A FAMOUS GROUSE

EDMOND Phiri exists! He is real! He has said so himself!

Which comes as a massive relief, for there we were, labouring under the impression that this “independent commentator and analyst” was the fictitious front of a crazed bot farm run by Independent Media boss Iqbal Survé with the sole purpose of discrediting those who critically report on his ailing Sekunjalo business empire.

Because that really is the sort of thing they do down Swervy way. In September 2022, Daily Maverick’s Ferial Haffajee revealed that the Independent columnist “Jamie Roz” was just such an invention, a “fake news” front that targeted the Maverick and its reporters. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Haffajee’s exposure resulted in Roz’s sudden disappearance from the propaganda frontlines and, as News24’s investigative reporters have wryly noted, a “prolific writing career at IOL” had come to an abrupt end.

Enter then our Edmond Phiri, who has gamely picked up Roz’s fallen poison pen to take the fight forward, lashing out at many of Survé’s critics, including the Financial Mail’s Ann Crotty, a respected business affairs and corporate governance commentator, retired Constitutional Court Judge Zak Yacoob, and Chris Roper, a respected digital media strategist.

More pertinently, Phiri suggested that News24 legal journalist Karyn Maughan could be a South African version of the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

Now, there are those who would be flattered by such a comparison. Riefenstahl’s pioneering documentaries of the 1930s remain the subject of study and debate in film schools the world over. The techniques employed in Triumph of the Will, her record of the 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, Germany, are still used in large public spectacles, be they sporting extravaganzas, like the World Cup, or indeed political rallies like last year’s 10th anniversary bash for the Economic Freedom Fighters.

Unfortunately, Maughan was not pleased at being likened to a Nazi propagandist and an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler, and accordingly approached the Press Council for relief. Her complaint was upheld and, in its ruling earlier this month, the council directed Sunday Independent and all other Sekunjalo-owned titles that published Phiri’s spew to retract the article and apologise to Maughan.

Much has been made, however, of Phiri’s “appearance” at a virtual hearing of the council’s adjudicating panel. Asked to turn on his computer’s camera, Phiri told the panel that it did not have one. Frustrated, the panel then asked if he could at least briefly use his mobile phone to show himself. Phiri replied that he did not have enough data to do so. 

As GroundUp’s correspondent remarked, “It is not at all clear whether the dog also ate his homework.”

Phiri insists, meanwhile, that he is not a fiction. 

Decrying the “scathing attacks” against Independent Media and himself, he has labelled News24’s investigation into Survé’s “glitchy propaganda machine” as a “hit piece”.

Moreover, Phiri claims that he has been denied the right of reply despite having communicated with News24’s reporters via email. He singles out one journalist, Nick Wilson, whose request for a Team or Zoom call to “prove” his existence he rejected, and suggests Wilson’s attitude reminded him “of the typical arrogance of ‘baas’ to his ‘baas boy’ during the apartheid era”.

Unsurprisingly, there has been no apology to Maughan from Independent Media. Instead, they have accused the Press Council of “demonstrating strong bias” in its ruling, which was “nothing but censorship of dissenting voices” and “a threat to freedom of speech and media freedom”.

This is a tack that has been taken up by another of Survé’s “independent commentators”, one Sipho Tshabalala, whose impassioned defence of media freedom appeared in the Sunday Independent at the weekend.

It was a valiant effort, with much verbiage about cornerstones in democratic societies, fundamental rights, free expression of beliefs and opinions without fear of retribution and the like. Coupled with this, there were — naturally — grave misgivings over the Press Council’s actions and the “erosion of media freedom and the narrowing of the space for open and honest discourse in our country”.

Unfortunately for Tshabalala, he had pegged his entire argument on the ramblings of David Icke, the conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy theorist and a man deeply troubled, shall we say, by the truth.

Icke, as Tshabalala suggested, is a “vocal advocate for unrestrained free speech” — but then only because so many object to and are openly scornful of his crazed ravings. 

Once a respected British sports broadcaster, Icke stepped off planet Earth to roam the realms of the unreal in 1990 when a psychic told him he would soon be receiving messages from the spirit world. This led him to claim he was the Son of God, and that the world would shortly be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes.

He’s written several books on New Age nonsense, mainly self-published following a fall-out with his publisher who vehemently objected to Icke’s endorsement of the antisemitic fabrication, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Critics have, with justification, accused Icke of being a Holocaust denier. He has claimed the Rothschild family are reptilian shape-shifters and members of a race of lizard people who manipulate world events to keep humans living in fear. 

Such antisemitic misinformation, or “unrestrained free speech” as some would call it, has resulted in Icke being banned from entering a number of countries to conduct his speaking tours. 

For further information on Icke and the like, see Jon Ronson’s Them: Adventures with Extremists (Picador, 2014). A scary read, but hilarious all the same.

Help from on high

Here are the Slaughtered Lamb (“Finest Ales & Pies”), a recent survey has prompted further discussion on woo woo. TshisaLive, the gossipy corner of the TimesLive website, had recently asked readers, “Do you believe fake sangomas exist?”

Do not sneer. It is a serious inquiry. As TshisaLive puts it: “This question tends to pop up from time to time as people who practise African spirituality tell of their different consultation experiences with traditional healers. The question, however, also comes into the spotlight when initiates who go through the traditional training process of becoming a healer are left in doubt.”

TshisaLive’s main order of business is pop culture so it came as no surprise that a messy celebrity divorce between a former TV soap opera star and her businesswoman wife had prompted their poll. (For what it’s worth, almost 90 per cent of respondents believed there were indeed fake sangomas out there, preying on the weak and gullible.)

This apparently was not only a matter of African spirituality, the news site said, but one that also “comes to the fore in Christianity when congregants fall prey to ‘prophets’ who become rapists or extort money from them.”

With that, our thoughts turned to Julius Malema, who on Sunday urged the congregation at the Newcastle funeral service for the mother of EFF KwaZulu-Natal chair Mongezi Twala to pray for unity in his battered and fractious party.

In the meantime, and until such time as the divine intervene, the redshirts and their supporters were not to despair or be shaken by the sudden defection of EFF co-founder Floyd Shivambu to Jacob Zuma’s MK party; the fighters will endure the necessary “contradictions” as they moved forward, Malema said.

But, as with arguments over lobola in dissolving lesbian civil partnerships, here too was a strange mishmash of the traditional and the “progressive” in a familiar rant about economic freedom — all laced, of course, with broadsides at the coalition government. News24 quoted him as saying:

“We can tell you now that this government of national unity … one day we are going to wake up and they are going to tell us that there is no longer a kingdom of KwaZulu-Natal. The Zulu king will no longer exist because the white supremacists do not recognise traditional leadership.

“So, everything else that reflects blackness and African, they are going to destroy everything that promoted and put the young black people in at the forefront. This government of today is going to destroy them. Black unity is very necessary, but we can't say black people must be united under the old man [Zuma].”

It is a strange sort of Marxist-Leninist “revolutionary” who goes out to bat for royalty and hereditary privilege and turns to God for help. That aside, though, here was a glaring example of the commander-in-chief’s paranoia. 

According to City Press, Juju’s fear of being ousted as leader at the EFF conference in December directly led to the redshirts exclusion from the present government. The newspaper reported that Malema’s dismissal of the GNU deal negotiated by his lieutenants was based on the possibility that they would use their newfound prominence to challenge his authority. Malema apparently did not feature at all in the ANC’s proposals to his party. Now irrelevancy beckons for the fighters.

“His paranoia cost the EFF four ministries and five deputy ministries. In terms of the deal negotiated by the EFF team, former deputy president Floyd Shivambu … would get the deputy finance minister’s position while senior member Mbuyiseni Ndlozi would become the minister of higher education.”

City Press added that other cabinet positions had yet to be decided, but were “confirmed for the EFF by the section of the ANC which was eager to avoid a marriage with the DA”. 

This, presumably, is the same “section of the ANC” that last month complained that DA ministers are making the ruling party “look bad” as they outperform their ANC counterparts. These ministers, News24 reported, have been “mopping the floor” with the ANC, “making its ministers appear ‘incompetent’.”

An anonymous source told the news platform, “The DA ministers came out as much more aggressive and much more competent, much more dedicated to making sure they succeed. We saw this when they had to present the budgets. These budgets were prepared by the [directors-general] who were appointed by the ANC, so we are asking why can’t our ministers do these things.”

It’s a tough question, and it’s understandable that a partnership with the EFF would have been far more comfortable. But, for now, let’s just say that God is indeed moving in mysterious ways.