Reporting from the West: A return to reason?

Influential people in parts of the media, civil society and academia in South Africa echoed Western narratives without scrutiny, but now the tide is slowly turning

- Imraan Buccus

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 coauthored 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,