EDITOR – Bell Pottinger, the world’s respected Public Relations firm, may be dead and buried, but the poisonous narrative continues to manifest itself through the threads of the fragile South African political fabric. The damage has been done.
When ANN7 and the New Age were launched many years ago its evident that these news agents were part of the machinations of the bigger agenda of those who wished to sow anarchy and confusion, while they looted the state coffers.
We have all witnessed how both ANN7 and the New Age have punted a particular narrative and in many senses were extremely successful.
As part of the bigger plan numerous formations were created and funded by the capturers, such as Transform SA, The De-Colonisation Foundation and many more each with a CEO or President, all of whom were very articulate and backed up by the in-house resident political analysts, who mushroomed out of nowhere.
Wrestling with how to concisely describe what Bell Pottinger was doing for the State Capturers is best termed “perception management” (PM). Many public relations firms now offer perception management as on of their services but it seems that not many of them do it very well. Apparently, if you want to be exceptional at creating the”Big Lie”, you really need to specialise in it.
PMs are not spin doctors because they don’t spin facts. They create facts and them sell them to the world as the truth. And by using these methods, a major untruth can be established so quickly and overwhelmingly that no digging by anyone after the fact can make a dent in the public consciousness that it actually isn’t true at all. That is precisely what makes it so dangerous and this was uncovered by the leaked capturer’s emails which consequently led to the demise of Bell Pottinger.
A brief overview of the political analysts would shed more light on the nefarious PM scheme. The one analyst, who is very impressive, is Tshepo Kgadima, with articulate responses to some of the more tricky questions raised on ANN7 reports. According to internet his sole qualification is a technical diploma NQF7 obtained in 1992.
Sometime in December 2014 he was recommended to serve as Chair of the board of PetroSA and it was at this point that his CV came under scrutiny and it was found that he was accused of swindling more than 250 investors who allegedly invested in LontohCoal for projects that did not exist. He also claimed to have mines in Zimbabwe and SA, but these claims are denied by both countries.
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The other very prominent and articulate political analyst, Professor Sipho Seepe,as former acting vice-chancellor of Vista University and in May 2005 was accused of plagiarism which he accepted responsibility for “inadvertent plagiarism”. Botsang Moilia has been described as a propagandist of note and Mazwanele Jimmy Manyi, who has just bought ANN7 and the New Age for R450 million – a loan from the Gupta controlled company Oakbay.
Both he and Carl Niehaus need no introduction to being politically controversial – Carl was removed from the offices of the ANC for allegedly fraudulent behavior and for fudging his CV claiming, inter alia, to have a doctorate when he hadn’t completed his basic degree.
I could go on and on taking each and every analyst and to show how these so called analysts have been hand-picked to promote the Bell Pottinger narrative of PM and how they are adjudicated by none other that Sindy Mabe, the host of the “show”, who has this uncanny ability to craftily massage the perception message so as to extract maximum damage. She is supported by Sifiso Mahlangu, the resident host of Straight Talk and the official political analyst of ANN7, but unfortunately there’s very little information on where he comes from – but one could only imagine.
The crux of providing this analysis is that as TV viewers we need to be absolutely careful of not falling victim to perception management. We have witnessed very recently how Russia has allegedly used PM to alter the outcome of the USA elections..
In the final analysis its evident that while South Africa has been liberated on the ground it has however been betrayed by it’s liberators.
Sicario
Durban
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