Adriaan Basson reveals Malema used to call him with tip-offs

In a column in News24, the publication’s editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson claims that Julius Malema used to call him with tip-offs.

The piece sees Basson seek to highlight the change in the relationship between Malema and the media as a whole.

Malema and the EFF were embraced by many in the media back when opposition to Jacob Zuma was a uniting factor.

The Citizen reported earlier this week, in a story about Ranjeni Munusamy taking the decision to block the EFF leader on Twitter, that he was once cordial with many of the journalists he is now waging war against.

READ MORE: EFF given a week to prove ‘apartheid-era Stratcom spies’ allegation

He appeared several times as a speaker at Daily Maverick’s The Gathering conference, but the publication’s role in exposing the EFF’s alleged role in the VBS scandal meant he was unlikely to do so again. Malema recently called Pauli van Wyk, who wrote the story linking Floyd Shivambu directly to VBS looting, “satan”.

In a separate News24 piece by its assistant editor Pieter du Toit, he spoke to some of the journalists who had a far better relationship with the commander-in-chief than they did now, some of which admit to having shown a level of support for the party during the battle to remove Jacob Zuma.

While it would be difficult to pinpoint an exact turning point, the narrative the EFF is advancing about their supposed “enemies” in the media appears to have taken root at a similar point to the rise of the term “Stratcom” in South African discourse.

In April, the party issued a statement slamming the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) for their “silence” following claims made by late struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in a documentary that journalists Thandeka Gqubule-Mbeki and Anton Harber were apartheid-era Stratcom spies.

Stratcom was a government unit tasked with spreading disinformation under apartheid. Both Gqubule-Mbeki and Harber strongly denied any involvement in it, with the former saying she found declassified documents showing that she was, in fact, the one spied on by the unit.

The pair launched a legal bid to get the EFF to retract the statement, also requesting damages of R1 million. Gqubule-Mbeki gave them a week to either prove the allegations or pay up, a deadline which the party appeared to have ignored. They claimed that rather than making any accusations of their own, they were just repeating Madikizela-Mandela’s.

READ MORE: Malema says Gordhan deserves a standing ovation

Stratcom is now used by many EFF supporters as a catch-all term for any journalist who is seen as pushing a “white” agenda, or indeed any agenda that clashes with the party’s.

The EFF has also started using the term “white monopoly capital”, one that was associated more with those seen to be pro-Gupta, a part of the political spectrum the party opposed during Zuma’s tenure.

The term, once linked to a campaign by disgraced UK PR company Bell Pottinger, has also become widely used, although some have argued it’s a valid term despite it having been abused by those seeking to protect the Guptas.

Malema recently called Gordhan a “dog” of white monopoly capital. While some have accused the EFF leader of flip-flopping on his views regarding the minister, bringing up many examples of past support, he has since claimed repeatedly that he had tried to “warn” South Africa about him all along.

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