The tide is slowly turning on uncritical pro-West reporting on issues such as Russia’s war on Ukraine (above) or Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Photo: Bulent Kilic/AFP
In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an already shrill pro-Western network in South Africa spanning NGOs, academia, and sections of the media took on a hysterical tone. This became frenzied when South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice.
Conspiracy theories — such as the claim that Iran bribed the ANC to bring the case — were circulated as fact, and people offering rational and evidence-based critiques of the often propagandistically pro-West network were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, radical economic transformation types or patsies for Russia, China or Hamas. A number of people were slandered in what became a witch-hunt. In this environment, disinformation — a very real issue — was no longer a matter of truth or falsehood: it became a label selectively wielded to discredit critique of the West.
Disinformation has never been the exclusive domain of Russia or China. The United States has a long history of covert influence, regime change and strategic propaganda — from Latin America to Africa, the Middle East and beyond. The “weapons of mass destruction” and “forty beheaded babies” lies are among the most notorious of the lies told by US presidents, but there are many others.
Yet for some years influential actors in parts of the media, NGO and academic establishment in South Africa echoed Western narratives without scrutiny, treating unevidenced US claims as fact and dismissing dissenting voices as dupes or foreign proxies.
On the media front, the Daily Maverick, under Branko Brkic, led the charge. In the NGO world, it was the Brenthurst Foundation under Greg Mills. And in the academy, the leading figure was Herman Wasserman, who, in an article co-authored with Dani Madrid-Morales and Saifuddin Ahmed, declared critical attitudes toward Nato to be the result of “strategic disinformation narratives” crafted by Russia. Other significant players included BizNews, amaBhungane, the Institute for Race Relations and figures such as RW Johnson, Tony Leon, Franz Cronje and Helen Zille, among others.
The effect of this hysteria, triangulated between the media, NGOs and the academy, was to delegitimise critical views and narrow the space for public debate.
But the tide is turning. There is now a growing recognition that some of the loudest voices on the South African political and media landscape have, for years, been uncritically echoing the ideological and geopolitical priorities of Western powers. The legitimacy of this behaviour is now being challenged, and with that challenge comes the possibility of a more independent, democratic and principled public debate.
The Brenthurst Foundation, once the most aggressive of the think tanks pushing a propagandistically pro-West line, has closed its doors in circumstances that remain opaque. The Daily Maverick, under new editor Jillian Green, no longer maintains the same hard pro-West line. It now includes a broader range of perspectives, including regular critiques of Israel. The publication’s credibility took a serious battering in the final years of Brkic’s editorship, but it is now in the midst of a clear and welcome restoration.
One of the clearest signs of this shift is a recent video commentary published by leading South African journalist Redi Tlhabi in the Daily Maverick itself. Tlhabi delivered a scathing rebuke of how sections of the South African media have treated statements and threats by fringe American politicians as if they were major diplomatic developments.
She singled out coverage of two proposed US House Bills targeting South Africa over its stance on Gaza. One had a single sponsor; the other had five — all Republicans — with no bipartisan support, no Senate version and no advancement to committee stage. “You can’t pass a law based on the signatures of five people out of a Congress of 535,” she said.
Tlhabi noted that the media manufactured hysteria over “non-issues” in US-South Africa relations, while failing to scrutinise the political identities, funding sources and actual legislative relevance of the individuals involved.
One of those individuals was Representative Ronny Jackson, a far-right Republican from Texas closely aligned with US President Donald Trump. Jackson voted against certifying former president Joe Biden’s election, and received more than $125,000 in funding from pro-Israel lobbying interests, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Tlhabi pointed to this as a clear example of how US and Israeli-aligned networks effectively use minor figures in the US and gullible journalists abroad to shift public discourse.
“A lot of money goes back and forth as people try to capture public perception,” she said, naming think tanks such as the Hudson Institute and its relationship with local political actors, as players in a coordinated effort to reshape public debate in South Africa. “We [the media] must not become players in these political games and machinations,” she warned. “We must discern and analyse and listen to a plurality of voices.”
That this critique appeared in the Daily Maverick is significant. It implicitly marks a rupture with the publication’s previous editorial line. It signals a break from a moment in which serious questions about the conduct of Western powers, and about elite alignments in South Africa, were reflexively cast as Russian propaganda, or as a result of machinations by China, Iran or Hamas.
It is fascinating to see how a line of critique that until recently was aggressively dismissed as conspiracy theory or “disinformation” has now been articulated in the mainstream media by one of our most respected journalists.
It’s often said that Gandhi once remarked, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The quote is misattributed. It actually comes from the American labour lawyer Nicholas Klein, who told a room of union members in 1918: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
In reality, there isn’t always a monument. Sometimes an idea or a position slowly becomes common sense.
This is exactly what we are now seeing with the quiet return of reason to South Africa’s public sphere. A once-hysterical conversation is giving way — slowly, inconsistently, but discernibly — to a more grounded one.
If we are serious about defending truth and democracy, we need to be consistent. We must subject all global powers to the same level of critical scrutiny. That means acknowledging the ideological work done by US-funded think tanks, media partnerships and academic exchanges. It means recognising that disinformation is a global problem — and that when it comes from the West it is often cloaked in the language of freedom, democracy and human rights. A mature public discourse must be able to hold this complexity without collapsing into paranoia or propaganda.
It is both possible and necessary to hold multiple critiques at once. One can oppose Russian aggression in Ukraine without parroting Nato or Western talking points. One can denounce Iranian authoritarianism while still rejecting US and Israeli propaganda. This is what a genuinely democratic and independent political culture looks like.
Tlhabi and the Daily Maverick are to be commended for taking an important step forward in the restoration of the credibility of our public sphere after the years of uncritical pro-West hysteria. This advance will also be well served by a frank appraisal of the routine recourse to conspiracy theory in BizNews, which continues to poison our public sphere.
Dr Imraan Buccus is senior research associate at ASRi and the University of the Free State.