WeeklySA_AdminSPIN: The author digs up some of the most perplexing occurrences that engulfed the nation’s consciousness in the recent past, if only for amusement, reflection and to encourage a more vigilant future generation…
By Jacob Mawela
A fib is defined as an untruth and if the chronology of occurrences contained within journalist Jonathan Ancer’s recently released book, Bullsh!t: 50 Fibs That Made South Africa, are anything to go by – it follows then that generations of citizens of this country might as well have been living a deliberately socially-engineered illusion masquerading as reality!
Scrutinising its path through what would be deemed as myths, urban and rural legends, the tome’s inquisitive assertions are complemented by acerbic cartoons of fellow journo Carlos Amato for a literally thought-provoking perspective!
Encapsulations of some of the fibs follow hence:
• 1994 – Ancer postulates that the historic elections’ results were ‘a little too perfect, absurd and dodgy’ according to political scientist, Professor Steven Friedman – then the head of the Independent Electoral Commission’s information analysis department –backing circumstantial evidence through findings undertaken by his department, but deliberately ignored by the IEC’s upper echelon reluctant to step on the toes of political heavies (the ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa and the NP’s Roelf Meyer who were present at the commission’s offices presumably monitoring the auditing process) with vested interest in the outcome, which Friedman suggests ‘was a negotiated compromise!’
• The decuplets debacle: involved a Tembisa woman named Gosiame Sithole who – according to journalist Piet Rampedi’s account in a Pretoria News issue of June 8, 2021 – had given birth to 10 babies! When Doubting Thomases subsequently sought proof of the newly-arrived, Rampedi duly began dishing a variation of excuses, among which he accused bureaucrats and others in authority of a specified agenda intended to discredit him as a journo – short of assuaging the suspense of a curious world.
Eventually after the then acting Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka released a report, based on medical evidence, dismissing claims of Sithole ever having given birth to even a single baby. Subsequently, Rampedi resigned from the publication!
Ironically, in a prelude titled, What The Critics Said About Bullsh!t, Rampedi –in what could be interpreted as someone making light of his own undoing – is quoted thus: “I bought 10 copies to give to the decuplets on their second birthday”.)
• Another chapter revisits the mystery of the $580 000 (or $4 million according to the version of ex-spy Arthur Fraser) in crisp dollar bills discovered in February 2020 by thieves on a couch at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm. His squeaky clean image unravelled, the president claimed the bonanza was from proceeds from 20 buffalo he had sold to a Sudanese businessman. In a case of so-near-yet ‘sofa’, Ramaphosa avoided impeachment, with his spokesperson hinting, at the time, that he’d answer questions (was the moolah declared to SARS? Did he flout foreign exchange laws?) at his “State of the Furniture Address (SOFA)”!
• The Gupta spin cycle: circumvents upon how British spin agency Bell Pottinger –under the guise of Project Biltong – was hired by the Guptas and Zumas (colloquially referred to as Zupta) to divert the South African public’s focus away from their ‘State Capture’ feeding frenzy by blaming so-called ‘White Monopoly Capital’ for being responsible for the economic misery the majority of Blacks found themselves entrapped in –until its bluff was called by the release of a cache of 200 000 e-mails known as “GuptaLeaks”,which exposed its disingenuous campaign.
The whole saga went cockeyed for the instigators as their comeuppance came in the form of the agency being expelled from the UK’s main PR industry body, and then president Jacob Zuma being forced to resign from office and the notorious Gupta brothers taking flight to “fugitiveville” – a la United Arab Emirates!
• Mandela was a sellout: this segment examines how the sweeping #FeesMustFall movement resurrected to prominence the commonly-held view, by blacks, that the founding father of a democratic South Africa, viz, Nelson Mandela, shortchanged his kindred at Codesa by striking a devil’s bargain which left Whites keeping the economy and the land – a perception Ancer dispels, instead asserting that the dreams of young Black South Africans were betrayed by corruption by the politically connected who looted state coffers and became staggeringly wealthy from crooked tenders at the expense of the poor!
• The good old days: is a statement reflecting people’s suffering from apartheid nostalgia when confronted by the current problems of load-shedding, a junk economy, massive unemployment, violent crime, corruption, et cetera. ‘Life was better under apartheid’ is not a lie – since it was so for some people at the expense of others, posits Ancer whilst maintaining that it’s not possible to compare a murderous regime with a democracy!
• The deadliest lie: grapples with the irrationality of the Thabo Mbeki administration which bickered in the face of the marauding HIV-Aids pandemic. From the anti-AIDS Sarafina II musical, Virodene PO58-administered ‘guinea pigs’, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s beetroot-garlic-olive oil concoction advanced as some of the ways of dealing with the pestilence –Mbeki’s recalcitrant perpetuation of the ‘HIV-doesn’t-cause-AIDS’ lie resulted in thousands of needless and painful deaths and a generation of AIDS orphans!
• A pandemic of madness: deals with measures ordinary South Africans resorted to, to counter the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic during the period before the mass rollout of vaccines with a drug referred to as a ‘killer cure’ and ‘a lie which proved deadly’ known as ivermectin going viral because of social media. Groote Schuur Hospital’s head of infectious diseases, Professor Marc Mendelson, informed Ancer: “I can’t tell you the large number of deaths caused by delay in seeking treatment by patients who would rather guzzle ivermectin at home.”
• Hall of shame: rounds up a selection of public figures in the country’s history who didn’t cover themselves in honour ranging from Nongqawuse’s purported vision leading to the 1856 decimation of the Xhosa nation, when most perished from starvation brought about by the mass slaughter of its livestock and burning of crops; Oscar Pistorius’ ‘snowball of lies’ that he thought the person in the toilet was a burglar, on the fateful Valentine’s Day in 2013 when he fatally shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The list goes on to include the controversy around Tim Noakes, the scientist Banting diet crusader who the medical community accused of spreading anti-scientific misinformation – with his one-size-fits-all diet pilloried as risky; Markus Jooste, the recently deceased –allegedly by suicide –ex-CEO of Steinhoff International described as a ‘hard-arsed bully-boy’ who oversaw the largest corporate fraud in South Africa’s history, which left thousands of investors, pensioners and government employees out of pocket!; Dr Iqbal Surve’, the Independent Media honcho whom Ancer maintains deserves ‘SA’s Biggest Liar’ gong for claiming to have been Nelson Mandela’s doctor (i.e. he told Cape Times staff after Madiba’s death: ‘Mandela said to me, just before he got ill, “Iqbal, are you still the same? I said to him, “Tata, I am still the same.” He said: “Now I can go.”)
The above and more feature in a read which will compel even the unsuspecting citizens to review how they perceive everyday reality as they know it. Although news media is reputable for cynicism, Ancer’s endeavour doesn’t hint for the reader to view occurrences with a dose of that for mere sake – but rather encourages for a vigilant type of denizen, if to avoid a repeat of anomalies such as the ‘State Capture’ debacle.
What his offering has going for it is thorough research backed by checks-and-balances, first-hand accounts. Ancer was an Independent Media journo when Dr Survé helmed the group, and had, as such, front-row experience of the owner’s torrent of fibs and empathy for his country’s well being!
* BULLSH!T: 50 Fibs That Made South Africa is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. Available at bookstores countrywide, it retails for R270
