By Masibongwe Sihlahla
@Goolammv is but one small cog in the works of this powerful beast of fake news threatening our democracy. Today we have in power a party which 80% of the electorate rejected but is made palatable by saying we are in a GNU. What an insult to the concept of GNU.
In the build-up to the May 2024 elections fake news seriously played a harmful role to our hard-won democracy of 30 years. Earlier, Helen Zille finally lifted the lid on a highly guarded open secret and that was that the ANC and DA decided right from the start, I assume before the elections, that they would form a coalition.
To make it palatable to the ANC she said Ramaphosa said that they have to call it a GNU. So all along the public were told that the voters have asked for a GNU now we find out the truth. Does the malign influence on our elections and this revelation of Helen Zille have any relation to each other?
Of course it has because it proves that certain parties set out from the start way before the elections that there will be a coalition, was this information shared with @Goolammv? Of course one can clearly see his postings is clear that he has inside information.
Those ministers who lost their jobs and those political appointees of the ministers won't be very happy with this news. I surmise there will be renewed effort to recall Ramaphosa but the forces of malign influences will go into high gear to prevent this because the DA has made it clear that they will only work with an ANC of Ramaphosa so the chances of a recall I can tell the public now will come to nought , we have seen the power of money in this elections, the donor elite wanted a GNU and that’s what they got.
As long as they want Ramaphosa there he will remain. The malign influence of @Goolammv cannot be divorced from the outcome of the elections and the detrimental influence that was the outcome of the elections that is this wild beast called GNU can also not be wished away. What responsible media should do is to counter immediately any misinformation that is spotted and I must say in this regard Independent Media did a sterling job under the guidance of Dr Iqbal Surve who immediately started to engage his sleuthing skills to get to the bottom of this.
Thanks to the insight and alertness of Dr Iqbal Survé he was able to spot the malign influence of @Goolammv from early on and knew that this was a sock puppet and not only an ordinary one but a highly paid and highly influential one privy to insider information. Those moneyed elites who pull strings both inside the ANC and outside serve not the people of this country but they serve narrow interests of the small cabal of the power elite.
Today in Britain there is great sadness when the ordinary people in England especially the middle class suffer from cost of living pressure due to the fact that Britain withdrew from the European Union due to the massive fake news campaign of the Brexit supporters. At the heart of the Brexit campaign those who wanted to leave was nothing but racism disguised as anti-immigration.
With careful management- cum- manipulation of the media information using people's inherent racism they were persuaded to vote Brexit. By voting to leave the EU they achieved what the elite wanted and that had nothing to do with immigration. Today too late the British public realise that Brexit did not benefit them but benefited a small elite.
Today we know in Mzansi the GNU is not benefiting the public but only a small elite.
The price of media freedom in a democracy is eternal vigilance and thank goodness for Dr Iqbal Survé and Independent Media. Having grown up under the jackboot of apartheid and National Party mouthpiece the SABC and StratCom Dr Iqbal Survé knew that for the ANC to have a fighting chance in the polls there need to be a counter to mainstream media which was in the hands of Apartheid beneficiaries and operators.
Yet by dishing it up to the public as fact what is in effect opinions are perceived as gospel by the man in the street. Enough research both in South Africa and overseas proves over and over again the power of dis-information.
We need to salute Dr Iqbal Survé for taking the lead as CEO to counter mainstream media disinformation. What made @Goolammv so egregious was the fact that he used personal attacks on Dr Iqbal Survé to hide his malicious and deliberate dis-information, knowing full well that most readers won't be able to immediately spot the fiction disguised as a fact. It's like a magician's sleight of hand but here it deceives the mind.
* Masibongwe Sihlahla an independent writer and political commentator.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.