The UmKhonto We Sizwe party of Jacob Zuma levereged strategies first learned during the Gupta era for covert influence operations dating back to 2016 to propagate the “big lie” conspiracy theory, which falsely alleged vote rigging in the May elections in South Africa. The Gupta brothers, two Indian nationals accused of grand-scale corruption in South Africa aided by Zuma, have since fled the country. Kyle Findlay, the co-founder of Murmur Data, a data-driven consultancy, told NSN in an interview that the MKP leveraged its echo chamber to drive the “big lie,” while paid influencers were employed mostly by other parties to attack political opponents. He also said that Zuma’s daughter was the key influencer promoting the idea that the election had been stolen in an attempt to undermine the election results.

Zuma’s MK Party Used Gupta Bots for Disinformation in South Africa’s Elections - National Security News