white monopoly capital” narrative and smear campaigns. South Africans have made it clear that the apology is not accepted. But we need to take this matter further.

Progressive forces in South Africa need to connect to the growing movement around Jeremy Corbyn, and progressive forces in all the countries that have suffered as a result of the dark arts of Bell Pottinger, and push for this firm to be shut and its assets socialised.

The possibility of laying criminal charges against Lord Bell needs to be seriously explored.

Now they have been forced out of our politics, and their role in writing statements for organisations like the ANCYL and the MKVA exposed, we need to give thought to how we can begin to repair the damage done to our public sphere by an avalanche of dishonesty.

We will not find a way forward if a critical mass of people do not agree to a set of rules for democratic engagement. Those must include absolute rejection of all forms of thuggery and intimidation and a commitment to reason, evidence and truth.

We must, as a matter of democratic principle, oppose intimidation and dishonesty even when it is used against people with whom we disagree.

Karima Brown did well in terms of principled conduct. Brown, as a socialist, has very different politics to Peter Bruce, former editor of Business Day. Yet when Bruce came under attack, Brown was one of the first people on the scene to stand with Bruce. This is what real democratic principle looks like and it is this kind of commitment that can take us out of this mess.

The media, and the parts of the academy that gave space to defamation from the BLF, also need to do serious introspection. It is not good enough to publish something because it will attract attention. It is time to insist on zero intolerance for dishonesty. We need to reaffirm that a commitment to truth, evidence and reason is fundamental to leftist values.

Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI, research fellow at UKZN School of Sciences and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation.